A preliminary investigation on the performance of brain-injured witnesses on target-absent line-up procedures

Abstract

The current study was a preliminary investigation that aimed to compare the performance of eyewitnesses with and without a brain injury on two target-absent line-up procedures: a simultaneous procedure and a sequential procedure with confidence ratings. A 2 × 2 design (N = 25) was employed, where both brain-injured (n = 15) and non-brain-injured (n = 10) participants were shown a short video of a non-violent crime taking place before taking part in either a simultaneous or sequential target-absent line-up. Participants’ general cognitive abilities and memory recall accuracy were also measured. Results found no significant differences in false identification rates between brain-injured and non-brain-injured witnesses. It was also found that participants with a greater memory accuracy were in fact more likely to make a false identification. The implications and limitations of the study are discussed.

Ethical standards

Declaration of conflicts of interest

Charlotte Gibert has declared no conflicts of interest

Dara Mojtahedi has declared no conflicts of interest

Ethical approval

All procedures performed in studies involving human participants were in accordance with the ethical standards of the institutional and/or national research committee (School Research Ethics Panel at The University of Huddersfield, Department of Psychology) and with the 1964 Helsinki declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards.

Informed consent

Informed consent was obtained from all individual participants included in the study