Effects of exposure time and cognitive operations on facial identification accuracy: a meta-analysis of two variables associated with initial memory strength

In the present study, we conducted two separate meta-analyses in order to quantify the influence on facial identification accuracy of two variables related to initial memory strength for an unfamiliar face, specifically, length of exposure at the time of encounter and encoding operations as manipulated via stimulus processing instructions. Proportion correct was significantly higher for longer (M = 0.66) as compared to shorter exposure durations (M = 0.53) and when participants made social judgments of faces (M = 0.75) than when they attended to individual facial features (M = 0.71). The effect of increased exposure time was non-linear, with comparable increases exerting a greater effect for relatively short versus relatively long exposures. Neither substantive nor methodological variables were found to moderate the effect of exposure duration, and only date of publication appeared to moderate the effect of encoding operations. Theoretical and practical implications of the findings are discussed.

Keywords:

• eyewitness
• exposure duration
• cognitive
• memory
• identification accuracy

Acknowledgements

This research was supported by Award # SES-0010140 from the National Science Foundation to the first author. We are grateful for the research assistance of Meera Adya and Valerie Franssen, and for comments on an earlier draft by Don Read.

Notes

1. A copy of the codebook is available from the authors.

2. We did explore whether alerting participants to the fact that their memory would be tested later moderated the effect of exposure duration. It did not.

3. In one or two studies we could use only the hit rate, as no false alarm data were reported.

4. One article (Reynolds & Pezdek, 1992) included both variables, but they were manipulated in separate experiments.