Cognitive approach: Pozzulo et al. (line-ups)

Psychology AS · The core studies. The idea in plain words, the rules to remember, the mistake to avoid and a worked example, written and checked by Mega Lecture.

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The idea

In a line-up a witness is asked to pick out the culprit. If the culprit is not there (a target-absent line-up), the correct response is to reject the line-up. Choosing an innocent person is a false positive. Children do this more often than adults. Is the reason poor memory (a cognitive factor) or a feeling that they must choose someone (a social factor)?

Pozzulo et al. showed young children and adults short video clips of cartoon characters they knew well and of unfamiliar people. After each clip they saw a line-up of four photographs.

Children almost always identified the cartoon characters when they were present, so memory was not the problem. Yet they still chose wrongly from target-absent line-ups more often than adults. This points to social factors.

Rules to remember

Sample: 59 children aged 4 to 7 and 53 adults aged 17 to 30.
Targets: two familiar cartoon characters (Dora and Diego) and two unfamiliar human faces, each shown in a 6-second clip.
Line-up: four photographs shown together, with a blank silhouette to point to if the target was not there.
Independent variables: age group, type of target (cartoon or human), and target-present or target-absent line-up.
Dependent variable: correct identification in target-present line-ups and correct rejection in target-absent line-ups.
Target-present, correct identification: cartoons, children 0.99 and adults 0.95; humans, children 0.23 and adults 0.66.
Target-absent, correct rejection: cartoons, children 0.74 and adults 0.94; humans, children 0.45 and adults 0.70.

Common mistake

Students say the children's errors were caused by poor memory. The cartoon results show that their memory for familiar faces was almost perfect, so the extra false positives are explained by social pressure to choose.

Worked example

Children correctly identified cartoon targets at a rate of 0.99, but correctly rejected cartoon target-absent line-ups at a rate of only 0.74. What does this pair of results suggest?

A rate of 0.99 shows that the children remembered the cartoon faces almost perfectly.
A rejection rate of 0.74 means that in 1 − 0.74 = 0.26 of target-absent line-ups a child picked a face that was not the target.
Since memory was not the problem, something else made them choose: they may feel that an adult expects an answer.

Answer: Children's false positives are caused mainly by social factors, not by weak memory for the face.

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