pozzulo et al.

Question 1

psychology being investigated

Answer 1

1. eye witness testimony
2. false positive response

Question 2

background

Answer 2

1. Children and adults produce similar correct identification rates from target-present line-ups, but even 13-year-olds
   struggle to correctly reject target-absent line-ups, leading to higher rates of
   false positive responses than with adults.
2. These errors may be due to social factors, such as social pressure, rather than cognitive factors.
3. The desire to please the interviewer, who is often an authority figure, may also be a social factor that leads to higher false positive responses in kids.

Question 3

aims

Answer 3

To investigate whether children:
1. are less able to recognise human faces than adults

2. make more false positive identifications than adults when faced with:
   – TAL vs TPL
   – human faces and cartoon characters.

Question 4

research method

Answer 4

laboratory experiment

Question 5

research design:

Answer 5

mixed design:
-Independent measures- two groups were compared: children and adults.
-Repeated measures – all participants viewed both types of line-up with both types of face.

Question 6

data collection techniques

Answer 6

1. Questionnaire: the demographic and cartoon watching form measured variables such as the participants’ age, gender and time watching cartoons, familiarity
   with the target cartoons.
2. Participants had to identify the cartoon/person in the video (if present) by
   pointing on a PowerPoint (children) or a matching sheet (adults)

Question 7

independent variables

Answer 7

• age: children (4–7-year-olds) versus adults (17–30)
• type of target faces: familiar cartoon or unfamiliar human faces
• type of line-up: target-present or target-absent.

Question 8

dependent variables

Answer 8

• correct identification rates for TPL
• correct rejection rates for TAL

Question 9

sample

Answer 9

Size: 59 children and 53 adults.

Demographic: 4–7-year-olds from three private schools in Canada; 17–30-year-olds from the Introductory Psychology Participant pool of an Eastern Ontario University

Question 10

Procedure

Answer 10

1. The videos:
   -Participants individually watched four videos (in colour), each with a photo line-up:
   – 2 had familiar cartoon characters, Dora and Diego.
   – 2 had an unfamiliar human character, either male or female.

-Next they completed a filler task in which they were asked, ‘What did the cartoon character/person look like?’ and ‘Do you remember anything else?’

2. Photo line-ups:
   - Participants viewed photo line-ups that included four tightly cropped black and white headshots.
   -TPL included 1 target photo and 3 foils (people who
   looked similar).
   - TAL had four foils.
   - Participants were asked to point to the photo if the target was present, or another box if not.

Question 11

controls

Answer 11

1. 4 videos and the order of the faces in the line-ups were randomised for each participant (prevent order effect)
2. Standardised instructions were given to each participant before the presentation of
   the photo line-ups
3. All experimenters wore the same type of ‘professional-casual’ clothing

Question 12

ethical issues

Answer 12

1. Informed consent- researchers gained written consent from parents of all child
   participants and from all adult participants
2. Deception- Participants were told that targets may not be present, so there was no deception
3. Protection from harm + rit to withdraw- All children were monitored for anxiety, stress and fatigue in order to minimise possible harm. Important as children are less likely to exercise right to withdraw.

Question 13

results

Answer 13

1. TPL
   - Children and adults were significantly better at identifying cartoon characters than human faces.
   -Children performed much worse than adults when identifying human faces
2. TAL
   - Children had a significantly higher correct rejection rate when cartoon characters
   used (0.74) than with human faces (0.45).
   - Adults did significantly better with cartoon characters (0.94)
   compared to human faces (0.70).
   - Children’s rate of false positive responses was much higher than adults.

Question 14

conclusions

Answer 14

1. As children were able to correctly identify cartoon characters in TPLs, cognitive factors not responsible for the lower success rate in TALs.
2. Errors were caused by social factors – that is, incorrectly believing that the researcher wanted them to make a positive identification
3. Children are less accurate when faced with human actors and more likely to give
   false positive responses than adults.

Question 15

evaluation

Answer 15

1. Reliability (S + W)
2. Validity (S)
3. Objectivity (S)
4. Generalisability
   -generalising beyond the sample (W)
   -generalising to everyday life (W)

Question 16

issues and debates

Answer 16

1.Application to everyday life
-Eyewitness testimonies can be affected by the expectations of others (especially with child witnesses).
- Findings could be used to develop police guidelines for interviewing child witnesses. Reducing incorrect identifications, with mostly TAL

2. Individual and situational explanations
   - When a target is present in a line-up of cartoon characters, adults and children are as accurate as each other. However, this is not the case for human faces.
   Individual characteristics such as age or memory may not be as important as situational characteristics such as familiarity.
   » The findings of the study suggest that situational factors such as social pressure may explain why children are more likely to identify a suspect even in a TAL.
3. Use of children in psychological research
   Young children are vulnerable to social pressure, so they were protected from harm by:
   - seeking parental consent
   - telling them that they could change their mind and not get into trouble
   - conducting craft activities to put them at ease before experiment starts