Comparing Younger and Older Adult Eyewitnesses: Examining the Simultaneous, Elimination, and Wildcard Lineup Procedures

Abstract

Older adults (60- to 99-year-olds) and younger adults (18- to 49-year-olds) viewed a videotaped theft and were then asked to provide a description of the perpetrator. Following a brief delay, participants were presented with a simultaneous, elimination, or wildcard lineup procedure that was either target-present or target-absent. Overall, younger adult eyewitnesses were more likely to be correct in their identification decisions, reported more perpetrator descriptors, and had a higher proportion of accurate descriptors compared to older adults. Moreover, the simultaneous and elimination procedures were superior to the wildcard procedure in target-absent lineups. When presented with a target-present lineup, participants were more likely to be correct when presented with the simultaneous procedure compared to the elimination procedure. Neither of the identification procedures that have been shown to be beneficial with child eyewitnesses appear to have influenced the rate of correct identification or correct rejection for older adults as a separate age group.

Key words:

• elimination lineup
• eyewitness identification
• lineup procedure
• older adults
• person descriptors
• wildcard lineup
• younger adults

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. Given that there is a range of 39 years, a Chi-square was run between the 60- to 79-year-olds and the 80- to 99-year-olds to determine whether there were any differences across the age range of the older adults, but no differences were found, χ²(1, n = 174) = 0.10, p = .76.

2. The simultaneous procedure was used as the reference group.