On the applied implications of the “Verbal Overshadowing Effect”

Schooler and Engstler-Schooler (1990) found that participants who wrote out a description of the perpetrator’s face after watching a simulated crime video were subsequently less likely to identify that perpetrator from a photo lineup compared to participants in a control condition (i.e., the correct ID rate was reduced). The first registered replication report in Perspectives on Psychological Science confirmed this verbal overshadowing effect (Alogna et al., 2014). Does this result indicate a reduced ability to recognize the person who was verbally described, or does it instead reflect more conservative responding? The answer depends on the still unknown likelihood of identifying an innocent suspect from a lineup (the false ID rate). Assuming the reduced correct ID rate does reflect memory impairment, should the legal system be advised to give less weight to a suspect identification if the witness previously provided a verbal description of the perpetrator? Intuitively, the answer is “yes,” but without knowing the false ID rate, it is unclear if a suspect identification following a verbal description should be given less weight or more weight. This is true even if the correct and false ID rates show that verbal descriptions impair memory. In our view, psychologists should withhold giving advice to the legal system about the effect of verbal descriptions on suspect identifications until the issue is investigated by including lineups that contain an innocent suspect

Policy regarding the sequential lineup is not informed by probative value but is informed by ROC analysis.

It is important to determine if switching from simultaneous to sequential lineups affects response bias (the inclination to make an identification from a lineup), discriminability (the ability to distinguish between innocent and guilty suspects), or both. Measures of probative value cannot provide such information; receiver operating characteristic analysis can. Recent receiver operating characteristic analyses indicate that switching to sequential lineups both induces more conservative responding and makes it more difficult to distinguish between innocent and guilty suspects. If more conservative responding is preferred (i.e., if policymakers judge that the harm associated with the reduction of correct identifications is exceeded by the benefit associated with the reduction in false identifications), recent data indicate that this result can be achieved without a loss of discriminability by using the simultaneous lineup procedure in conjunction with a more conservative decision criterion.Yeshttps://us.sagepub.com/en-us/nam/manuscript-submission-guideline

In the DNA Exoneration Cases, Eyewitness Memory was Not the Problem:A reply to Berkowitz and Frenda (2018) and Wade, Nash and Lindsay (2018)

The available real-world evidence suggests that, on an initial test, eyewitness memory is often reliable. Ironically, even the DNA exoneration cases—which generally involved nonpristine testing conditions and which are usually construed as an indictment of eyewitness memory—show how reliable an initial test of eyewitness memory can be in the real world. We endorse the use of pristine testing procedures, but their absence does not automatically imply that eyewitness memory is unreliable. </jats:p

ROC analysis measures objective discriminability for any eyewitness identification procedure

Which eyewitness identification procedure better enables eyewitnesses to discriminate between innocent and guilty suspects? In other words, which procedure better enables eyewitnesses to sort innocent and guilty suspects into their correct categories? The answer to that objective, theory-free question is what policymakers need to know, and it is precisely the information that ROC analysis provides. Wells et al. largely ignore that question and focus instead on whether ROC analysis accurately measures underlying (theoretical) discriminability for lineups. They argue that the apparent discriminability advantage for lineups over showups is an illusion caused by “filler siphoning.” Here, we demonstrate that, both objectively and theoretically, the ability of eyewitnesses to discriminate innocent from guilty suspects is higher for lineups compared to showups, just as the ROC data suggest. Intuitions notwithstanding, filler siphoning does not account for the discriminability advantage for lineups. An actual theory of discriminability is needed to explain that interesting phenomenon

The effect of instructor fluency on students’ perceptions of instructors, confidence in learning, and actual learning

Students’ judgments of their own learning are often misled by perceptions of fluency—the ease with which information is presented during learning. Lectures represent important learning experiences that contain variations in fluency, but have not been extensively studied. In the current study, students watched a 22-minute videotaped lecture that was delivered by the same instructor in either a fluent (strong, confident, and deliberate) manner, or in a disfluent (uncertain, hesitant, and disengaged) manner. Students then predicted their score on an upcoming test over the information, rated the instructor on traditional evaluation measures, and took a multiple-choice test over the information immediately (Experiment 1) after 10 minutes (Experiment 2), or after one day (Experiment 3). The fluent instructor was rated significantly higher than the disfluent instructor, but test scores did not consistently differ between the two conditions. Though students did not indicate higher confidence overall in learning from a fluent instructor, Experiment 3 found that when participants base their confidence on the instructor, those in the fluent condition were more likely to be overconfident. These findings indicate that instructor fluency leads to higher ratings of instructors and can lead to higher confidence, but it does not necessarily lead to better learning