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Person descriptions as eyewitness evidence

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1
Person Descriptions
as Eyewitness Evidence
Christian A. Meissner
University of Texas at El Paso
Siegfried L. Sporer
University of Giessen, Germany
Jonathan W. Schooler
University of British Columbia, Canada
Two teenage girls were enjoying their family vacation in a hotel hot tub one evening.
Shortly after their parents had left them, the girls were approached by a stranger, who
proceeded to join them in the hot tub. Following several minutes of conversation, the
stranger attempted to molest the older girl by touching her “private parts.” The older girl
struck the stranger in the face and told him to stop, and instructed the younger girl to
find their parents. After the older girl shouted “rape” several times, the stranger finally
exited the hot tub, gathered his belongings, and ran from the area. The girls would later
describe the stranger as a male in his twenties, with no shirt, wearing tan/brown shorts
and a shell necklace. He had dark hair, and a dark/suntanned complexion. Upon receiv-
ing the description, detectives released a BOLO (“be on the lookout”), and a suspect
matching the description was detained 45 minutes later as he walked on the beach about
a half-mile from the hotel. The girls were brought to the suspect and together identified
him as the stranger they had encountered. The suspect was arrested for the crime, but
prosecutors would later drop the charges when the suspect provided a detailed (and cor-
roborated) alibi for his whereabouts at the time of the incident. Simply put, detectives
had detained the wrong person.
Person descriptions represent an important element for detectives in the investiga-
tion of any crime. Unfortunately, the descriptions provided by witnesses or victims tend
to be rather nondistinct and, like the description provided by the teenage girls above,
can frequently apply to many people in the vicinity of the crime. Although descriptions
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4 MEISSNER, SPORER, SCHOOLER
are most often useful for locating a suspect in the immediate aftermath of an incident,
they are also used throughout a criminal investigation to identify potential suspects from
mug books, to construct sketches or composites of a suspect, and as a basis for selecting
fillers when investigators are constructing a lineup identification parade and subsequently
assess the “fairness” of that lineup. In addition, witness descriptions are regularly intro-
duced at trial as a means for demonstrating the congruence between the suspect and a
witness’s memory. In Neil v. Biggers (1972), the U.S. Supreme Court indicated that wit-
ness descriptions could be used as one basis for determining the accuracy of a witness.
However, as discussed in this chapter, the relationship between a witness’s description
and his or her ability to perceptually identify the actual perpetrator is not clear-cut.
Given the importance of person descriptions as eyewitness evidence, psychologists
and criminologists have conducted a wealth of research aimed at establishing what is
known about the content and veracity of person descriptions, as well as factors that may
positively or negatively influence a witness’s ability to provide an accurate description.
The current chapter provides a review of this research, including a discussion of psycho-
logical factors that may influence person descriptions at encoding (e.g., alcohol, stress,
illumination, distance, etc.), the effects of delay and repeated descriptions over time, the
role of person variables (e.g., age, gender, race, etc.) and individual differences, and the
influence of misinformation from investigators and/or co-witnesses. In addition, we ad-
dress the variety of recall techniques that have been explored to improve the quality and
quantity of person descriptors, and the relationship between such description procedures
and witnesses’ subsequent attempts at perceptual identification of a suspect (i.e., the
verbal overshadowing effect, Schooler & Engstler-Schooler, 1990; or the use of person
descriptions as retrieval cues, Cutler, Penrod, & Martens, 1987; Sporer, in press).
CONTENTS OF PERSON DESCRIPTIONS
IN REAL CASES
Quantity and Quality of Descriptors
A number of archival studies have examined the content of person descriptions in real
cases. Likely the most well-known study was conducted by Kuehn (1974). This study
involved the analysis of person descriptions contained in 100 police protocols of cases
of bodily injury, rape, and robbery in Seattle, Washington. Statements were taken from
the witnesses immediately after the incident, and all perpetrators in the sample were
strangers. Unfortunately, it is not clear from Kuehn’s report whether the descriptions
were rendered as free descriptions or were the result of some standardized questioning
scheme employed by the local police. The number of details contained in the descrip-
tions was fairly meager overall (with a maximum of nine descriptors)—on average there
were 7.2 descriptors, whereas most witnesses reported 8 or 9 features. Only four vic-
tims were unable to provide any details at all. In descending order of frequency, gender,
age, height, build, race, weight, complexion, and hair color were mentioned. With the
exception of eye color (23%), all features were named by more than 70% of all vic-
tims. Kuehn concluded from these data that witnesses were able to convey a general
impression about the perpetrator but could not provide more specific features, like hair
or eye color.
In contrast to Kuehn (1974), Yuille and Cutshall (1986) examined a single shoot-
ing incident, involving a total of 21 witnesses, of which 13 collaborated in a follow-up
research interview. Surprisingly, the witnesses’ reports were remarkably elaborate and
highly accurate, even after the 5-month delay between the incident and the research
interviews. Based on these results, the authors questioned typical laboratory findings
that have capitalized on witness errors since the heyday of eyewitness testimony research
by Stern (1902) and Muensterberg (1908). However, one potential explanation for the
findings of Yuille and Cutshall may be that the type of case, which apparently was quite
spectacular, was likely to have involved multiple interviews of the witnesses, many con-
versations between witnesses and family/friends, as well as ample opportunity to read
about the events in the local press. We speculate that these multiple information expo-
sures may have served as opportunities for witnesses to rehearse these events and thus
improve recall (for more on the role of verbal and visual rehearsal in eyewitness recall,
see Read, Hammersley, Cross-Calvert, & McFadzen, 1989; Sporer, 1988, 1989).
Overall, Yuille and Cutshall (1986) found that the police interview had rendered a
total of 392 action, 180 person description, and 78 object description details, many of
which turned out to be correct (82%, 76%, and 89%, respectively). These figures were
even higher for the research interview, which asked additional questions that were of
primary interest to a memory researcher but not to a police investigator. Yet, despite the
large number of correct details elicited by both the police and the researchers in the in-
terviews there were also some errors in the person descriptions, most of which re-
ferred to estimates of height, weight, and age (23% errors out of a total of 46 such sta-
tistics in the police interview). Such estimates were deemed errors if they were outside
of an acceptable range determined by the authors (i.e., plus or minus 2 inches or
years, or 5 pounds). Second in errors were faulty descriptions of style and color of hair,
as well as style and color of clothing (18%). Problems with descriptions of clothing, par-
ticularly memory for colors, were noted long ago by Muensterberg (1908). Cutshall and
Yuille (1989) were subsequently able to elicit a greater number of details (although not
a greater proportion of accurate details) than the police from witnesses of shootings and
of bank robberies up to 2 years after the incident.
Sporer (1992a) analyzed criminal records containing 100 witnesses (46 male, 54 fe-
male) who provided a total of 139 person descriptions of perpetrators of capital crimes
(mostly cases of robbery and rape). About half of the descriptions were from witnesses
who were themselves victims or bystanders involved in the criminal action; the other
half were from persons who had observed the criminal outside the context of the crime
itself. Overall, person descriptions tended to be rather poor; the number of descriptive
details mentioned ranged from 1 to 48 details (M 9.71; SD 7.03). Almost one-
fourth of all descriptive details referred to general information such as height, age, and
race, where height estimates frequently referenced some (unknown) population norm
(e.g., “average height”, “normal body figure,” etc.). Another 31% of descriptors referred
to clothes, and 30% described the face of the perpetrator. Some witnesses also men-
1. PERSON DESCRIPTIONS 5
tioned jewelry or the dialect spoken. Close to 5% of the descriptors referenced personal-
ity characteristics (which are useless when investigators are trying to find a person to ar-
rest, but may promote subsequent recognition of the person because of the deeper level
of processing possibly involved at encoding; see Sporer, 1991). It is also noteworthy that
quantity and pattern of descriptions found in this archival study closely resembled those
of a staged event study in which a confederate had interrupted a lecture to take away a
slide projector (Sporer, 1992b).
Of the facial descriptors analyzed by Sporer (1992a), the majority referred to the
upper half of the face, particularly the hair of the perpetrator. This finding confirms ear-
lier studies on contents of facial descriptions (Ellis, Shepherd, & Davies, 1980; Laughery,
Duval, & Wogalter, 1986; Shepherd, Ellis, & Davies, 1977) and on the importance of
upper portions of the face in the recognition process (e.g., Fisher & Cox, 1975). In fact,
the cheek and chin (but also the forehead) were rarely mentioned in these descriptions.
Although reference to hair (about 16% of all descriptors) appeared to be the most dom-
inant single descriptor, it is also the most problematic and is likely to be of little help in
the pursuit of a criminal because hair style can be most readily altered in comparison
with other more permanent features (e.g., inner features of a face). Similarly, the large
number of references to the clothing of the perpetrator is generally of limited value when
police are attempting to locate a perpetrator.
Lindsay, Martin, and Webber (1994) examined the descriptions of 105 criminals pub-
lished in the Kingston, Ontario newspaper (The Whig Standard) and compared their com-
pleteness with that of 100 descriptions (across five targets) obtained from a series of lab-
oratory studies. Participant-witnesses viewing staged crimes were most likely to report
clothing (99%), hair color (90%), and height (86%), whereas less than 50% reported
such obvious descriptors as gender, age, or race/ethnicity. The most frequently reported
feature of the face was the eyes (43%), and all other features were reported less than 25%
of the time. Witnesses to real crimes were significantly more likely to report gender (96%),
hair color (38%), clothing (60%), and race/ethnicity (25%), and facial features were
provided in less than 10% of the sample. Although the results of Lindsay et al. indicated
that laboratory witnesses provided more complete descriptions than real witnesses (7.35
vs. 3.94 features, respectively), they more generally concluded: “The data strongly sup-
port our concern that eyewitness descriptions are frequently vague” (p. 531).
