Overhearing the Planning of A Crime: Do Adults Outperform Children As Earwitnesses?

Abstract

This study examined the reliability of earwitnesses using an ecologically realistic experimental set-up. A total of 282 participants, distributed over three age-groups (7-9 vs. 11-13 year olds vs. adults), were exposed to an unfamiliar voice for 40 seconds. After a two week delay, they were presented with a 7-voice lineup. Half of the participants were exposed to a target-present lineup (TP), and the other half to a target-absent lineup (TA). For both types of lineups the participants performed poorly. In the TP-condition only the 11-13-year olds (with 27% correct identifications) performed above chance level. Furthermore, in the TA-condition all agegroups showed a high willingness to make an identification (overall mean=53%). For both groups of children, voice identification co-varied significantly with speaking rate and pitch level, as did pitch variation for the youngest children. Neither factor correlated significantly with the adults' identifications.

Angry Voices from the Past and Present: Effects on Adults' and Children's Earwitness Memory

“…Overall, children performed slightly better than adults, although not significantly so. The tendency for children (in the age range 11–13 years) to perform somewhat better than adults is in line with past research (Clifford & Toplis, ; Öhman et al , ) and suggests that if we are prepared to accept adults as earwitnesses, we should also accept children as earwitnesses.…”

“…Yarmey, ) and children (e.g. Öhman et al , ). When mapping possible biases, we found that most witnesses who made a false identification chose one particular foil.…”

“…Further, research has shown that the accuracy level for identifying an unfamiliar voice heard under realistic circumstances is far from satisfactory from a legal perspective (e.g. Read & Craik, ; Öhman, Eriksson, & Granhag, , ).…”

“…realistic circumstances is far from satisfactory from a legal perspective (e.g. Read & Craik, 1995;Öhman, Eriksson, & Granhag, 2010, 2011.…”

Resolving the (Apparent) Talker Recognition Paradox in Developmental Speech Perception

“…Here, we speculate that what on the surface could be seen as a developmental paradox in talker recognition can be explained by methodological differences across the two literatures. In the past, infants were almost exclusively tested on talker discrimination tasks, while older children were largely tested on talker recognition tasks, including talker learning tasks (e.g., Creel & Jim enez, 2012;Perea et al, 2014) and voice line-ups (e.g., Fecher & Johnson, 2018a;€ Ohman, Eriksson, & Granhag, 2011). Discrimination and recognition tasks differ in many ways, and they put different demands on the auditory system (as previously discussed in, e.g., Creel & Jim enez, 2012;Fecher & Johnson, 2018a;Sadakata & McQueen, 2013;Werker, Fennell, Corcoran, & Stager, 2002;Winters, Levi, & Pisoni, 2008).…”