ArticleCognitive research: principles and implications2021
Testing encoding specificity and the diagnostic feature-detection theory of eyewitness identification, with implications for showups, lineups, and partially disguised perpetrators.
Article in Cognitive research: principles and implications, 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 7 papers.
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Who cites it
7 citing papers in PubMed.
- Predicting accuracy in eyewitness showups: confidence and response time in the laboratory, confidence in the field.Cognitive research: principles and implications · 2026Article
- Article
- The effect of surgical masks on identification decisions from masked and unmasked lineups.Psychiatry, psychology, and law : an interdisciplinary journal of the Australian and New Zealand Association of Psychiatry, Psychology and Law · 2024Article
- Face masks are less effective than sunglasses in masking face identity.Scientific reports · 2023Article
- Toward a more comprehensive modeling of sequential lineups.Cognitive research: principles and implications · 2022Article
- Improving face identification of mask-wearing individuals.Cognitive research: principles and implications · 2022Article
- Perpetrator pose reinstatement during a lineup test increases discrimination accuracy.Scientific reports · 2021Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
8 authors.
Funding
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Abstract
The diagnostic feature-detection theory (DFT) of eyewitness identification is based on facial information that is diagnostic versus non-diagnostic of suspect guilt. It primarily has been tested by discounting non-diagnostic information at retrieval, typically by surrounding a single suspect showup with good fillers to create a lineup. We tested additional DFT predictions by manipulating the presence of facial information (i.e., the exterior region of the face) at both encoding and retrieval with a large between-subjects factorial design (N = 19,414). In support of DFT and in replication of the literature, lineups yielded higher discriminability than showups. In support of encoding specificity, conditions that matched information between encoding and retrieval were generally superior to mismatch conditions. More importantly, we supported several DFT and encoding specificity predictions not previously tested, including that (a) adding non-diagnostic information will reduce discriminability for showups more so than lineups, and (b) removing diagnostic information will lower discriminability for both showups and lineups. These results have implications for police deciding whether to conduct a showup or a lineup, and when dealing with partially disguised perpetrators (e.g., wearing a hoodie).
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