Van Koppen and Lochun (1997) reported a large-scale archival analysis of person
descriptions in 431 robbery cases. A total of 1313 witnesses provided 2299 descriptions
of the offenders. Descriptors were subdivided into 24 permanent descriptors (e.g., gen-
der, skin color) and 19 temporary characteristics (e.g., particulars of clothing, type of
mask). Similar to Sporer’s (1992a) findings, the completeness of the descriptions was
rather poor. Of the possible maximum of 43 descriptors, the median number provided
by each witness was 8 (interquartile range 6). Permanent features were mentioned
more frequently (median 5, interquartile range 5) than temporary characteristics
(median 2, interquartile range 3). Considering that gender, appearance (including
race), and skin color were among the most frequently mentioned permanent character-
istics (characteristics that are likely the most obvious to any observer), the paucity of
these descriptions becomes even more dramatic. Less than 5% of the descriptors referred
6 MEISSNER, SPORER, SCHOOLER
to inner features of a face (eye color, nose, face color or complexion, mouth, eye shape,
teeth, earrings, chin, ear size, ears protruding), which are considered most important for
identifying another person (Ellis, 1992). Of the temporary characteristics, the majority
of descriptors referred to hats (51%) and hat color (31%), as well as jackets (28%), coats
(25%), and trousers (26%), and their respective colors (28%, 22%, and 18%).
Van Koppen and Lochun’s (1997) analysis was not restricted to the quantity of in-
formation recalled as in Sporer’s (1992a) study, but also sought to analyze the accuracy
of descriptions by validating the descriptions by witnesses against the descriptions con-
tained in the police database used in the Netherlands. Although more elements of the
descrptors were correct than incorrect, the majority of crucial facial descriptors were
wrong (e.g., accuracy of facial descriptors included: eye color 36%; nose 35%;
mouth 39%; chin 38%). Most strikingly, almost all descriptors of facial hair (beard
and mustache) failed to match the police database. Given that perpetrators may have
changed these aspects of their appearance over time, however, the latter finding is diffi-
cult to interpret. Interestingly, there was a negative correlation between accuracy and
completeness, indicating that when witnesses did provide more extensive descriptions
their accuracy suffered.
Estimates of Height and Weight
Almost all person descriptions contain references to the perceived height, weight, and
age of the perpetrator (Kuehn, 1974; Sporer, 1992a; van Koppen & Lochun, 1997; Yuille
& Cutshall, 1986); however, authors differ in their interpretation of existing data re-
garding the extent to which such estimates are accurate. Some authors have defined ac-
curacy as estimates falling within a certain range of “true” values (e.g., true value plus or
minus 2 inches or 5 pounds; see Yarmey & Yarmey, 1997; Yuille & Cutshall, 1986), con-
cluding that estimates appear to be rather accurate. Then again, treating values with a
difference of 4 inches (almost 10 cm) in height as “accurate” would allow an estimate of
170 cm to be equivalent to one of 180 cm, values that are substantially below or above
the population average (see Flin & Shepherd, 1986; Sporer, 1996).
When the accuracy of estimates for height and weight are defined as the correlation
between the actual values and their estimates, these correlations are well below their
maximum possible value. For example, Janssen and Horowski (1980) reported that the
average correlations between the actual and estimated heights in a series of studies with
students aged 10 to 18 fluctuated between .26 rs .90. As might be expected, the
correlations were smaller for younger children than for older teenagers. This age effect
could be either a function of the restricted experience of the smaller children with num-
bers (see also Davies, 1996) or a result of the smaller children’s own height, which seems
to assist adults in gauging their estimates of another person.
Next to the target’s true height and weight, probably the most important determi-
nant of this type of estimate is the witness’s own height and weight, perhaps modified by
his or her knowledge (or better, supposition) of what the average population norm might
be for a typical middle-aged male or female. Flin and Shepherd (1986) have presented a
comprehensive and representative study on this topic. The authors had 588 participants
1. PERSON DESCRIPTIONS 7
estimate the height and weight of male targets (using a total of 14 targets of differing
heights and weights). Each target was accompanied by a second person, the context per-
son, who asked the participant for directions. Thereafter, the context person returned to
the participant and asked for an estimate of the target’s height and weight, as well as the
participant’s own height and weight. Overall, Flin and Shepherd found evidence for an
own-anchor effect in which participants used their own height or weight as a reference
to judge that of the target person. In contrast, neither the context person’s height nor his
or her weight appeared to influence participants’ estimates, as might have been expected
if participants were to compare the two individuals side by side. Generally, participants
underestimated the target person’s height and weight. There was also a tendency for par-
ticipants to underestimate the height of taller targets and to overestimate the height of
shorter targets—a finding that could be interpreted as regression to the mean. Flin and
Shepherd explained this finding with reference to subjects’ knowledge of population
norms, which might induce observers to shy away from extreme judgments. Hence, very
tall or very heavy targets were more likely to be underestimated.
FACTORS THAT INFLUENCE DESCRIPTION
ACCURACY/COMPLETENESS
Consistent with any memory task, the accuracy or completeness of person description is
likely to be influenced by a host of factors, including those present at encoding (e.g., ob-
servation to view, anxiety or stress, etc.) or throughout the retention interval (e.g., length
of the interval, post-event misinformation, etc.). The current section will review the
available laboratory, field, and archival research on such factors, as well as witness or tar-
get variables (e.g., age, race/ethnicity, gender, etc.) or other individual difference variables
that might influence description performance. Finally, various methods for obtaining per-
son descriptions are discussed here for their influence on accuracy and completeness.
Encoding-Based Factors
Opportunity to View. It has been assumed that many if not most crimes happen at
night; however, few studies have directly assessed the influence of illumination levels on
person descriptions. From the perception literature we know that color vision is dramat-
ically reduced at low levels of illumination, which implies that descriptions of clothing
or hair color given under these conditions must be treated with caution. In addition,
less information can be extracted under low levels of illumination (G. R. Loftus, 1985;
Reinhardt-Rutland, 1986), which should lead to poorer descriptions. One study con-
ducted by Yarmey (1986) has confirmed these extrapolations to person descriptions. More
specifically, Yarmey examined eyewitness recall and identification of an event under
conditions representing daylight, beginning of twilight, end of twilight, and night vision.
His results indicated a significant influence of illumination level on witness recall, in-
cluding details of the perpetrator, the victim, and the environment. As might have been
expected, recall was superior during the daylight and beginning of twilight conditions.
8 MEISSNER, SPORER, SCHOOLER
Although it has been assumed that the opportunity to view a target person (i.e., dis-
tance between or duration of the event) should significantly influence the accuracy or
completeness of person descriptions, only a handful of field studies have attempted to in-
vestigate such factors. For example, Yarmey, Jacob, and Porter (2002) conducted a study
in which participants interacted with a target person for 5 seconds or 30 seconds and
were subsequently asked to describe the encounter. As expected, their results indicated
that person descriptions (particularly for clothing) were superior when participants had
a longer time to observe the target person. Another aspect that appears to be important
regards whether the witness encodes information about a perpetrator with the intent of
later recalling it from memory. Along these lines, Yarmey (2004) found that instructions
to intentionally encode information from the event for a subsequent memory test led to
superior recall of person descriptions (again particularly for articles of clothing).
Although both laboratory and field research on such factors has been minimal, there
are some archival analyses of criminal records that have explored the importance of
viewing conditions. Despite claims for the superior ecological validity of archival studies
(Yuille & Cutshall, 1986), the problem with archival analyses is that the accuracy of the
descriptions generally cannot be determined—rather, a proxy for accuracy must be cre-
ated with respect to the precision of the description, or its relative consistency with that
of the individual found guilty for the crime. In Sporer’s (1992a) study, the mean number
of descriptors, length, and precision of person descriptions were coded and related to
low, medium, and high levels of a host of potentially relevant factors, including illumi-
nation, duration of event, and time to observe. The categories “low,” “medium,” and
“high” are not to be taken literally, as they may take on different meanings with respect
to the particular variable coded (e.g., “high illumination” was operationalized as bright
daylight or good artificial lighting). Level of illumination had the expected effect (such
that greater illumination led to more complete person descriptions), whereas duration
of the incident and time estimated for the target to be in view did not seem to influence
description completeness. Similarly, van Koppen and Lochun (1997) found that better
illumination and shorter distances between the witness and perpetrator were associated
with greater frequency of person descriptors. Whereas both of these studies supported
the predicted linear relationship between opportunity to view and recall, Kuehn’s (1974)
archival analysis found worse performance for twilight conditions than for observations
either at bright daylight or at night.
Stress or Anxiety. Eyewitness events are generally considered anxiety-provoking
situations in which the victim or witness is likely to experience a great deal of stress
during the encoding process. Consistent with this notion, a number of studies of eye-
witnesses have suggested that high levels of stress or anxiety impair memory by restrict-
ing attentional and executive processes at encoding and thereby prevent the consolida-
tion of information into a coherent event sequence (see Deffenbacher, 1983, 1994). On
the other hand, other studies suggest that stress may increase participants’ memory for
central details (Christianson, 1992) and that the negative effects of stress (at least in some
cases) may reverse with the passage of time (Burke, Heuer, & Reisberg, 1992; Christian-
son, 1984; for a general review see Deffenbacher, Bornstein, Penrod, & McGorty, 2004;
1. PERSON DESCRIPTIONS 9
Schooler & Eich, 2000.) With regard to person descriptions, several laboratory studies
have demonstrated impairment in accuracy and completeness as a result of stress or anx-
iety. For example, Clifford and Hollin (1981) varied the violence of a to-be-remembered
event and found that participants in the violent conditions were less likely to recall de-
tails of the perpetrator (see also Loftus & Burns, 1982). In their recent meta-analysis on
the topic, Deffenbacher et al. (20004) found that heightened anxiety led to significant
decrements in recall accuracy (Cohen’s d .31) across studies.
