A Repeated Forced-choice Line-up Procedure Provides Suspect Bias Information with No Cost to Accuracy for Older Children and Adults.

In two experiments and one follow-up analysis, we examined the impact of using a repeated forced-choice (RFC) line-up procedure with child and adult eyewitnesses. The RFC procedure divides the identification task into a series of exhaustive binary comparisons that produces not only traditional line-up information (identification decision and confidence) but also information about witness' selection behavior. Experiment 1 revealed that younger children (6- to 8-year-olds) struggled with the RFC procedure, while older children (9- to 11-year-olds) performed as well with the RFC procedure as with a simultaneous procedure (with wildcard). Experiment 2 replicated this comparable performance with adults. Witnesses' suspect selection behavior during the RFC was predictive of identification accuracy for older children and adults. A model examined the additional information provided by the RFC in experiments 1 and 2 and provided evidence that witnesses' patterns of responding can be used to estimate suspect selection bias (a proxy for suspect recognition strength) associated with individual line-up decisions. Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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