Can the Mystery Man help to reduce false identification for child witnesses: A study with video lineups

Havard, Catriona and Memon, Amina (2011). Can the Mystery Man help to reduce false identification for child witnesses: A study with video lineups. In: Society of Applied Research in Memory and Cognition (SARMAC) IX, 27-29 Jun 2011, New York.

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Abstract

Although children can identify a target from a target present (TP) lineup as accurately as adults, they are more likely to make a misidentification from a target absent (TA) lineup. In the present study children aged 4-7 and 8-11 years viewed a film of a staged theft and 1-2 days later viewed either a TP or TA video lineup. For half of the lineups a ‘mystery man’ (silhouette) was present. When the ‘mystery man’ was present in the lineup, there were significantly fewer false identifications for the TA lineups, and no significant differences in correct identifications for the TP lineups.