The presence of a weapon, which may be accompanied by stress or fear, has also
been shown to divert a witness’s attention away from the face of the offender. A number
of studies have investigated the possibility that the presence of a weapon is associated
with impaired recall of details of the perpetrator or event. Consistent with the afore-
mentioned research, studies of the “weapon focus” effect have generally demonstrated a
significant influence of the presence of a weapon on person description accuracy (see
meta-analysis by Steblay, 1992). Recent research by Pickel (1998, 1999) has indicated
that the unusual or unexpected nature of a weapon may be responsible for the observed
effect on description accuracy, when contrasted with the “threat” posed by the object.
Archival studies of eyewitness testimony have also attempted to assess the influence
of anxiety, stress, or the presence of a weapon on the accuracy or completeness of person
descriptions. Given that stress in criminal situations could not be observed (or manipu-
lated) directly, the amounts of anxiety and arousal were coded retrospectively by classi-
fication of an event on the basis of the reports emerging from police records (e.g., pres-
ence of a deadly weapon, bodily injury, etc.) or of self-reports of anxiety provided by the
witnesses in the course of testimony. In Sporer’s (1992a) study, three groups of witnesses
were compared: victims, bystanders participating in the event without being victims,
and other witnesses who were questioned by the police about the perpetrator during the
investigation but were not themselves directly involved in the case (e.g., the owner of a
gunshop where the perpetrator bought his weapon). Overall, the most striking finding of
this analysis was that none of the various ways in which stress had been coded seemed to
indicate the expected deterioration in witness recall for high levels of stress and its asso-
ciated variables. In fact, there even appeared to be a (linear) increase in descriptive de-
tails as a function of some of these stress-related variables (e.g., greater reported anxiety
was associated with a greater number of details). An analysis of stress conducted by
Yuille and Cutshall (1986) showed similar results, whereas an analysis conducted by van
Koppen and Lochun (1997) demonstrated results consistent with the laboratory and
field research reported earlier (i.e., high levels of stress associated with impaired recall
performance). A more recent archival study by Wagstaff et al. (2003) demonstrated null
effects on the accuracy or completeness of person descriptions. The general inconsistency
observed between laboratory or field research and archival research may potentially be
accounted for by length of the retention interval. Laboratory studies have typically used
short retention intervals that are known to sometimes give an advantage to nonstressful
memories, whereas archival studies typically involve longer retention intervals, which
sometimes afford advantages to more stressful memories (Kleinsmith & Kaplan, 1963,
1964). It also possible that stressful experiences may be more likely to incur rehearsal,
which could increase the amount of details recalled. Importantly, in none of these
10 MEISSNER, SPORER, SCHOOLER
archival studies was it possible to ascertain the accuracy of the descriptions, so all con-
clusions from the archival data must be drawn with caution.
Alcohol or Drugs. The consumption of alcohol or drugs is frequently associated
with criminal activity (Yuille, 1986). Laboratory research has consistently demonstrated
that alcohol consumption inhibits the encoding process when administered beforehand
and thereby impairs subsequent recall of information (for a review see Sayette, 1999).
However, research has been somewhat limited in examining the influence of alcohol
or drug usage on the accuracy or completeness of eyewitness descriptions. One of the
few empirical studies examining the effect of alcohol consumption on witness recall was
conducted by Yuille and Tollestrup (1990). In general, the authors found that con-
sumption of alcohol significantly impaired participants’ ability to recall details (in both
frequency and accuracy of recall) of the event and/or target person, regardless of
whether the participant recalled immediately (and under the continued influence of al-
cohol) or 1 week later. Read, Yuille, and Tollestrup (1992; Experiment 1) subsequently
found similar effects. In his archival analysis, Sporer (1992a) also found that when wit-
nesses had consumed alcohol they were less able to report details about the perpetra-
tor’s appearance.
More recently, Yuille and his colleagues (Yuille, Tollestrup, Marxsen, Porter, & Herve,
1998) investigated the effects of marijuana use on eyewitness memory. Prior research
had generally shown detrimental effects of marijuana on memory recall (cf. Murray,
1986). The results of Yuille et al. demonstrated that marijuana use significantly impaired
the completeness of witnesses’ recall regarding the event or target person. This effect,
however, was moderated by the timing of recall such that the impairment of recall asso-
ciated with marijuana use was present only when participants were questioned immedi-
ately after the event. When participants in the marijuana and control conditions were
questioned after a 1-week delay, no differences in completeness of recall were observed.
In contrast to completeness of recall, no significant effects of marijuana use were found
when accuracy of recall was considered. It is apparent that further research is needed to
evaluate the influence of alcohol and drugs on eyewitness recall.
Retention Factors
To the layperson it may sound like a truism that accurate retrieval of information should
deteriorate following increased levels of delay; however, the form of the postulated for-
getting function varies with the type of material (e.g., visual vs. verbal) as well as the
form of the memory test (e.g., recall vs. recognition; see Shepherd, Ellis, & Davies, 1982;
Shepherd, 1983; Sporer, 1989; Wixted & Ebbesen, 1997). The current section discusses
the available research (both laboratory, field, and archival) regarding the influence of re-
tention factors on person descriptions, including the length of the delay, the strength of
the memory trace, and the intrusion of post-event information.
In general, laboratory research has shown significant detrimental effects of delay in
the accuracy and completeness of person descriptions. For example, Ellis, Shepherd,
and Davies (1980) had participants describe one face immediately after viewing it, and
1. PERSON DESCRIPTIONS 11
another either 1 hour, the next day, or 1 week following exposure. Participants remem-
bered significantly fewer details after 1 week compared with the two shorter retention
intervals, and memory loss was rather equally distributed across specific facial features.
The accuracy of person descriptions also declined significantly with the longer delay in-
terval. In a similar laboratory experiment, Meissner (2002) found significant losses in
both the completeness and the accuracy of facial descriptors when participants provided
a description either immediately or following a 1-week delay.
In their archival analysis, van Koppen and Lochun (1997) observed a pattern con-
sistent with the aforementioned laboratory studies, such that witnesses provided fewer
person descriptors following longer retention intervals. In contrast to this study, Yuille
and Cutshall (1986) and Cutshall and Yuille (1989) emphasized strikingly high levels of
recall from witnesses of real crimes as late as 2 years after the incidents. As mentioned
previously, these high levels of performance were likely mediated by repeated question-
ing (and rehearsal) prior to recall at the time of the study (see Sporer, 1989).
It should be noted that the course of time alone is unlikely to have a detrimental
effect on recall; rather, both the strength of the initial memory trace and interference
from a variety of activities during the delay interval are likely the major influence of a
witness’s ultimate recall of person descriptors. Generally referred to as “post-event infor-
mation,” witnesses may obtain information during the retention interval (either deliber-
ately or unintentionally) through a number of sources or tasks that they engage in. For
example, overhearing a description provided by another person or being shown an erro-
neous facial composite or sketch can lead the witness to incorporate erroneous details
into his or her own description of the perpetrator, and the likelihood of such post-event
information influencing subsequent recall has been shown to increase following a long
retention interval (Loftus & Greene, 1980; Loftus & Ketcham, 1983; Shaw, Garven, &
Wood, 1997; Sporer, 1996b). The related effects of misleading questioning by investiga-
tors (referred to as “misinformation”) and collaborative recall with another witness (or
“co-witness” effects) are discussed below.
Witness and Target-Person Variables
As in the eyewitness identification literature, a number of witness and target variables
(e.g., gender, age, ethnicity, etc.) appear to influence the accuracy and completeness of
person descriptions. This section reviews the available literature on such variables.
Gender. Although many studies on eyewitness memory have included both male
and female participants, few have analyzed gender differences. Several studies conducted
by Yarmey (1986, 1993, 2004) have generally indicated few differences in the recall of
men and women. When differences were noted, they typically involved responses to spe-
cific attributes that women may have been more likely to attend to at encoding (e.g.,
jewelry, hair color or length, and weight; see Yarmey, 2004), or they involved more com-
plex interactions between variables (such as levels of illumination; see Yarmey, 1986). In
several studies, Yarmey noted that men appeared more confident in their responses than
women (Yarmey, 1986, 1993).
12 MEISSNER, SPORER, SCHOOLER
MacLeod and Shepherd (1986) have drawn attention to gender differences in an
archival study of criminal assault cases. Similar to research by Yarmey (1986, 2004), gen-
der differences were found to covary in a complex manner with such variables as the
type of questions analyzed (e.g., action details vs. descriptive details; statements refer-
ring to self, victim, accused, or periphery) and the type of incident (involving injury of
the victim or not). In his archival analysis, Sporer (1992a) reported that male witnesses
provided on average longer descriptions than females (M 7.50 vs. 7.10 number of
lines in the protocol, respectively). In contrast, the number of descriptors and rated pre-
cision of statements showed an opposite but nonsignificant trend favoring females.
Thus, it appears that although females may have said less quantitatively, they did not
necessarily convey less information.
Child Witnesses. Although some studies have found that the relative accuracy in
reports of children may not differ from that of adults (Goodman & Reed, 1986; Leippe,
Romanczyk, & Manion, 1991; Marin, Holmes, Guth, & Kovac, 1979), adults’ state-
ments are likely to be much longer and more detailed than those of children (Davies,
Tarrant, & Flin, 1989; Dent & Stephenson, 1979; Leippe et al., 1979; Marin et al., 1979).
