Over the course of a criminal investigation, eyewitnesses are sometimes shown multiple lineups in an attempt to identify the culprit, yet little research has examined eyewitness identification performance from multiple lineups. In two experiments, we examined eyewitness identification accuracy among witnesses who made an inaccurate identification from an initial lineup, correctly rejected an initial lineup, or saw no initial lineup. Consistent with the legal practice of "burning" eyewitnesses who pick fillers, witnesses who made an inaccurate identification from an initial lineup provided subsequent identification evidence that had little diagnostic value and reflected poor memory performance. Critically, these eyewitnesses’ initial-identification confidence did not predict their subsequent identification accuracy, thus precluding the identification of witnesses who could provide diagnostic evidence in a subsequent lineup. Eyewitnesses who correctly rejected the initial lineup performed similarly to eyewitnesses who saw only one lineup, and initial-rejection confidence was associated with subsequent identification accuracy under some conditions.

Item Type:	Refereed Article
Keywords:	eyewitness identification, eyewitness memory, eyewitness confidence, multiple lineups, diagnosticity, dicriminability, police investigation
Research Division:	Psychology
Research Group:	Cognitive and computational psychology
Research Field:	Memory and attention
Objective Division:	Expanding Knowledge
Objective Group:	Expanding knowledge
Objective Field:	Expanding knowledge in psychology
UTAS Author:	Palmer, MA (Associate Professor Matt Palmer)
ID Code:	133008
Year Published:	2019
Funding Support:	Australian Research Council (DP140103746)
Web of Science® Times Cited:	7
Deposited By:	Psychology
Deposited On:	2019-05-31
Last Modified:	2020-06-22
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