Understanding Bystander Misidentifications: The Role of Familiarity and Contextual Knowledge (From Adult Eyewitness Testimony: Current Trends and Developments, P 56-79, 1994, David Frank Ross, et al, eds. -- See NCJ-159543)

• NCJ Number: 159546
• Author(s): J D Read
• Date Published: 1994
• Length: 24 pages
• Sale Source: Cambridge University Press
• Publication Type: Research (Applied/Empirical)
• Language: English
• Country: United States of America

Annotation

Misidentification of innocent individuals in photospread lineups may result from faulty assessments by eyewitnesses in their levels of perceptual or contextual knowledge about a target person.

Abstract

Eyewitness memory research generally indicates faulty assessments are most often responsible for misidentification. The interpretation given to misidentification errors in research studies relies heavily on retrieval rather than on encoding processes. Some studies suggest that bystander misidentification occurs because interaction between a witness and a bystander are encoded without effort or awareness but are later elicited from memory by the retrieval cue of the bystander at the identification test. In other words, the bystander is judged familiar but the witness cannot provide retrieval information as to why the bystander seems familiar. Anecdotal evidence lends little support to the automatic processing interpretation because it implies that witnesses cannot recall circumstances of their prior encounters with bystanders, even when prompted to do so. Other studies indicate that memory blending accounts for bystander misidentification. The author concludes that the strongest evidence for an inferential interpretation of bystander misidentification involves simple observations of subject responses in familiarity, recognition, and context recall tasks. Subjects tend to approach lineup identification as a problem to solve, and problem solution appears to involve information obtained from several sources. 32 references, 2 notes, and 6 figures