Investigating New Ways to Improve Eyewitness Identifications Using Receiver Operating Characteristic Analysis

关于目击者的指认，存在着一个双管齐下的非常现实的社会问题：无辜的嫌疑人被错误地指认并被指控犯下了他们没有犯下的罪行，或者有罪的嫌疑人没有被指认，可以自由地犯下更多的罪行。不幸的是，减少无辜嫌疑人被误认的机会也会降低辨认有罪嫌疑人的机会；同样，增加辨认有罪嫌疑人的机会也会增加辨认无辜嫌疑人的机会。换句话说，目击者的准确性不仅关系到选择正确的嫌疑人，还关系到不会错误地识别错误的嫌疑人。这种摇摇欲坠的现象是目击者记忆研究人员几十年来一直在努力解决的问题，我们的目标是与之抗争。这可能看起来是一个大胆的主张，但现在它是可能的，因为我们最近引入了一种新的分析方法来研究目击者的记忆。该方法将反应偏差(即目击者从辨认游行中选择某人或不选择某人的倾向)的概念与可辨别性(即区分无辜嫌疑人和有罪嫌疑人的能力)分开。虽然这种方法对于目击者记忆研究人员来说是新的，但对于经常使用它来测试一个诊断程序是否能够更好地区分疾病状态和非疾病状态的医疗诊断专家来说，这种方法是屡试不爽的。目击者记忆研究人员面临着与医学诊断专家相同的概念问题，他们需要确定一种程序是否能够更好地区分有罪嫌疑人和无辜嫌疑人。我们的新方法使我们能够回答目击者记忆中的重要问题，这些问题以前无法回答，因为没有令人满意的方法来衡量辨别力。我们将在一系列实验中使用我们的新技术，以探索提高辨别力的方法。为此，我们将通过比较常用的识别游行程序和操作每个程序的组件来调查提高区分性的因素。这些实验的结果将阐明为什么某些识别游行程序(例如，顺序呈现的视频与同时呈现的视频)和这些程序的组件(例如，快速进行的识别、在识别游行中呈现的个人数量)提高辨别性。这项研究的结果可能最终会导致更多有罪的人和更少的无辜者被确认并随后被起诉。因此，拟议的研究有可能产生重大的社会影响。

There is a two-pronged, very real societal problem concerning identifications made by eyewitnesses: innocent suspects are mistakenly identified and charged with a crime they did not commit, or guilty suspects are not identified and free to commit more crimes. Decreasing the chances that innocent suspects are misidentified, unfortunately also decreases the chances that guilty suspects are identified; and likewise, increasing the chances that guilty suspects are identified also increases the chances that innocent suspects are identified. In other words, an eyewitness's accuracy is not just about choosing the right suspect; it is also about not misidentifying the wrong suspect. This teeter tottering is what eyewitness memory researchers have been grappling with for decades, and we aim to combat it. That may seem like a bold claim, but it is now possible because of the new method of analysis we recently introduced to the field of eyewitness memory. The method disentangles the concept of response bias (i.e., the inclination of an eyewitness to choose someone or not choose someone from an identification parade) from discriminability (i.e., the ability to discriminate an innocent suspect from a guilty suspect). While the method is new to eyewitness memory researchers, the method is tried-and-true for medical diagnosticians who routinely use it to test whether one diagnostic procedure is better able to discriminate a disease state from a non-disease state, for example. Eyewitness memory researchers are faced with the same conceptual issue as medical diagnosticians in which they need to determine whether one procedure is better able to discriminate guilty from innocent suspects. Our new method allows us to answer important questions in eyewitness memory that could not be previously answered because there were no satisfactory ways to measure discriminability.We will use our new technique in a series of experiments designed to investigate ways to increase discriminability. We will do this by comparing commonly used identification parade procedures and manipulating components of each procedure to investigate the factors that increase discriminability. The results of the experiments will shed light on why certain identification parade procedures (e.g., sequentially presented videos vs. simultaneously presented videos) and components of those procedures (e.g., identifications made quickly, number of individuals presented in an identification parade) increase discriminability. The results of this research could ultimately lead to more guilty people and fewer innocent people being identified and later prosecuted. Thus, the proposed research has the potential to make significant societal impact.