A police lineup presents a real-world signal-detection problem because there are two possible states of the world (the suspect is either innocent or guilty), some degree of information about the true state of the world is available (the eyewitness has some degree of memory for the perpetrator), and a decision is made (identifying the suspect or not). A similar state of affairs applies to diagnostic tests in medicine because, in a patient, the disease is either present or absent, a diagnostic test yields some degree of information about the true state of affairs, and a decision is made about the presence or absence of the disease. In medicine, receiver operating characteristic (ROC) analysis is the standard method for assessing diagnostic accuracy. By contrast, in the eyewitness memory literature, this powerful technique has never been used. Instead, researchers have attempted to assess the diagnostic performance of different lineup procedures using methods that cannot identify the better procedure (e.g., by computing a diagnosticity ratio). Here, we describe the basics of ROC analysis, explaining why it is needed and showing how to use it to measure the performance of different lineup procedures. To illustrate the unique advantages of this technique, we also report 3 ROC experiments that were designed to investigate the diagnostic accuracy of simultaneous versus sequential lineups. According to our findings, the sequential procedure appears to be inferior to the simultaneous procedure in discriminating between the presence versus absence of a guilty suspect in a lineup.

Over the last ten years, Oosterhof and Todorov's valence-dominance model has emerged as the most prominent account of how people evaluate faces on social dimensions. In this model, two dimensions (valence and dominance) underpin social judgments of faces. Because this model has primarily been developed and tested in Western regions, it is unclear whether these findings apply to other regions. We addressed this question by replicating Oosterhof and Todorov's methodology across 11 world regions, 41 countries, and 11,570 participants. When we used Oosterhof and Todorov's original analysis strategy, the valence-dominance model generalized across regions. When we used an alternative methodology to allow for correlated dimensions we observed much less generalization. Collectively, these results suggest that, while the valence-dominance model generalizes very well across regions when dimensions are forced to be orthogonal, regional differences are revealed when we use different extraction methods, correlate and rotate the dimension reduction solution.

We examined the influence of alcohol on remembering an interactive hypothetical sexual assault scenario in the laboratory using a balanced placebo design. Female participants completed a memory test 24 hours and 4 months later. Participants reported less information (i.e., responded 'don't know' more often to questions) if they were under the influence of alcohol during scenario encoding. The accuracy of the information intoxicated participants reported did not differ compared to sober participants, however, suggesting intoxicated participants were effectively monitoring the accuracy of their memory at test.Additionally, peripheral details were remembered less accurately than central details, regardless of intoxication level; and memory accuracy for peripheral details decreased by a larger amount compared to central details across the retention interval. Finally, participants were more accurate if they were told they were drinking alcohol rather than a placebo. We discuss theoretical implications for alcohol myopia and memory regulation, together with applied implications for interviewing intoxicated witnesses.Keywords: Alcohol myopia, sexual assault, memory monitoring and control, hypervigilance, intoxication Alcohol and remembering a hypothetical sexual assault: Can victims who were under the influence of alcohol during the offense provide accurate testimony?Serious violent offenses often involve intoxicated witnesses and victims (Evans, Schreiber Compo, & Russano, 2009;Palmer, Flowe, Takarangi, & Humphries, 2013). In sexual assault and rape cases 1 , especially, victims and perpetrators are likely to be under the ALCOHOL AND REMEMBERING SEXUAL ASSAULT 4 influence of alcohol (Brecklin & Ullman, 2002;Mohler-Kuo, Dowdall, Koss & Wechsler, 2004;Testa, 2002). Importantly, intoxicated sexual assault victims are less likely than their sober counterparts to report the offense to the police (e.g., Clay-Warner & Burt, 2005; WolitzkyTaylor et al., 2011). However, even among simple rape cases-involving acquaintances, no collateral injury, or no weapon use-that are reported and referred for prosecution, charges are less likely to be issued if the victim was drinking (Beichner & Spohn, 2012).Alcohol intoxication raises questions about the accuracy of testimony in the minds of criminal investigators (Cole & Logan, 2010). Similar concerns can also influence trial outcomes: Jurors (e.g., Evans & Schreiber Compo, 2010) and eyewitness experts (Kassin, Tubb, Hosch, & Memon, 2001) agree that intoxicated witnesses suffer memory impairment.But, can intoxicated people provide accurate information in legal settings? In the present study, we focused on alcohol and memory impairment in the sexual assault context. Our aims were twofold: we tested whether being under the influence of alcohol, or believing that one has consumed alcohol, would (1) differentially affect the quantity of information women reported about a simulated sexual assault, and (2) interact with other factors to influence the accuracy of women's memory for the sexu...

There is widespread belief in the legal system that alcohol impairs witness testimony.Nevertheless, most laboratory studies examining the effects of alcohol on witness testimony suggest that alcohol may affect the number of correct but not incorrect details recalled. However, it is difficult to draw conclusions because sample sizes, testing paradigms, and recall measures vary between individual studies. We conducted a metaanalysis to address this issue. We found alcohol intoxication had a significant and moderate sized effect on the number of correct details recalled (g = 0.40). The effect of alcohol on the number of incorrect details recalled was not significant. Further, the effect of alcohol on the recall of correct details was significantly moderated by multiple factors like intoxication level, the retention interval length between encoding and recall, and the types of questions asked (i.e., free recall vs. cued recall). We discuss the applied implications of the results.

SummaryThe identification performance of children (5 to 6 years, n = 180; 9 to 10 years, n = 180) and adults (n = 180) was examined using three types of video lineup procedures: simultaneous, sequential and elimination. Participants viewed a videotaped staged theft and then attempted to identify the culprit from a target‐present or target‐absent video lineup. Correct identifications in simultaneous and elimination video lineups did not differ as a function of age. The sequential video lineup was associated with a reduction in correct identifications for both child groups compared with adults. With respect to the target‐absent lineup condition, the video elimination lineup was associated with an increase in correct rejection rates for adult witnesses. Age was also significantly associated with accuracy. Differences in correct rejection rates were observed between adults and children and also between the two child groups. Implications and future directions are discussed. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.