EYEWITNESS IDENTIFICATION ACCURACY, CONFIDENCE, AND DECISION TIMES IN SIMULTANEOUS AND SEQUENTIAL LINEUPS

Eyewitness identification accuracy was investigated in simultaneous and sequential lineups. Seventy-two subjects watched a film of a robbery in a public park under incidental learning conditions and returned to the laboratory the following day to answer questions about the film. Sequential lineup procedures led to significantly fewer false identifications than the simultaneous lineup mode, with comparable performance in detecting the perpetrator in target-present conditions. Alternative methods for analyzing confidence and decision times in sequential lineups are presented which allow for more fine-grained analyses of the relationships between accuracy, confidence, and decision times both between and within subjects. Distinguishing between choosers and nonchoosers, these analyses show the predictive utility of decision times and confidence as assessment variables.