In contrast, a recent study conducted by Pozzulo and Warren (2003, Experiment 1)
observed both greater accuracy and completeness of person descriptions provided by
adults versus youths (ages 10 to 14). Further analyses indicated that adults were more
likely to report features of the face, aspects of the body (i.e., height, weight, and build),
and race of the perpetrator, whereas youths were more likely to report various acces-
sories (e.g., belt or glasses). With regard to accuracy, youths were significantly less accu-
rate than adults in describing interior facial features (e.g., eyes, nose, or mouth), aspects
of the body, and the age of the perpetrator. In a follow-up study using a live event, Poz-
zulo and Warren (Experiment 2) observed the more classic pattern involving a greater
frequency of person descriptors by adults when compared with youths, but no differ-
ences in the overall accuracy of features reported. The analysis of specific features was
largely consistent with the first study, except that aspects of the target’s clothing were
more likely to be reported by adults in the sample. Recent research by Lindholm (2005)
has also suggested that witnesses, particularly children and young adults, may actually
perform better when recalling descriptions of target persons matching their own age
group. Such own-age effects (similar to the cross-race effects discussed below) may result
from a variety of experiential or motivational factors (cf. Sporer, 2001a), and further
research on this topic seems warranted.
Saywitz (1995) has suggested that it may be important to adapt one’s language when
interviewing children such that questions are more comprehensible to young children.
In particular, interviewers should use short sentences with a simple grammatical struc-
ture, common phrases, and proper names. They should avoid the passive voice, double
negatives, and indirect questions. Before estimates are obtained, interviewers should
also make sure that children understand concepts like size, distance, weight, age, and
time, as well as particular body parts and various color names. For example, Dent (1982)
reported large inaccuracies in estimates with children between 8 and 13 years of age.
Furthermore, age estimates may suffer from children’s lack of knowledge of facial cues to
1. PERSON DESCRIPTIONS 13
aging (Ellis, 1992). Providing children (and adults) with possible ranges or specific an-
chors (Dent, 1982; Sporer, 1996b) or a color plate or color wheel may lead to better re-
sults for some aspects of person descriptions than free descriptions. In contrast, specific
questions (e.g., What was the color of her hair?) may lead not only to more information
but also to more inaccurate information than general questions (e.g., What was her ap-
pearance?; Dent & Stephenson, 1979).
One challenge in understanding the influence of misinformation on children rela-
tive to adults is that children may be both more likely to forget details of the original ex-
perience (including the appearance of the perpetrator) and more likely to forget any mis-
information they receive about the individual after the fact (Schooler, 1998; Schooler &
Loftus, 1993). Thus, it is possible that testing children following a delay (when they have
had the opportunity to forget the misinformation) may provide the best opportunity for
achieving veridical recall. In their classic review of the topic, Ceci and Bruck (1993) also
posited that certain cognitive (e.g., memory trace strength or source-monitoring ability)
and social (e.g., conformity to an authority figure) activities can mediate a child’s sus-
ceptibility to suggestion in recall. Although the authors caution against the perils of sug-
gestive questioning, they warn against completely discounting children’s recall. In their
own words, “children are able to encode and retrieve large amounts of information, es-
pecially when it is personally experienced and highly meaningful” (p. 434).
Elderly Witnesses. Aging in late adulthood has been shown to affect both the per-
ceptual and memory abilities of witnesses (for a review, see Yarmey, 1996). Elderly wit-
nesses (i.e., above 65 years), for example, are increasingly more likely to demonstrate
deficits in their visual acuity at night, and in their ability to perceive depth and to adapt
to darkness. Both color vision (particularly blue and blue-green) and memory for colors
are also likely to decline with age. At later age levels, individuals are also more likely to
demonstrate difficulty with source monitoring (Cohen & Faulkner, 1989; Henkel, John-
son, & de Leonardis, 1998), which may be crucial in many eyewitness situations (e.g., to
counter the influence of suggestive questioning).
In a field experiment in which both showup and lineup identifications were admin-
istered to participants ranging in age between 18 and 65 (Yarmey, Yarmey, & Yarmey,
1994), 651 individuals were randomly approached in public places and asked for direc-
tions by one of two young adult, female confederates. The duration of exposure to the
target was approximately 15 seconds. Two minutes later the witness was approached by
a female investigator and was asked to describe the target and to identify her face and
voice. With regard to description accuracy, young adults (18–29 years of age) were sig-
nificantly superior (M 72%) to middle-aged witnesses (30–44 years of age) (M 61%),
who in turn were superior to older adults (45–65 years of age) (M 54%). These results
comport with prior research conducted by Yarmey and his colleagues (e.g., Yarmey &
Kent, 1980), which indicated that “young adults on average were twice as complete and
20% more accurate in free narration in their descriptions of a criminal incident than
were the elderly” (Yarmey, 1996, p. 268). Recent research by Searcy, Bartlett, Memon, and
Swanson (2001) has demonstrated similar effects on person description completeness
14 MEISSNER, SPORER, SCHOOLER
and accuracy for young versus elderly adults. However, to the extent that most of these
studies have used only young adults as targets to be observed and described, these stud-
ies may reflect as much an in-group bias in the form of an own-age effect (Sporer, 2001a)
as deficits in the memory of elderly witnesses.
Cross-ethnic Differences. Although more than 60 studies have investigated recog-
nition memory for own- versus other-race faces (for reviews see Chance & Goldstein,
1996; Meissner & Brigham, 2001b; Sporer, 2001a), very few studies have attempted to
determine whether participants differ in the way they describe faces of their own and
another race (Sporer, 2001b). Those that have investigated descriptions of own- versus
other-race faces have suggested that individuals attend to features deemed relevant to
own-race faces and further attempt to apply this encoding scheme inappropriately when
examining other-race faces (Ellis, Deregowski, & Shepherd, 1975; Shepherd & Dere-
gowski, 1981). For example, Ellis and colleagues (1975) demonstrated several differ-
ences in the type of features that black and white participants recalled (regardless of the
race of face). Although Ellis and colleagues did not assess descriptions for accuracy or
discriminability, they did note that white participants often reported rather “redundant”
descriptions of black faces (e.g., “he has black skin, black, kinky hair and brown eyes”)
that would likely be indiscriminant upon later assessment (p. 123).
Fallshore and Schooler (1995) compared Caucasian undergraduates’ ability to iden-
tify and describe African American and Caucasian faces. As is typically found, they
observed the cross-race effect for lineup identification decisions, such that participants
were better able to recognize Caucasian relative to African American faces. However,
when description accuracy was assessed with the use of a communication accuracy par-
adigm in which subject-judges attempted to identify the faces based on witnesses’ verbal
descriptions, no cross-race effect was observed (although a numerical advantage was
shown for the identification of other-race faces). Fallshore and Schooler speculated that
differences in the pattern of results associated with cross-racial face recognition versus
face description may be due to differential reliance on configural versus featural process-
ing for own versus other race faces, respectively (see Rhodes, Brake, Taylor, & Tan, 1989).
Accordingly, if the source of the own-race face recognition advantage were an enhanced
ability to rely on configural information (Sporer, 2001a), then it follows that verbal de-
scription ability, which typically relies on featural knowledge (see Farah, Wilson, Drain,
& Tanaka, 1998; Wells & Turtle, 1987), should not reveal such differences. Thus, al-
though the relative dearth of studies on the topic clearly suggests the need for additional
research, the absence of evidence for an own-race advantage for person description may
reflect fundamental differences in the processes associated with face recognition versus
description.
Methods for Obtaining Person Descriptions
Several methods of eliciting a person description have been developed over the years,
from standard free recall approaches to feature checklists and techniques based upon
1. PERSON DESCRIPTIONS 15
principles of cognitive psychology (e.g., the cognitive interview). In this section, we dis-
cuss research on the generation of person descriptions and their positive and negative
effects. Along the way, we also address the role of leading questions and attempts at per-
mitting witnesses to collaborate in generating a description, and we consider the effect
of repeated questioning on the accuracy and completeness of person descriptions.
Free Recall vs. Leading Questions. Likely the most common technique used by
investigators to obtain a person description involves a request for the witness to simply
recall what he or she remembers about the perpetrator of the crime. Although such free
recall descriptions are often quite accurate, unfortunately they rarely satisfy investigators,
because of their likelihood of being incomplete with regard to critical details (Lipton,
1977). Thus, investigators will frequently follow up with more specific, close-ended ques-
tions to complete the description (e.g., Do you remember the color of the man’s hair?). In
addition, investigators may have previously received information regarding the perpetra-
tor and so will attempt to confirm this information by inquiring about more specific de-
tails (e.g., Did the man have red hair with long sideburns?) or may include this information
in the context of inquiring about another detail (e.g., This man with the red hair and long
sideburns, did he have any facial hair?). Unfortunately, such leading questions can have rather
harmful consequences for the witness’s attempts at subsequent recall, as studies indicate
that witnesses are quite likely to incorporate potentially inaccurate information (“misin-
formation”) into their person descriptions (Loftus, 1975, 1979; Loftus & Zanni, 1975).
For example, Loftus and Greene (1980) observed that participants who viewed a face
and then heard a description of the face that was attributed to another witness later in-
corporated the verbal expressions of that witness into their description, even when the
description was in error.
Feature Checklists. As noted above, one primary drawback to the use of free recall
tasks regards the incompleteness of person descriptions. Witnesses will often vary in their
output criterion for recalling details of an event (Koriat & Goldsmith, 1996), and a com-
mon difficulty with person descriptions involves the limited vocabulary that individuals
have for describing the human face. In an attempt to alleviate this problem, researchers
have sought to develop feature checklists that might aid witnesses in providing more
complete (and useful) descriptions of the perpetrator they viewed. For example, Shep-
herd (1986; see also Shepherd & Ellis, 1996; Sporer, in press) and his colleagues have
developed the Aberdeen Face Rating Schedule, which consists of some 50 items on
which witnesses are asked to rate individual features of a face on five-point scales (for a
published version of these scales, see Sporer, in press). Using these forms, observers are
prompted to use certain features that otherwise they might omit or forget. However, ac-
curacy of these descriptions might be poor, as people may frequently mark the middle
(“normal”) value of the scale when they either don’t remember or guess the information
(Sporer, in press). Nonetheless, forms of this type are useful both for communicating in-
formation to other agencies and for conducting computerized searches to identify indi-
viduals in mug shot databases who might be presented to the witness (cf. Pryke, Lindsay,
& Pozzulo, 2000). A prototype of such a system was developed by psychologists at the
16 MEISSNER, SPORER, SCHOOLER
University of Aberdeen (see Shepherd, 1986; Shepherd & Ellis, 1996), and another sim-
ilar system, SIGMA-IRIS, was used by the Austrian police (Zima & Zeiner, 1982).
