Law enforcement officials routinely rely on eyewitness identification evidence to solve crimes. Nonetheless, this form of evidence is prone to errors. Researchers have previously attempted to examine conditions under which such errors can be reduced. The present study examines whether giving witnesses an explicit not sure response option increases the accuracy of lineup identification decisions. 251 participants watched a mock crime video before viewing a lineup that either included the perpetrator, or was made up of innocent suspects. Results indicated that witnesses provided with a not sure option made fewer false identifications, fewer filler identifications, and a similar number of correct identifications as witnesses who were not provided with this option. Furthermore, these benefits occurred regardless of whether witnesses received otherwise biased or unbiased instructions. Results suggest that the inclusion of an explicit not sure response option is a simple procedure that can increase the quality of eyewitness lineup decisions.

P3HT (Poly(3-hexylthiophene)) is an organic polymer that shows promise as an active material in semiconducting electronics. It is important to study the electronic properties of this material in order to determine its efficacy in such devices. However, many current studies of thiophene only examine the oligomer, since it is a simpler material to investigate. In this study, several P3HT interfaces were analyzed to determine their electronic properties. The P3HT was deposited on Au, highly-ordered pyrolitic graphite (HOPG), and indium tin oxide (ITO) substrates via electrospray deposition. The depositions were performed in several steps, with x-ray photoemission spectroscopy (XPS) and ultraviolet photoemission spectroscopy (UPS) measurements taken between each step without breaking the vacuum. The resulting series of spectra allowed orbital line-up diagrams to be generated for each interface, giving detailed analysis of the interfacial properties, including the charge injection barriers and interface dipoles. The results, when compared to similar oligomer-based investigations, show a difference in the orbital line-up between oligomeric and polymeric P3HT junctions.

The field of eyewitness memory has long been concerned with identifications but functioned in the absence of an explanatory theory. Recently Charman and Wells (2007) developed applied lineup theory to address this deficiency. They argue that quality of memory and the decision process interact to determine lineup decision accuracy. In a series of experiments I tested whether their theoretical assumptions hold for face recognition tasks and tested the theory using simple manipulations with lineups. Experiments 1 through 7 utilized a face recognition paradigm. In Experiments 1 through 5, the relationship between quality of memory and face recognition accuracy was explored as a function of frequency of viewing, duration of viewing, and depth of processing. The results indicated that, as expected, increased frequency of viewing and deeper processing of faces at encoding led to better recognition memory. Unexpectedly, increasing the duration of viewing did not increase recognition memory. In the remaining experiments (Experiments 6 to 9) I manipulated the decision process by manipulating the match between a face image shown at encoding and retrieval and how quickly participants were able to respond. The results of Experiments 6 and 7 only weakly supported applied lineup theory. In Experiments 8 and 9 I used a lineup paradigm and again found little support for applied lineup theory. Notably, the manipulations of decision process were relatively unsuccessful in Experiments 6 to 9. The stimulus manipulations used may not have been sufficient to produce differences in the decision process or applied lineup theory may not account for lineup decisions. Suggestions for future research on lineup decision processes to clarify whether applied lineup theory can account for lineup decisions are made. / Thesis (Ph.D, Psychology) -- Queen's University, 2010-09-18 16:10:43.637

The field view is an identification procedure that was recently acknowledged in a national report assessing eyewitness identifications. However, the field view has not been empirically examined to date. In fact, very little is known regarding the effectiveness of the procedure. Because it is an exploratory procedure - used by police when they do not have a suspect in mind - it is important to determine how the field view fares in comparison to the traditional procedures such as lineups and showups, whereby police do have a suspect. Using a controlled, lab-based methodology, Study 1 examined correct and false identifications elicited from the field view procedure and whether filler similarity affects identification accuracy. Results revealed that the exploratory field view can be a harmful procedure, particularly when the perpetrator is not present in the location, as it produced significantly more false identifications (36%) than both the lineup (13%) and showup (5%) procedures. The reason for this alarmingly high rate of mistaken identifications is that in an exploratory procedure, there is not an a priori suspect, and thus, nobody in the location is known to be innocent, as fillers are in a lineup. Because of this, anyone identified would come under suspicion. A second study further examined whether the field view may be an acceptable identification procedure under a different circumstance, namely, when police do have a suspect. Study 2 used a more ecologically valid methodology to examine the hypothesis that this confirmatory field view procedure may fare superior to the showup under the condition that the field view is administered by someone who is blind to the identity of the suspect. Contrary to our predictions, however, all three procedures (i.e., field view with non-blind administration; field view with blind administration; showup) produced comparable correct and false identification rates. Overall, results indicate that a field view may be a viable procedure when it is used as a confirmatory procedure and includes fillers similar to the suspect. More research is needed to determine under what conditions exploratory procedures may be acceptable.

Eyewitness identification plays an important role during criminal proceedings and may lead to prosecution and conviction of a suspect. One of the methods of eyewitness identification is a police photo lineup when a collection of photographs is presented to the witness in order to identify the perpetrator of the crime. In the lineup, there is typically at most one photograph (typically exactly one) of the suspect and the remaining photographs are the so-called fillers, i.e. photographs of innocent people. Positive identification of the suspect by the witness may result in charge or conviction of the suspect. Assembly of the lineup is a challenging and tedious problem, because the wrong selection of the fillers may end up in a biased lineup, where the suspect will stand out from the fillers and would be easily identifiable even by a highly uncertain witness. The reason why it is tedious is due to the fact that this process is still done manually or only semi-automatically. This thesis tries to solve both issues by proposing a model that will be capable of generating synthetic data, together with an application that will allow users to obtain the fillers for a given suspect's photograph. 1

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