Critical Tests of Decision Models for Eyewitness Identification

目击者会犯辨认错误，这是众所周知的。 如果目击者不能作出正确的指认，罪犯就可能逃脱法律制裁，继续对社会构成威胁。 如果证人作了假指认，无辜的人可能会被起诉，并被判犯有他没有犯过的罪行。 刑事司法系统的健康运作要求尽可能少地发生这类错误。为了尽量减少目击者的错误，我们必须了解目击者为什么会犯错。本研究试图通过发展、测试和完善目击者的心理理论来了解目击者辨认错误的原因。该理论被称为目击者模型，它描述了目击者辨认决策背后的记忆和决策过程，并做出了可以与数据进行比较的定量预测。数据来自在受控条件下进行的目击者辨认实验。 实验中的参与者成为一个犯罪现场的目击者，然后被展示给在场或不在场的犯罪者。 犯罪嫌疑人在场的阵容模拟了那些警察嫌疑人有罪的真实案件，而犯罪嫌疑人缺席的阵容模拟了那些警察嫌疑人无罪的真实的案件。 关键数据是对有罪者的正确识别率和对无罪者的错误识别率。 正确辨认率高、错误辨认率低时，辨认证据的证明价值最大。 第一个系列的实验研究如何证明价值的鉴定证据的功能，警方创建阵容和决策过程中，证人使用，使识别决定的变化。 第二组实验考察了证人如何？的决策过程将准确性和错误分布在一个阵容的成员中。

It is well-established that eyewitnesses make identification errors. If the eyewitness is unable to make a correct identification, a criminal may escape justice and continue to present a threat to society. If the witness makes a false identification, an innocent person may be prosecuted and convicted of a crime he did not commit. The healthy functioning of the criminal justice system requires that such errors occur as infrequently as possible. In order to minimize eyewitness errors, we must understand why witnesses make errors. The present research seeks to understand the causes of eyewitness identification errors by developing, testing, and refining a psychological theory of the eyewitness. The theory, called the Witness model, describes the memory and decision processes that underlie eyewitness identification decisions, and makes quantitative predictions that can be compared to data.The data come from eyewitness identification experiments, conducted under controlled conditions. The participants in the experiments become witnesses to a staged crime, and are later shown either a perpetrator-present or a perpetrator-absent lineup. The perpetrator-present lineup simulates those real-world cases in which the police suspect is guilty, whereas the perpetrator-absent lineup simulates those real world cases in which the police suspect is innocent. The key data are the correct identification rates of the guilty and the false identification rates of the innocent. The probative value of identification evidence is maximized when the correct identification rate is high and the false identification rate is low. The first series of experiments examines how the probative value of identification evidence varies as a function of the way police create lineups and the decision processes that witnesses use to make identification decisions. The second set of experiments examines how a witness?s decision processes distribute accuracy and error across the members of a lineup.