One potential problem with the use of feature checklists regards their presentation
of a rather exhaustive list of person descriptors, many of which the witness may never
have attended to at encoding. The information elicited is either not very informative (as
when witnesses mark default, “normal” values) or even incorrect, and the accuracy of
the information is not related to the accuracy of a later identification (Sporer, in press).
When the witness signifies the recollection of several features that are incongruent with
the actual perpetrator, this may cause interference quite similar to the misinformation
effects discussed above. In several studies, Wogalter (1991, 1996) has shown that such
feature checklists (in contrast to a free recall or imaging task) can produce more incor-
rect features and subsequently interfere with witnesses’ ability to identify the perpetra-
tor. As a result, feature checklists may not provide the best means for collecting eyewit-
ness information.
Collaborative Recall. Should witnesses be permitted to discuss their memory for
the event with one another in generating a common, agreed-upon description for the
perpetrator? There are, of course, potential benefits from collaborative recall, but there
would also be potential costs of cross-contamination if witnesses were to share erroneous
information with one another. Psychologists have studied this problem in the context of
person descriptions, attempting to understand any benefits of permitting collaborative
recall on the accuracy and completeness of descriptions, and the extent to which wit-
nesses may adopt erroneous information provided by another witness into their descrip-
tions. For example, Warnick and Sanders (1980) investigated the influence of group dis-
cussion of a previously viewed event on individual witness’s subsequent recall. Their
results indicated superior accuracy and completeness of recall for participants who had
discussed the event in a group when compared with participants who recalled the infor-
mation independently. Yarmey and Morris (1998) conducted a similar study, but had
some participants also provide a consensus description of the perpetrator and event
(some immediately, others following a 1-week delay). The results of Yarmey and Morris
also indicated that group discussions led to more correct details being recalled when
compared with individual attempts at recall, but no similar increase in erroneous details.
Given that witnesses’ person descriptions are generally quite accurate, it seems rea-
sonable that collaborative recall would have some positive effects on the amount of
information recalled. But are witnesses particularly susceptible to adopting erroneous
details that might be provided by another witness? To explore such a “conformity effect,”
Gabbert, Memon, and Allan (2003) created a situation in which witnesses viewed events
differing in several key features. Witnesses were then later asked to discuss the event
with another witness before providing a description independently. Consistent with pre-
vious studies of the misinformation paradigm (cf. Shaw et al., 1997), a rather substantial
percentage of participants (71%) incorporated erroneous details provided to them by
the co-witness. Thus, to the extent that a co-witness might provide erroneous informa-
tion, collaborative recall may contaminate the person descriptions of others who partic-
ipate in the discussion.
1. PERSON DESCRIPTIONS 17
Repeated Questioning. Witnesses may be asked to provide a description of the
perpetrator and event on multiple occasions, including immediately following the event,
throughout the investigative process, in depositions and pretrial hearings, and finally
(but most importantly) on the witness stand before a jury. To what extent might repeated
questioning influence the veridicality of the information provided by the witness? The
general cognitive literature has shown both positive and negative effects of repeated re-
call (Brown, 1923). For example, individuals may benefit from repeated attempts by
recalling information or items that had not previously been reported (Payne, 1987;
Roediger & Challis, 1989). To avoid confusion, we adopt the distinction between hyper-
mnesia, that is, an increase in net recall (number of new details minus number of items
lost), and reminiscence, that is, the gross recall of details provided at least once across
a number of trials (Payne, 1987; Turtle & Yuille, 1994). In their study of eyewitnesses,
Scrivner and Safer (1988) demonstrated hypermnesia during the repeated recall of event
and perpetrator details from a previously viewed crime. Turtle and Yuille (1994) par-
tially replicated these findings with longer retention intervals between successive re-
call episodes, demonstrating reminiscence but not hypermnesia. Bornstein, Liebel, and
Scarberry (1998) further demonstrated that repeated testing can improve recall for de-
tails of a negatively arousing event.
In addition to the possibility of more complete descriptions, repeated testing has
also been shown to preserve an individual’s memory by strengthening associations that
are retrieved (see Bjork, 1988). One important moderator, however, regards the reten-
tion interval prior to the first attempt at retrieval—to the extent that the retention in-
terval is brief, more information may be preserved by the act of retrieval (Bahrick, 2000;
Ebbesen & Rienick, 1998; Shaw, Bjork, & Handall, 1995). Ebbesen and Rienick (1998)
varied the interval between exposure to a target and the first recall attempt (1 day,
7 days, or 28 days), and all participants provided a second recall attempt after 4 weeks.
Their results indicated that, across all conditions, participants recalled about one less
descriptor at the 4-week test (M 8.50) than at all other tests (M 9.50). Although
the authors stress the fact that there was virtually no decline in the recall of personal
attributes once a recall attempt was made, the percentage of errors for facial features,
clothing color, and clothing style was still substantial. Even recall for the ethnicity of the
person who participants had interacted with showed error rates between 13% and 23%.
Nonetheless, these results do appear to demonstrate the predicted protection of person
description memory afforded by repeated questioning. In a similar fashion, Dunning and
Stern (1992) reported two experiments in which participants showed a (nonsignificant)
tendency to recall more person information correctly, with no change in incorrect or
confabulated details, over repeated reports. The interval between reports, however, was
only 5 minutes, which is functionally quite different from the situation in which wit-
nesses are repeatedly asked about events at different occasions separated by days or even
months (Sporer, 1992a; van Koppen & Lochun, 1997).
In contrast to the benefits of increased completeness and maintenance of the mem-
ory, Roediger and his colleagues have demonstrated that repeated testing can also have
rather paradoxical effects in which erroneous information may be reported and incor-
porated into subsequent recall episodes (see Roediger, McDermott, & Goff, 1997; Roedi-
ger, Wheeler, & Rajaram, 1993). For example, a study by Roediger, Jacoby, and McDer-
18 MEISSNER, SPORER, SCHOOLER
mott (1996) demonstrated that when participants were encouraged to recall erroneous
information from a previously viewed crime, they were more likely to report that infor-
mation in later attempts at recall (cf. Schooler, Foster, & Loftus, 1987). Meissner (2002)
subsequently replicated the pervasive effects of self-generated misinformation in the
context of person descriptions, particularly when participants were forced to report
descriptors that they were unsure of.
Cognitive Interview. Over the years, researchers have been interested in devising
techniques that might improve the accuracy and completeness of information obtained
from witnesses. Likely the most well-known technique is the cognitive interview, which
was initially developed by Geiselman and Fisher in the early 1980s (for a review, see
Fisher & Geiselman, 1992). Overall, the cognitive interview consists of four main com-
ponents: (1) context reinstatement, which includes mentally reinstating the environ-
mental and personal context of the original event; (2) instruction to “report all” infor-
mation, including partial information, even if it seems unimportant; (3) recounting the
event in a variety of temporal orders; and (4) reporting the events from a variety of per-
spectives. With the use of the cognitive interview, a host of studies have shown that de-
scriptions of persons, objects, and events can be reliably improved when compared with
other standard (free recall) interview techniques.
In the first of these studies, Geiselman et al. (1984) obtained 11.00 correct details
in response to open-ended questions about characteristics of a person from witnesses in-
structed with the cognitive interview, compared with 7.38 details by witnesses in a stan-
dard interview condition. Importantly, the cognitive interview did not lead to an increase
in incorrect details. Whereas this basic pattern of results has been confirmed in studies
with real witnesses (Fisher, Geiselman, & Amador, 1989), other studies have noted an
increase in the recall of incorrect details gathered with the cognitive interview. For ex-
ample, a study by Finger and Pezdek (1999) found that the cognitive interview increased
the recall of both correct and incorrect facial descriptors when compared with a stan-
dard interview procedure. Confirming this pattern, a recent meta-analysis of 42 studies
by Koehnken, Milne, Memon, and Bull (1999) revealed a large increase in the number
of correct details elicited by the cognitive interview and a smaller, yet significant, in-
crease in the number of incorrect details elicited. Furthermore, the meta-analysis indi-
cated that accuracy rates elicited with the cognitive interview were about the same as
accuracy rates achieved with traditional interview methods (84% vs. 82%, respectively).
It should be noted that the majority of studies examining the cognitive interview have
not focused on obtaining person descriptions per se, so further research in this direction
seems worthwhile.
THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN PERSON
DESCRIPTIONS AND EYEWITNESS IDENTIFICATION
So far our discussion has focused on the nature and quality of person descriptions. An
important related issue involves the relationship between the description and identifica-
tion of faces. This in turn leads to two distinct (albeit related) questions. First, what is
1. PERSON DESCRIPTIONS 19
the relationship between the quality with which a witness describes a face and the accu-
racy with which he or she subsequently identifies it? Second, what is the influence of
describing a face on its subsequent identification? As will be seen, the answers to both
of these questions are not as intuitive as one might expect.
