Non-biased lineup instructions do matter – a problem for older witnesses

Abstract

From the limited literature on older witnesses’ identification performance it is known that they are less accurate on lineups compared to younger witnesses. What is less certain is why they show this age deficit and what can be done to aid their performance. Witnesses forgot being given non-biased lineup instructions informing witnesses that the perpetrator may or may not be present. More older witnesses than younger witnesses forgot and witnesses who failed to report remembering these instructions were significantly less accurate on the lineups. In addition, the current study investigated the use of sequential lineup presentation and stringent decision criteria to aid the performance of older witnesses. Sequential presentation was beneficial to both younger and older adults when the lineup was target absent (TA) but was detrimental when the lineup was target present (TP). Stringent decision criteria had no significant beneficial effect. Future directions for aiding older witnesses’ performance are discussed.

Keywords:

• Older witnesses
• identification
• lineup instructions

This research was conducted while the first author was in receipt of a University of Portsmouth research studentship. We would like to thank the anonymous reviewers for their comments on an earlier version of this paper

Notes

1 Three of our older participants were between 55 and 59 years. They were recruited from a “Help The Aged” Day Care Centre under the direction of the Centre Manager who advised that though they had a younger chronological age they were similar to the over 60 age group in every other respect. Ageing is subject to massive individual differences (Woodruff-Pak, 1997). These three participants were screened as described and their results were in line with the rest of the older participants.

2 The bystander was a young man with similar looks to the young perpetrator and was included in the young lineup. However, there was no difference in older participants’ performance between the young and old lineup and another foil was identified more frequently than the bystander. These two findings would suggest that the presence of the bystander had little or no effect on older witnesses’ performance. Though the young participants demonstrated poorer performance on the young lineup, the bystander was not identified at above chance level, and therefore it was felt that presence of the bystander did not significantly contribute to the results. For these reasons, presence of the bystander will not be discussed further.

3 Though participants received more than one set of instructions, we are sure that the question asking participants about the content of the lineup instructions was understood by participants to relate to such instructions (i.e. that the perpetrator may or may not be present) for two reasons. Firstly, because it asked them about instructions given to them prior to the lineups and other instructions were given to them as they viewed the lineups. Secondly, when examining the raw data no participants recalled any of the other instructions.