The effects of distance and age on the accuracy of estimating perpetrator gender, age, height, and weight by eyewitnesses

Nyman, Thomas J.; Antfolk, Jan; Lampinen, James Michael; Korkman, Julia; Santtila, Pekka

doi:10.1080/1068316x.2020.1798425

Cited by 3 publications

(3 citation statements)

References 34 publications

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“…Also, we encourage researchers to discuss smallest effect sizes of interest in other areas of applied memory research. To provide a concrete example, Nyman et al (2021) discussed the importance of “serious errors” 8 in person descriptions. According to them, “serious errors” increase the chance of arresting the wrong person.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The importance of the smallest effect size of interest in expert witness testimony on alcohol and memory

et al. 2022

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Memory experts are sometimes asked to evaluate the validity of accounts of witnesses, victims, or suspects. In some of these cases, they are asked what effect alcohol has on the validity of such accounts. In this article, we offer a guide on what expert witnesses can reliably say about how alcohol affects memory. We do so by resorting to effect sizes from previous studies and meta-analytic work, and address this novel question: Are these effect sizes meaningful in legal cases? More specifically, we argue that any determination of whether individual studies about alcohol and memory are practically relevant for legal cases, scientists must focus on the smallest effect size of interest. We make the case that a decrease or increase of only 1 detail, especially an incorrect detail, should be regarded as the smallest effect size of interest in this line of research. In line with this idea, we show that effect sizes in the alcohol and memory literature are often larger than this smallest effect size of interest. This finding is important because it implies that alcohol often exerts a practically relevant and meaningful detrimental effect on the reporting of both correct and incorrect details, which in turn negatively affects the validity of witness testimony.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The importance of the smallest effect size of interest in expert witness testimony on alcohol and memory

et al. 2022

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“…Our data include repeated measures from participants who conducted multiple line‐up tasks, which has been found to be a useful approach in eyewitness research (Mansour et al., 2017; Nyman, Antfolk, et al., 2019; Nyman et al., 2023; Nyman, Lampinen, et al., 2019). Moreover, each task was either TP or TA (within subjects) and participants were randomized into groups where they either received biased or unbiased instructions (between subjects).…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…A considerable amount of research has focused on the system variables because they can be controlled by the judicial system (Wells, 1978, 2020; Wells et al., 2020). In contrast to system variables, estimator variables, relate to aspects of an investigation that cannot be influenced by the judicial system, such as, exposure time (Bornstein et al., 2012), viewing distance (Nyman et al., 2023; Nyman, Lampinen, et al., 2019) and the weapon focus effect (Fawcett et al., 2013). Typically, researchers have relied on simulated events (e.g.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Eyewitness identifications based on biased or unbiased line‐up instructions after a realistic and violent hostage simulation

Nyman,

Cappa,

Zappalà

et al. 2023

Journal Invest Psychology

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Few earlier studies have investigated the effects of highly stressful, realistic, violent, and threatening scenarios on eyewitness identification accuracy in an ecologically valid setting. The majority of studies have relied on laboratory‐based simulated (videos/images) experiments. The present study investigated line‐up accuracy approximately 1 week after a hostage simulation event. We administered biased line‐up instructions to 50% of participants to investigate how this impacted choosing behaviour and accuracy. Based on 1030 line‐up decisions (N = 122), we found that average accuracy was 38% in target present (TP) and 54% in target absent (TA) line‐ups and that biased line‐up instructions decreased overall accuracy (vs. unbiased). The hit rate for TP line‐ups with biased instructions was 0.43 (unbiased instructions: 0.33), while the false alarm rate for TA line‐ups with biased instructions was 0.60 (unbiased instructions: 0.32). We found that high confidence was associated with correct identifications and that shorter response times were indicative of correct rejections. Our findings demonstrate, in a more realistic scenario than the majority of eyewitness identification studies, the effect that biased line‐up instructions lead to increased choosing and decreased accuracy.

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The masked villain: the effects of facial masking, distance, lighting, and eyewitness age on eyewitness identification accuracy

Nyman,

Korkman,

Lampinen

et al. 2023

Psychology, Crime & Law

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The effects of distance and age on the accuracy of estimating perpetrator gender, age, height, and weight by eyewitnesses

Cited by 3 publications

References 34 publications

The importance of the smallest effect size of interest in expert witness testimony on alcohol and memory

The importance of the smallest effect size of interest in expert witness testimony on alcohol and memory

Eyewitness identifications based on biased or unbiased line‐up instructions after a realistic and violent hostage simulation

The masked villain: the effects of facial masking, distance, lighting, and eyewitness age on eyewitness identification accuracy

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