The Description-Identification Relationship
It seems quite reasonable that witnesses who are better at describing a perpetrator
should also be better at identifying him. The intuitive nature of this relationship is in-
herent in the arguments in many eyewitness cases where inconsistencies between a wit-
ness’s initial description of a perpetrator and the appearance of the suspect are high-
lighted to undermine the credibility of the identification. Both the U.S. Supreme Court
(Neil v. Biggers, 1972) and the German Supreme Court have used the quality of person
descriptions as indicators to evaluate the accuracy of person identifications in criminal
trials (see Sporer & Cutler, 2003). Despite the appeal of the belief that a strong relation-
ship should exist between face description quality and identification accuracy, research
reveals that this relationship is at best very weak and often nonexistent. Although
Sporer (1992b) reported a significant positive relation (assessed by a point-biserial cor-
relation) between the number of descriptors and identification accuracy in a staged
event study (r .28), other studies have not confirmed this finding when focusing on
the accuracy of descriptions. For example, Grass and Sporer (1991) staged another
event in a classroom and then 1 week later had participants describe the target’s appear-
ance and respond to prompted questions about the target’s appearance. Participants
were then presented live simultaneous, live sequential, or photographic sequential line-
ups. These authors found no relationship between two judges’ assessments of either the
completeness (r .06) or accuracy (r .04) of the descriptions and identification
performance. Similar failures to find a relationship between face description quality and
recognition performance have been observed in a number of other studies (Pigott &
Brigham, 1985; Sporer, in press). Furthermore, Wells and Leippe (1981) actually found a
nonsignificant, yet sizable, negative relationship (r .41) between the accuracy of
witnesses verbal recall of other aspects of the scene of a simulated crime and their iden-
tification of the target individual.
Although an absence of a relationship between person description quality and iden-
tification performance is by far the most common result, there are a few circumstances
under which a relationship has been observed. Using the communication accuracy par-
adigm, Fallshore and Schooler (1995) examined the relationship between a description’s
quality and the ability of another individual to use a given description to identify the in-
dividual described from among a set of distractors. In the context of describing and iden-
tifying own- versus other-race faces, the authors found no significant relationship be-
tween description accuracy and identification performance for own-race faces (r .12),
but a significant relationship in performance on other-race faces (r .36). This finding
further supports the view that other-race faces may be recognized in a more featural
manner than own-race faces (Rhodes et al., 1989; Sporer, 2001a). Accordingly, inas-
much as the recognition of other-race faces depends on the quality of witnesses’ memory
20 MEISSNER, SPORER, SCHOOLER
of individual features, the veracity of the witnesses’ memory for those features (as re-
vealed by the quality of their descriptions) becomes predictive of their recognition per-
formance. This finding also potentially offers a key for understanding why face descrip-
tion quality bears so little relationship to identification performance with own-race
faces—namely, the two tasks may draw on fundamentally different types of knowledge,
with the former depending on participants’ memory for distinctive features and the lat-
ter depending on their nonverbal knowledge of the face in its entirety (see Farah et al.,
1998; Wells & Turtle, 1987).
A second exception to the typical absence of a relationship between description
quality and face recognition quality comes from studies that have compared the relative
ease with which different faces can be described versus recognized. Wells (1985) showed
participants multiple faces and then examined their ability to both describe and recog-
nize each face. He found that distinctive faces tended to be easier to describe and to rec-
ognize than less distinct faces, thereby leading to a modest relationship between recog-
nition accuracy and description quality (r .27) across faces. Although this modest
correlation does suggest that certain distinctive faces can be recognized on the basis of
individual features, it certainly does not undermine the more common conclusion that
typically little relationship between verbal description quality and recognition accuracy
can be expected.
A final exception to the absence of a relationship between description quality and
recognition performance has been observed in studies in which participants were forced
to generate rather elaborate descriptions of faces and were later asked to identify these
individuals in a lineup identification task (cf. Meissner, Brigham, & Kelley, 2001). In
these studies, it appears that the elicitation of elaborate verbal descriptions may lead
participants to generate inaccurate details, which then impairs their recognition perfor-
mance. Indeed, several studies using such a paradigm (Finger & Pezdek, 1999; Meissner,
2002; Meissner et al., 2001) have found that incorrect details reported in participants’
descriptions are predictive of subsequent identification errors.
In short, it seems that despite the clear intuition that witnesses who are better at
describing a target should also be better at recognizing it, this relationship has proved
to be quite elusive and generally weak. Though the absence of such a relationship may
undermine this frequently relied-upon method for assessing the credibility of witnesses,
it also provides an important link in our understanding of the nature of person descrip-
tions—namely, that person descriptions may draw upon knowledge or cognitive pro-
cesses that are very different from those invoked in the identification of a face. More
specifically, person descriptions appear to encourage a focus upon verbalizable features
of the face that are not always useful for perceptually individuating a given face from
among similar distractors. In contrast, recognition of faces has been shown to involve a
configural process in which features combine to create a nonverbalizable perceptual set
that is stored and later accessed for pattern recognition (Farah et al., 1998). The ex-
ceptions to the incompatibility of these processes appear to involve faces that are rec-
ognizable based upon a distinctive local feature, or conditions in which retrieval of a
face description distorts the veracity of the memory trace and interferes with subsequent
identification.
1. PERSON DESCRIPTIONS 21
The Influence of Person Descriptions
on Identification: Verbal Overshadowing
The fundamental difference between describing a face and recognizing it also contributes
to some counterintuitive findings regarding the influence of verbally describing a face on
subsequent recognition of that face. Intuitively we might expect that describing a face
would be helpful for subsequent memory performance, because it constitutes a form of
verbal rehearsal, and verbal rehearsal is well known to enhance memory performance
(e.g., Darley & Glass, 1975; Glenberg & Adams, 1978; see Sporer, 1989). There is some
evidence that visually rehearsing a face, even after being prompted by a verbal descrip-
tion cue, may indeed improve recognition (Sporer, 1988). However, a growing body of re-
search suggests that contrary to this intuition, efforts to describe a previously seen face
can actually impair subsequent memory performance, at least under some circumstances.
In the original documentation of this counterintuitive effect of verbal description on
face recognition (termed verbal overshadowing), Schooler and Engstler-Schooler (1990)
showed participants a videotape of a bank robbery. Some participants were instructed to
describe the robber in as much detail as possible while others engaged in an unrelated
filler activity. Finally, all participants were shown a lineup containing the robber and
seven foils. The results revealed that participants who had described the robber were
markedly less accurate in recognizing him compared with no-description controls. Fol-
low-up experiments by Schooler and Engstler-Schooler were largely consistent with the
verbal overshadowing hypothesis that the negative effects of verbalization were due to a
mismatch between the visual information or processes associated with the original expe-
rience and the verbal information or processes associated with the act of verbal descrip-
tion. For example, the negative effects of verbal description generalized to another type
of nonverbal stimuli (i.e., colors), but not to more readily verbalized stimuli (i.e., the con-
tents of what the robber said). Similarly, whereas verbal rehearsal repeatedly disrupted
performance, visualizing the robber’s face had no effect on subsequent identification.
Since its original demonstration, the verbal overshadowing phenomenon has been
replicated numerous times (Dodson, Johnson, & Schooler, 1997; Fallshore & Schooler,
1995; Ryan & Schooler, 1998; Schooler, Ryan, & Reder, 1996; Sporer, 1989). At the same
time, however, it has also failed to replicate on a number of occasions (Lovett, Small, &
Engstrom, 1992; Yu & Geiselman, 1993). A meta-analysis of the verbal overshadowing
effect was recently conducted by Meissner and Brigham (2001a). Across a sample of
15 studies (29 effect size comparisons; N 2018), Meissner and Brigham observed a
small, yet significant, verbal overshadowing effect (Zr .12) demonstrating that par-
ticipants who described a target face were 1.27 times more likely to later misidentify the
face from a lineup recognition task when compared with participants who did not gen-
erate a description prior to identification.
Although the verbal overshadowing effect is a reliable phenomenon, it nevertheless
appears to be somewhat fragile. Moreover, while research following the original dem-
onstration of verbal overshadowing is largely (if not entirely) consistent with the claim
that it is associated with discrepancies between the modality of the original visual en-
coding, the precise mechanism responsible for the effect remains an issue of some con-
22 MEISSNER, SPORER, SCHOOLER
tention. We briefly review the research surrounding this topic and then consider the
merits of several current explanations. As will be seen, there is compelling evidence in
support of each of the primary accounts, yet no single explanation can accommodate all
of the extant findings suggesting that multiple mechanisms may be involved.
Recoding Interference. In their original account of the verbal overshadowing ef-
fect, Schooler and Engstler-Schooler (1990) proposed that it results from recoding in-
terference in which “the verbalization of a visual memory can foster the formation of
a nonveridical verbally biased representation corresponding to the original stimulus”
(p. 62). Such an account generally explains why the overshadowing effect is exclusively
observed with nonverbal stimuli such as faces that are difficult to put into words, but not
with stimuli that are more easily described.
More recently, Meissner and his colleagues (Meissner, 2002; Meissner et al., 2001)
have provided additional support for the recoding interference account by demonstrat-
ing that the influence of verbalization is mediated by the amount of incorrect descriptors
that participants are encouraged to generate. Specifically they found that verbal disrup-
tion was maximized when participants were “forced” to provide elaborate descriptions of
the face. Under such forced recall conditions, Meissner and colleagues (2001) found
that participants were more likely to include erroneous elements in their descriptions
and subsequently demonstrated verbal overshadowing in their poor performance on
a lineup identification task (27% accuracy) when compared with participants in a no-
description control condition (52% accuracy). In contrast, another group of participants
were warned to provide very accurate descriptions and not to guess at any particular
features. Those in this warning condition actually demonstrated verbal enhancement
(63% accuracy) when compared with participants in the control or forced conditions.
