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Research on eyewitness identification often involves exposing participants to a simulated crime and later testing memory using a lineup. We conducted a systematic review showing that pre-event instructions, instructions given before event exposure, are rarely reported and those that are reported vary in the extent to which they warn participants about the nature of event or tasks. At odds with the experience of actual witnesses, some studies use pre-event instructions explicitly warning participants of the upcoming crime and lineup task. Both the basic and applied literature provide reason to believe that pre-event instructions may impact eyewitness identification performance. In Experiment 1, we will test the effect of pre-event instructions on lineup identification decisions and confidence. Participants will receive non-specific pre-event instructions (i.e., “watch this video”) or eyewitness pre-event instructions (i.e., “watch this crime video, you’ll complete a line-up later”) and complete a culprit absent or present lineup. In Experiment 2, we will manipulate exposure duration and pre-event instructions to determine if pre-event instructions differentially impact high or low quality eyewitness events. If pre-event instructions impact eyewitness identification accuracy, then the findings of existing studies need to be considered in the context of their pre-event instructions and future work will be needed to determine how instructions interact with existing systems and estimator variables.

We examined the replicability of the co-witness suggestibility effect originally reported by Garry et al. (2008) by testing participants from 10 countries (Brazil, Canada, Colombia, India, Japan, Malaysia, Poland, Portugal, Turkey, and the United Kingdom; total N=486). Pairs of participants sat beside each other, viewing different versions of the same movie while believing that they viewed the same version. Later, participant pairs answered questions collaboratively, which guided them to discuss conflicting details. Finally, participants took a recognition test individually. Each of the 10 samples replicated the Garry et al. finding: Participants often reported on the final test a non-witnessed answer that their co-witness had stated during the collaboration phase. Such co-witness suggestibility errors were especially likely when the witness had not disputed the co-witness's report during the collaboration phase. The results demonstrate the replicability and generalizability of the co-witness suggestibility effect., This research was supported by a Grant-in-Aid from the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (KAKENHI No. 25280050) to Kazuo Mori and a grant from Aichi University (KENKYUJOSEI No. C-180) to Hiroshi Ito. Kazuo Mori was also supported by the Joint Research Grant 2017 from the Promotion and Mutual Aid Corporation for Private Schools of Japan to Matsumoto University for cooperative research with Aichi University. While conducting the study and writing of the manuscript, Krystian Barzykowski was supported by a grant from the National Science Centre, Poland [No.: 2015/19/D/HS6/00641]. Nicole Laird's work on this project was supported by a Natural Science and Engineering Research Council Discovery Grant to D. Stephen Lindsay.

ᅟ We report on research on individual-difference measures that could be used to assess the validity of eyewitness identification decisions. Background The predictive utility of face recognition tasks for eyewitness identification has received some attention from psychologists, but the previous research focused primarily on witnesses’ likelihood of correctly choosing the culprit when present in a lineup. Far less discussed has been individual differences in witnesses’ proclivity to choose from a lineup that does not contain the culprit. We designed a two-alternative non-forced-choice face recognition task (consisting of mini-lineup test pairs, half old/new and half new/new) to predict witnesses’ proclivity to choose for a set of culprit-absent lineups associated with earlier-viewed crime videos. Results In two studies involving a total of 402 participants, proclivity to choose on new/new pairs predicted mistaken identifications on culprit-absent lineups, with r values averaging .43. The likelihood of choosing correctly on old/new pairs (a measure of face recognition skill) was only weakly predictive of correct identifications in culprit-present lineups (mean r of .22). Conclusions Our findings could be the basis for further research aimed at developing a standardized measure of proclivity to choose that could be used, along with other measures, to weigh eyewitnesses’ lineup identification decisions. Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (10.1186/s41235-018-0150-3) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

To contribute to the 2015 Conference Retrospective, we chronicled the 22-year history of the Society for Applied Research in Memory and Cognition (SARMAC). Throughout the 70s, 80s, and early 90s, there was no society dedicated to applied cognitive work. That changed in 1994, when researchers at the third iteration of the Practical Aspects of Memory conference agreed to establish SARMAC. Since then, SARMAC membership has grown tenfold and its conferences have traveled the globe. Recently, the society established this very journal for the dissemination of applied research in memory and cognition. SARMAC has a promising future marked by increased student involvement, the announcement of JARMAC's inaugural impact factor, and a visit to Australia for the society's 2017 conference.

Witnesses to crimes are sometimes reluctant to identify the culprit in a lineup (e.g., for fear of retribution). We introduce an ERP-based guilty knowledge test for sequential lineup identifications, using an oddball paradigm to evoke the P300 component when a witness sees a photo of a culprit compared to those evoked by an innocent familiar face. At the group level, clear differences were found between P300 amplitudes evoked by the culprit’s face and the innocent filler face. At the individual level, the participants’ waveforms were less diagnostic. This method of eyewitness assessment may prove useful if the procedure can be improved in ways that clarify P300 amplitudes for individual participants. Success in this endeavor would be best applied with witnesses who recognize the culprit easily but are compelled to claim falsely that they do not.