Andrew SmithIowa State University | ISU · Department of Psychology
Andrew Smith
Doctor of Philosophy
About
56
Publications
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478
Citations
Citations since 2017
Introduction
Additional affiliations
August 2019 - present
July 2017 - August 2019
September 2015 - August 2017
Education
September 2011 - August 2015
September 2009 - April 2011
September 2006 - August 2009
Publications
Publications (56)
When following scientific best-practice recommendations, the simultaneous lineup is effective at demonstrating guilt. The simultaneous lineup is less effective at demonstrating innocence. A critical problem is that when a witness identifies a filler or indicates the culprit is not present, confidence does not measure the strength of match between t...
The conceptual frameworks provided by both the lineups-as-experiments analogy and Signal Detection Theory have proven important to furthering understanding of performance on eyewitness identification-procedures. The lineups-as-experiments analogy proposes that when investigators carry out a lineup procedure, they are acting as experimenters, and sh...
Suspect identifications from unbiased lineups (fair lineups) are more accurate than suspect identifications from biased lineups (Wixted & Wells, 2017). We examined whether laypersons were sensitive to the fact that suspect-identification accuracy is higher for unbiased than for biased lineups. Laypersons were presented with biased and unbiased line...
The field of psychology–law is extremely broad, encompassing a strikingly large range of topic areas in both applied psychology and experimental psychology. Despite the continued and rapid growth of the field, there is no current and comprehensive resource that provides coverage of the major topic areas in the psychology–law field. The Oxford Handb...
A police lineup is a procedure in which a suspect is surrounded by known-innocent persons (fillers) and presented to the witness for an identification attempt. The purpose of a lineup is to test the investigator’s hypothesis that the suspect is the culprit, and the investigator uses the witness’ identification decision and the associated confidence...
Two provocative claims about eyewitness confidence have recently been advanced in the eyewitnessidentification literature: (a) suspect identifications made with high confidence are highly accurate and (b) high-confidence suspect-identification accuracy is unaffected by variations in memory strength. Several recent publications have reiterated these...
Forensic science plays an increasingly important role in the criminal justice system; yet, many forensic procedures have not been subject to the empirical scrutiny that is expected in other scientific disciplines. Over the past two decades, the scientific community has done well to bridge the gap, but have likely only scratched the tip of the icebe...
Forensic science plays an increasingly important role in the criminal justice system; yet, many forensic procedures have not been subject to the empirical scrutiny that is expected in other scientific disciplines. Over the past two decades, the scientific community has done well to bridge the gap, but have likely only scratched the tip of the icebe...
A police lineup is a procedure in which a suspect is surrounded by known-innocent persons (fillers) and presented to the witness for an identification attempt. The purpose of a lineup is to test the investigator’s hypothesis that the suspect is the culprit, and the investigator uses the witness’ identification decision and the associated confidence...
Objective:
Past research with one-person showup identification procedures suggests that providing witnesses with an explicit option to opt-out reduces innocent-suspect identifications without reducing culprit identifications (Weber & Perfect, 2012). This finding suggests that improving performance from identification procedures might be as simple a...
Objective: Two provocative claims about eyewitness confidence have recently been advanced in the eyewitness-identification literature: (1) suspect identifications made with high confidence are highly accurate and (2) high-confidence suspect-identification accuracy is unaffected by variations in memory strength. We argue that several recent publicat...
I examined why mistaken identifications increase when either witnessing or testing conditions get worse. In Experiment 1 (N=633), participants watched either a clear or degraded version of a simulated crime. In Experiment 2 (N=1266), all participants watched the same version of the crime, but were then randomly assigned to either a clear or noise-d...
Objective: When a witness is presented with an identification procedure, she may not be aware that among the valid response options is the option to say “I’m not sure” or “I don’t know”. This is problematic, at least in theory, because it suggests that witnesses might be forced into making definitive identification decisions when they do not have t...
While there is a growing body of research examining the relatively “cold”, cognitive decision-making components of showups, few attempts have been made to capture the “hot” affective components of showups that are thought to exacerbate the suggestiveness of the procedure. In three simulated-field experiments, we partnered with law enforcement to ex...
I examined why mistaken identification rates increase when either witnessing or testing conditions get worse (Smith, Wilford, Quigley-McBride, & Wells, 2019). In two experiments, I assigned witness-participants to a strong or weak recognition experience for the lineup by varying either the strength of encoding or retrieval conditions. In Experiment...
It is generally agreed that proper pre‐lineup instructions can reduce the rate of mistaken identifications of innocent suspects. However, the exact nature of these instructions have not been empirically established. We compared the effects of the detailed pre‐lineup instructions recommended by the U.S. Department of Justice to a simple instruction...
When presenting a suspect to a witness for an identification attempt, fair lineups are superior to one-person showups. Relative to showups, fair lineups decrease innocent-suspect identifications to a greater extent than culprit identifications (Steblay et al., 2003). We examined whether the lineup advantage extends from facial identification to for...
Scientific advances across a range of disciplines hinge on the ability to make inferences about unobservable theoretical entities on the basis of empirical data patterns. Accurate inferences rely on both discovering valid, replicable data patterns and accurately interpreting those patterns in terms of their implications for theoretical constructs....
