The Effects of Alcohol Intoxication on Accuracy and the Confidence–Accuracy Relationship in Photographic Simultaneous Line‐ups

Abstract

SummaryAcute alcohol intoxication during encoding can impair subsequent identification accuracy, but results across studies have been inconsistent, with studies often finding no effect. Little is also known about how alcohol intoxication affects the identification confidence–accuracy relationship. We randomly assigned women (N = 153) to consume alcohol (dosed to achieve a 0.08% blood alcohol content) or tonic water, controlling for alcohol expectancy. Women then participated in an interactive hypothetical sexual assault scenario and, 24 hours or 7 days later, attempted to identify the assailant from a perpetrator present or a perpetrator absent simultaneous line‐up and reported their decision confidence. Overall, levels of identification accuracy were similar across the alcohol and tonic water groups. However, women who had consumed tonic water as opposed to alcohol identified the assailant with higher confidence on average. Further, calibration analyses suggested that confidence is predictive of accuracy regardless of alcohol consumption. The theoretical and applied implications of our results are discussed.© 2017 The Authors Applied Cognitive Psychology Published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd.

And one more for the road: Commentary on the Special Issue on alcohol and eyewitness memory

“…Participants, who had either consumed alcohol (BrAC 0.06%) or a placebo, studied unfamiliar faces and indicated for each face the likelihood that they would recognize the face on a future memory test. In line with previous findings, participants who were intoxicated did not perform worse on the face recognition test (e.g., Flowe et al, ) and gave similar judgments of learning (e.g., Evans et al, ).…”

“…Alcohol intoxication may not only affect the accuracy of the memory or the interpretation of the situation but it may also affect how well the witness thinks they remember the crime. Whereas such confidence tends to be measured at the time of memory retrieval (e.g., Flowe et al, ), Monds et al () examined how accurately witnesses can make judgments of learning at the time of encoding. Participants, who had either consumed alcohol (BrAC 0.06%) or a placebo, studied unfamiliar faces and indicated for each face the likelihood that they would recognize the face on a future memory test.…”

An experimental examination of the effects of alcohol consumption and exposure to misleading postevent information on remembering a hypothetical rape scenario

“…People who were intoxicated during encoding may have a weaker memory for the original event and fewer source cues available in memory to help them differentiate suggested from original event details. However, whereas alcohol intoxication has not been found to affect the confidence–accuracy relationship in line‐ups (Flowe et al, ), the effect of alcohol on recall and metacognitive discrimination accuracy following MI exposure has not been examined.…”

The influence of alcohol and weapon presence on eyewitness memory and confidence

“…For example, moderately intoxicated participants in an old-new face recognition experiment were found to make more false identifications of same-race faces than sober controls, a reduction of the own-race face processing bias the study's authors attribute to alcohol disrupting the expert encoding of same-race faces (Hilliar, Kemp & Denson, 2010). Among studies incorporating more forensically relevant face memory tasks (Altman, Schreiber Compo, McQuiston, Hagsand, & Cervera, 2018;Bayless, Harvey, Kneller, & Frowd, 2018;Colloff & Flowe, 2016;Dysart, Lindsay, MacDonald, & Wicke, 2002;Flowe et al, 2017;Hagsand, Roos af Hjelmsäter, Granhag, Fahlke, & Söderpalm-Gordh, 2013a;Harvey, Kneller, & Campbell, 2013a;Kneller & Harvey, 2016;Read, Yuille, & Tollestrup, 1992;Yuille & Tollestrup, 1990), three reveal an adverse effect of alcohol intoxication on identification accuracy (Bayless et al, 2018;Dysart et al, 2002;Read et al, 1992). Read et al (1992, Experiment 2) found an alcohol-linked reduction in face identification accuracy, but from a mock-perpetrator rather than mock-witness perspective.…”