Meissner and colleagues have replicated this “instructional bias” effect in several stud-
ies (Meissner, 2002; Meissner et al., 2001; see also Finger & Pezdek, 1999; MacLin, Tap-
scott, & Malpass, 2002) and have found that the effect persists despite delays of 30 min-
utes or 1 week, despite instructions to source monitor, and across repeated attempts at
recall prior to identification. Taken together, these results suggest that extensive verbal-
ization can lead to the production of a self-generated misinformation effect whereby par-
ticipants are misled by the erroneous details present in their own descriptions. Further
support of this account has also come from a moderator analysis conducted by Meissner
and Brigham (2001a) demonstrating that variations in the reliability of verbal overshad-
owing studies could be reconciled by differences in the procedure used by various re-
searchers. In particular, studies that utilized elaborative description procedures led to
more reliable verbal overshadowing effects than those that utilized a standard free-recall
procedure.
Transfer Inappropriate Processing Shift. Although the recoding interference ac-
count nicely accommodates many verbal overshadowing findings, there are some results
that it does not easily handle (for a review see Schooler, Fiore, & Brandimonte, 1997;
Schooler, 2002). First, whereas a relationship between verbalization quality and recog-
nition performance has been observed in some studies (e.g., Finger & Pezdek, 1999,
1. PERSON DESCRIPTIONS 23
Meissner, 2002; Meissner et al., 2001), other studies have failed to find such a relation-
ship (e.g., Schooler & Engstler-Schooler, 1990). If verbal overshadowing is due to inac-
curacies present in the verbal description, then, as Meissner and others have noted, such
inaccuracies should be predictive of performance. The failure to find such a relationship
across all studies, regardless of the type of recall instructions or task provided, is there-
fore potentially problematic for this account (Schooler, 2002).
A second problem for the recoding interference account involves studies dem-
onstrating that verbalization can interfere with the recognition of other nonverbalized
faces. For example, Dodson and colleagues (1997) presented participants with two faces
(a male and a female face) and then had them describe just one of them. On a subse-
quent recognition test, they observed that verbalization interfered with the recognition
of the nonverbalized face as much as it did with the verbalized face. Additional studies
have demonstrated that even describing a parent’s face from memory can interfere with
recognition of a recently encoded (and unrelated) face. More recently, Brown and Lloyd-
Jones (2002, 2003) have introduced a novel overshadowing paradigm in which partici-
pants are asked to encode a series of faces. Half of the participants are then asked to pro-
vide a description of the final face they viewed, and the second group of participants is
asked to complete an unrelated filler task. Thereafter, all participants are provided with
a recognition test in which a series of faces are shown to them (both novel faces and
those from the study set). Brown and Lloyd-Jones have consistently found that describ-
ing the final face produces a verbal overshadowing effect in the recognition of all faces
from the study set.
If verbal overshadowing is the product of relying on an inaccurate verbal code, then
it is hard to understand why verbalization would have comparable effects when the face
in question was itself never actually verbalized. Given these concerns, Schooler and his
colleagues have suggested an alternative to the recoding interference account, originally
termed “transfer inappropriate retrieval” (Schooler et al., 1997) but subsequently re-
named “transfer inappropriate processing shift” (TIPS) (Schooler, 2002), based upon
evidence that retrieval per se may not be a critical component of the process. According
to Schooler and colleagues, verbal descriptions may induce a general processing shift
that dampens the subsequent application of nonverbal configural processes. In effect,
verbal description causes participants to become “stuck” in a verbal mode of processing
faces, which is then applied (inappropriately transferred) to the recognition test, result-
ing in disruption.
The TIPS account nicely accommodates the basic finding that verbalization im-
pairs recognition of nonverbal stimuli (such as faces), but not stimuli that are easily
verbalizable (as only the former would be disrupted by an excessive focus on verbal pro-
cessing). It also accounts for the findings that verbalizing one face can interfere with
recognition of a different face (because of the general nature of the processing shift).
Finally, TIPS is consistent with the influence of other manipulations (e.g., focusing
on individual elements of composite figures) that disrupt face recognition performance
(Macrae & Lewis, 2002) and provides a useful way of conceptualizing a variety of situ-
ations in which the engagement in one task can impair performance on subsequent
tasks. At the same time, however, it does not offer a simple account of why a relation-
24 MEISSNER, SPORER, SCHOOLER
ship is sometimes observed between the quality of verbal descriptions and recognition
performance.
Criterion Shifts. Until recently, the debate regarding the mechanisms underlying
the negative effects of verbal description on face recognition were limited to the recod-
ing interference and transfer inappropriate processing accounts. However, a third ac-
count has been suggested in which verbalization is said to more simply induce a criterion
shift such that individuals who provide a description are subsequently less likely to make
a positive identification (irrespective of accuracy). In a target-present lineup (used by
the majority of researchers investigating the verbal overshadowing effect), such a shift
would lead to a greater frequency of misses and thus to reduced accuracy. In testing this
hypothesis, Clare and Lewandowsky (2004) found that verbal description of a previously
presented face impaired performance on suspect present lineups when participants were
provided a “not present” option, but not when they were forced to select from among
the faces presented. Moreover, on a target-absent lineup, verbalization actually improved
performance (being more cautious necessarily leads to less false identifications)—a find-
ing that the authors note is not predicted by either the recoding interference or TIPS
accounts.
While representing an important additional account of verbal overshadowing ef-
fects, Clare and Lewandowsky (2004) acknowledge that this approach cannot explain
all the extant findings. Specifically, a number of studies have found verbal overshadow-
ing effects with paradigms that either did not include a “not present” option (e.g., Fall-
shore & Schooler, 1995) or assessed performance on target-absent lineups (e.g., Meiss-
ner, 2002). In addition, the recognition paradigm introduced by Brown and Lloyd-Jones
(2002, 2003) permitted the calculation of signal detection measures of discrimination
and response criterion, but found an overshadowing effect on the former measure. Taken
together, these findings prove difficult for a criterion shift account and encourage further
research on the precise mechanism of the verbal overshadowing effect.
Summary of Verbal Overshadowing Findings. In the end it seems that all three
current accounts of the negative effects of verbal description on face recognition have
merit. Under some conditions, such as when individuals provide elaborate descriptions
of a face and a relationship between description quality and recognition accuracy ex-
ists, it seems quite likely that verbalization produces a self-generated misinformation ef-
fect in which participants rely upon their erroneous description at the expense of their
more veridical visual memory. Under other conditions, particularly when no relation-
ship between description performance and recognition accuracy is observed and/or when
verbalization is observed to impair the recognition of faces other than those described,
it seems likely that verbalization induces a transfer inappropriate processing shift,
whereby featural processing operations are inappropriately applied to a recognition test
that would be better served by nonverbal, configural processes. Under still other situa-
tions, particularly when not present options are included, and the negative effects of
verbalization are limited to increased misses, a criterion shift may be in operation.
Clearly future research is needed to sort out more precisely when each of these respec-
1. PERSON DESCRIPTIONS 25
tive mechanisms may be at play. Nevertheless, such research seems greatly warranted,
given that verbal description is an inherent element in many eyewitness situations, and
that understanding the precise mechanisms by which such descriptions can impair
memory is certain to be critical to minimizing the negative effects that such descriptions
might otherwise have. In the meantime, investigators should be cautioned against en-
couraging elaborate descriptions of a perpetrator, so as to minimize the effects of self-
generated misinformation on later identification.
CONCLUSIONS AND FUTURE DIRECTIONS
A pervasive theme of research on eyewitness performance is that memory is not partic-
ularly reliable. Unfortunately, this theme appears to be particularly pronounced in the
context of person descriptions. Person descriptions tend to be vague and nondiscrimina-
tive and are susceptible to many of the sources of error that plague other forms of eye-
witness memory (e.g., the effects of arousal, poor encoding conditions, misinformation,
declines with age, etc.). At the same time, there appear to be some aspects of person de-
scriptions that are uniquely problematic. For example, whereas in general it is useful for
witnesses to generate as much information about a witnessed event as possible (e.g.,
Fisher et al., 1989), in the context of person description, encouraging people to spend
extensive time generating their descriptions can actually impair face recognition (Finger
& Pezdek, 1999) and result in the generation of a greater proportion of inaccurate de-
tails (Meissner et al., 2001).
Although much has been learned about person description, there is still more that
needs to be discerned. Theoretically, an important area for future research is to further
flesh out the shared and unique processes that contribute to individuals’ ability to rec-
ognize as opposed to describe faces. A variety of converging lines of evidence suggest
that person descriptions may draw on processes that are distinct from those involved in
face recognition. Whereas face recognition benefits from focusing on the global qualities
of a face (Farah et al., 1998), face description benefits more from consideration of indi-
vidual features (Wells & Turtle, 1987). Similarly, whereas face recognition consistently
reveals an own-race advantage (a process known to rely on configural processing), face
description has generally failed to show such a difference (Meissner & Brigham, 2001b;
Sporer, 2001a, 2001b). These findings, in conjunction with a rather low or inconsistent
relationship between the quality of face descriptions and recognition performance, as
well as the verbal overshadowing phenomenon, suggest that face recognition and face
description may rely on fundamentally different processes.
From this perspective it appears that future research might benefit from more pre-
cisely delineating the distinct processes contributing to person description versus recog-
nition and explicating the behavioral and neurocognitive underpinnings of those pro-
cesses. For example, recent research has found that face recognition performance is
impaired if, between encoding and test, participants are shown large letters composed of
small letters and are asked to attend to the smaller letters—a procedure believed to pro-
mote featural processing (Macrae & Lewis, 2002). However, what would be the effect of
26 MEISSNER, SPORER, SCHOOLER
such a manipulation on person description? Given the hypothesis that person descrip-
tion relies more on featural processing, it seems quite plausible that although a focus on
local processing impairs face recognition, it may actually improve face description! It has
also been observed that focusing on large letters in this task can enhance face recogni-
tion; however, according to the current perspective, a configural process might actually
impair person description. It also seems quite plausible that person description and face
recognition may differentially draw upon separate areas of the brain, with face recogni-
tion relying more on the nonverbal operations associated with the right hemisphere
(Leehey, Carey, Diamond, & Cahn, 1978) and face description relying more on the ver-
bal operations associated with the left hemisphere (Hellige, 1993). Further investigation
of the unique and sometimes conflicting processes associated with person recognition
and description may be crucial to enhancing our theoretical understanding of these two
critical elements of eyewitness memory.