The conceptual frameworks provided by both the lineups-as-experiments analogy and Signal Detection Theory have proven important to furthering understanding of performance on eyewitness identification-procedures. The lineups-as-experiments analogy proposes that when investigators carry out a lineup procedure, they are acting as experimenters, and sh...
There is a long-standing belief that confidence is not useful at discriminating between accurate and inaccurate deception decisions. Historically, this position made sense because people showed little ability to discriminate lie-tellers from truth-tellers. But, it is now widely accepted that, under certain conditions, people can discriminate betwee...
We examined how giving eyewitnesses a weak recognition experience impacts their identification decisions. In 2 experiments we forced a weak recognition experience for lineups by impairing either encoding or retrieval conditions. In Experiment 1 (n = 245), undergraduate participants were randomly assigned to watch either a clear or a degraded culpri...
The present article focuses on a utility-based understanding of criminal justice practice regarding eyewitness identifications. We argue that there are 4 distinct types of utility that should be considered when evaluating an identification procedure. These include the utility associated with all identifications, the utility associated with only the...
When one lineup identification procedure leads to both fewer innocent–suspect identifications and fewer culprit identifications than does some other lineup procedure, it is difficult to determine whether the procedures differ in diagnostic accuracy. In an influential article, Wixted and Mickes (2012) argued that measures of probative value do not i...
We tested the proposition that when eyewitnesses find it difficult to recognize a suspect (as in a culprit-absent showup), eyewitnesses accept a weaker match to memory for making an identification. We tie this proposition to the basic recognition memory literature, which shows people use lower decision criteria when recognition is made difficult so...
Nothing is more fundamental to Signal Detection Theory (SDT) than the notion that memory performance decreases as lures become increasingly similar to target items. Yet, Colloff, Wade, and Strange (2016) claimed that the use of high-similarity fillers (lineup lures) increased memory performance relative to low-similarity fillers. We use their data...
While there is a growing body of research examining the relatively “cold,” cognitive decision-making components of showups, few attempts have been made to capture the “hot” affective components of showups that are thought to exacerbate the suggestiveness of the procedure. In 3 simulated-field experiments, we partnered with law enforcement to examin...
ROC analysis has recently come in vogue for assessing the underlying discriminability and the applied utility of lineup procedures. Two primary assumptions underlie recommendations that ROC analysis be used to assess the applied utility of lineup procedures: (1) ROC analysis of lineups measures underlying discriminability, and (2) the procedure tha...
A showup is an identification procedure in which a lone suspect is presented to the eyewitness for an identification attempt. Showups are commonly used when law enforcement personnel locate a suspect near the scene of a crime in both time and space but lack probable cause to make an arrest. If an eyewitness rejects a suspect from a showup, law enfo...
Some researchers have been arguing that eyewitness identification data from lineups should be analyzed using Receiver Operating Characteristic (ROC) analysis because it purportedly measures underlying discriminability. But ROC analysis, which was designed for 2. ×. 2 tasks, does not fit the 3. ×. 2 structure of lineups. Accordingly, ROC proponents...
Our previous article (Wells et al., 2015a. Journal of Applied Research in Memory and Cognition, in press, this issue) showed how ROC analysis of lineups does not measure underlying discriminability or control for response bias. Wixted and Mickes (2015. Journal of Applied Research in Memory and Cognition, in press, this issue) concede these points....
The accounts of eyewitnesses have proven integral in some international criminal proceedings (e.g., Prosecutor v. Kayishema and Ruzindana). Even in war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide, the identity of perpetrators may be in question. Granted the individuals who carry out these massacres are often those in power and thus known by many i...
If an eyewitness rejects a show-up, police may respond by finding a new suspect and conducting a second show-up with the same eyewitness. Police may continue finding suspects and conducting show-ups until the eyewitness makes an identification (Study 1). Relatively low criterion-setting eyewitnesses filter themselves out of the multiple show-ups pr...
Law enforcement personnel regularly present suspects to eyewitnesses using showups. In this study, we examined the impact of the presence of stolen property on live showup identification performance. Two hundred seventy university students were exposed to a simulated theft. During the subsequent showup, we manipulated the presence of the target and...
Convicted persons who claim to be factually innocent frequently seek assistance from advocacy organizations that help investigate and establish actual innocence. This experiment examined the extent to which the knowledge that a case has passed pre-screening by an innocence project influences case-reviewer judgment through top-down case processing....
Projects
Projects (6)
Lineups that adhere to science-based best practices do an excellent job at preventing innocent-suspect identifications and are proficient at ruling in (inculpating) guilty suspects. But these same lineups are much less proficient at ruling out (exculpating) innocent suspects. This is evident from two patterns in the lineup literature: (1) lineups better discriminate between guilty-suspect identifications and innocent-suspect identifications than they do between correct rejections and misses, and (2) the confidence-accuracy relation is much stronger for suspect identifications than for lineup rejections. We are examining (1) why lineups are less proficient at ruling out than they are at ruling in, and (2) how to increase the proficiency of lineups at ruling out innocent suspects.
We are examining how the eyewitness lineup model commonly used with facial identification procedures might be used to improve applied performance on other identification tasks.
We examine the predictive validity of different measures of diagnostic accuracy in eyewitness identification procedures. A key goal is to determine which measures best track the relative utility of different lineup procedures and to compare existing measures of diagnostic accuracy with novel measures of diagnostic accuracy.
