Date of Award

May 2024

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Science (MS)

Department

Psychology

First Advisor

Andre Kehn

Abstract

Testing a witness’s memory more than once has been shown to decrease accuracy in subsequent tests, and providing a witness with disconfirming feedback has also been shown to reduce confidence levels and reduce accuracy after they have made a decision from a lineup. The current study aims to examine how disconfirming feedback affects a witness’s accuracy throughout multiple lineups, as well as looking to examine the reflector variables of reaction time and the “Remember, Know, Guess” (e.g. RKG) questionnaire. Participants who incorrectly chose a suspect from an initial target-absent lineup were given disconfirming feedback and randomly assigned to either a final target-present or target-absent lineup. The results did not reveal any significant effect of disconfirming feedback on final lineup accuracy. Reaction time and the “remember” response of the RKG questionnaire were significant predictors of accuracy only in the final target-present lineup condition. Participants who chose from the final target-present lineup quicker were more likely to be accurate than participants who took longer to make a decision, and participants who chose the “remember” response were more likely to be accurate than those who chose the “know” or “guess” response.

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