In addition to suggesting important theoretical directions for future research, the
present analysis also points to some critical applied issues that must be resolved if we are
to maximize the efficacy of person descriptions in eyewitness contexts. As noted, it ap-
pears that the value of person descriptions critically depends upon how much informa-
tion individuals are required to generate, with extensive descriptions leading to both
more inaccurate and more disruptive descriptions. However, determining the precise
amount of information that will lead to maximum description quality has yet to be de-
termined. Exactly how much information should witnesses be asked to provide? If details
are not spontaneously offered, should they be probed for? And if so, which details are ac-
ceptable to inquire about, and which details may lead to elaborative interference? If a
witness does offer an extensive description that is potentially more riddled with inaccu-
racies, are there some details (e.g., hair color) that might be more likely to be accurate
than others (e.g., shape of face)? Are the details that are generated first more likely to
be accurate than those generated later, and, if so, can the utility of person descriptions
be enhanced by differentially emphasizing details that are more likely to be accurate
from those that are more suspect? Although clearly there is much more that we need to
research, we are in a far better position to know when and how to use this critical source
of eyewitness information by recognizing the unique issues that affect person description
processes.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The writing of this manuscript was supported by a grant from the National Science
Foundation to the first author (CAM) and a grant from the Deutsche Forschungsgemein-
schaft (German Science Foundation) to the second author (SLS).
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34 MEISSNER, SPORER, SCHOOLER
... Eyewitness experts examine factors affecting eyewitness identifications under two main groups: System variables and estimator variables [6]. Crime and eyewitness-related factors such as stress, violent content of the crime, exposure time, and perpetrator characteristics are called estimator variables [7][8][9][10][11][12]. The factors under the control of the justice system and related to the accuracy of the identification are covered under the heading of system variables [13]. ...
... Betaface (Demo) test(6)(7)(8)(9)(10).Note. *The results were calculated with Deepface Framework on Jupyter Notebook. ...
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Eyewitness misidentifications are one of the leading factors in wrongful convictions. This study focuses on the structure of the lineups, which is one of the factors that cause misidentification, and the use of artificial intelligence (AI) technologies in the selection of fillers to be included in the lineups. In the study, AI-based face recognition systems are used to determine the level of similarity of fillers to the suspect. Using two different face recognition models with a Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) structure, similarity threshold values close to human performance were calculated (VGG Face and Cosine similarity = 0.383, FaceNet and Euclidean l2 = 1.16). In the second part of the study, the problems that are likely to be caused by facial recognition systems used in the selection of fillers are examined. The results of the study reveal that models responsible for facial recognition may not suffice alone in the selection of fillers and, an advanced structure using CNN models trained to recognize other attributes (race, gender, age, etc.) associated with similarity along with face recognition models would produce more accurate results. In the last part of the study, a Line-up application that can analyze attributes such as facial similarity, race, gender, age, and facial expression, is introduced.
... Despite divergent findings (e.g. Meissner et al., 2007;Demarchi & Py, 2009;Pozzulo et al., 2009;Sheahan et al., 2017;Areh & Walsh, 2020;Handler & Frühholz, 2021), research shows that quantity and quality of description do not consistently affect identification accuracy. Also, Pozzulo et al. (2013) found that in this respect there are no differences between adults and adolescents (Generation Z). ...
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... The benefit of selecting fillers based on a witness' description is that it provides an obvious stopping point for how similar the fillers should be (e.g., if the witness mentions three physical characteristics of the perpetrator, officers can match on those three dimensions and nothing more), and reduces the amount of subjectivity involved in the selection process. However, the potential costs of using descriptionmatched fillers are that descriptions can be inaccurate, or sparse in detail, which may partly stem from the fact that faces are difficult to describe (e.g., see Frowd et al., 2005;Meissner et al., 2007). In addition, as mentioned above, there is evidence that the level of similarity that optimizes performance is less similar than lineups with purely description-matched fillers (Colloff et al., 2021;Wells et al., 1993). ...
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... The eyewitness literature is therefore limited in offering insights into whether the process of generating facial descriptions for identification, independent of memory demands, is error-prone in and of itself. In addition, research in the domain of eyewitness recognition does not address how useful face descriptions are in circumstances when the person making the identification is a different person to the initial describer (Meissner et al., 2007). We therefore know little about how effectively individuals can communicate facial information to others. ...
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Facial identification evidence obtained from eyewitnesses, such as person descriptions and facial composites, plays a fundamental role in criminal investigations and is regularly regarded as valuable evidence for apprehending and prosecuting perpetrators. However, the reliability of such facial identification information is often queried. Person descriptions are frequently reported in the research literature as being vague and generalisable, whilst facial composites often exhibit a poor likeness to an intended target face. This raises questions regarding the accuracy of eyewitness facial identification information and its ability to facilitate efficient searches for unknown perpetrators of crimes. More specifically, it questions whether individuals, blind to the appearance of a perpetrator of a crime (i.e. the public), can correctly identify the intended target face conveyed by facial identification information recalled from eyewitness memory, and which of the two traditional facial identification formats would be better relied upon by law enforcement to enable such searches. To investigate this, in the current study (N=167) we employed two metrics – identification accuracy and identification precision – to assess the utility of different formats of eyewitness facial identification information in enabling participants to correctly identify an unknown target face across three different formats: facial descriptions, facial composites and computer-generated description-based synthetic faces. A statistically significant main effect for the format of facial identification information on identification accuracy (p
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To test the hypothesis that the quality of an eyewitness's description of a face is useful for predicting the accuracy of a subsequent identification, 176 undergraduates were presented with pictures of 88 target faces. Ss were asked to rate the personality characteristics and to provide a description of the target; Ss were later required to identify the target from a set of 21 photographs. A significant point-biserial correlation between description accuracy and identification accuracy was found. This relationship was not due to a process wherein good describers were good identifiers, but to the fact that faces that were better described were better identified, a relationship that could not be tested in the designs of previous studies. The quality of an S's description of a given face did no better than did a 2nd S's description of that face in terms of predicting the former S's identification accuracy. Because the description–identification relationship was mediated by target factors rather than S characteristics, it is suggested that different assessments (e.g., of target-face uniqueness) could better predict identification accuracy. (19 ref)
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The New Police Officer During the past twenty years the tasks required of police officers have expanded and changed with dramatic rapidi ty. The tradi tional roles of the police had been those of law enforcement and the maintenance of public order. As a consequence police officers were typically large-bodied males, selected for their physical abilities and trained to accept orders and enforce the law. Over the past two decades, however, the industrialized nations have placed a variety of new demands on police officers. To traditional law enforcement and public order tasks have been added social work, mental health duties, and cORllluni ty relations work. For example, domestic disputes, violence between husbands and wives, lovers, relatives, etc. , have increased in frequency and severity (or at least there has been a dramatic increase in reporting the occurence of domestic violence). Our societies have no formal system to deal with domestic disputes and the responsibility to do so, in most countries, has fallen to the police. In fact, in some areas as many as 607. of calls for service to the police are related to domestic disputes (see the chapter in this text by Dutton). As a result the police officer has had to become a skilled social worker, able to intervene with sensi ti vi ty in domestic situations. Alternatively, in the case of West Germany, the officer has had to learn to work co-operatively with social workers (see the chapter by Steinhilper).
Book
This is the first volume that directly compares the practices of adversarial and inquisitorial systems of law from a psychological perspective. It aims at understanding why American and European continental systems differ so much, while both systems entertain much support in their communities. In the chapters it is demonstrated how the different systems chose different solutions for many of the same problems and how the solutions are related to the typical characteristics of the adversarial and the inquisitorial systems of criminal law. Particular emphasis is placed on problems addressed by psychological researchers and practitioners in the two systems. Chapters cover topics including: police investigative techniques, risk assessment, the death penalty, recovered memories, child witnesses, line-up practices, expert witnesses, trial procedures, and lay versus judge decision making. The book is written for advanced audiences in psychology and law.
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Participants viewed either a violent, arousing film or a non-violent, control version of the same film. After viewing the film, they made three successive attempts to recall details of the event. Participants who were exposed to the negative emotional event were better than control participants at recalling details of the event itself, but they were worse at recalling details that preceded or followed the violence. Both groups of participants recalled significantly more information over successive recall attempts, suggesting that memory impairment due to arousal can be alleviated by repeated testing. Repeated testing was also associated with a small but reliable increase in memory intrusions. The implications of these findings for research on hypermnesia and on the relationship between arousal and memory are discussed. © 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
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Investigated the appropriateness of a Supreme Court guideline for the evaluation of eyewitness identification evidence that concerns the relationship between the accuracy of an eyewitness's description of a suspect and the witness's accuracy in his/her lineup decision. 120 undergraduates were exposed briefly to a target person and required to describe his physical characteristics. Later they were asked to identify the target person from a photograph lineup in which he was or was not present. Ss' certainty in their decision was also assessed. Results provide no support for the validity of the Supreme Court's guideline: There was no relationship between description and identification accuracy or between an S's description and the characteristics of the person identified (rightly or wrongly) from the lineup. When all Ss who identified someone from the lineup were combined, a substantial relationship between confidence and accuracy was found. Theoretical issues concerning the effects of differences between target persons and between witnessing conditions are discussed. (36 ref)