Yang Yueran, Burke Janice L, Healy Justice
Department of Psychology, University of Nevada, Reno, Reno, NV, USA.
Interdisciplinary Social Psychology Ph.D. Program, University of Nevada, Reno, Reno, NV, USA.
Cogn Res Princ Implic. 2025 Aug 22;10(1):54. doi: 10.1186/s41235-025-00652-3.
How do witnesses make identification decisions when viewing a lineup? Understanding the witness decision-making process is essential for researchers to develop methods that can reduce mistaken identifications and improve lineup practices. Yet, the inclusion of fillers has posed a pivotal challenge to this task because the traditional signal detection theory is only applicable to binary decisions and cannot easily incorporate lineup fillers. This paper proposes a multi-item signal detection theory (mSDT) model to help understand the witness decision-making process. The mSDT model clarifies the importance of considering the joint distributions of suspect and filler signals. The model also visualizes the joint distributions in a multivariate decision space, which allows for the incorporation of all eyewitness responses, including suspect identifications, filler identifications, and rejections. The paper begins with a set of simple assumptions to develop the mSDT model and then explores alternative assumptions that can potentially accommodate more sophisticated considerations. The paper further discusses the implications of the mSDT model. With a mathematical modeling and visualization approach, the mSDT model provides a novel theoretical framework for understanding eyewitness identification decisions and addressing debates around eyewitness SDT and ROC applications.
证人在查看列队辨认时是如何做出辨认决定的？对于研究人员来说，理解证人的决策过程对于开发能够减少错误辨认并改进列队辨认做法的方法至关重要。然而，陪衬人的加入给这项任务带来了一个关键挑战，因为传统的信号检测理论仅适用于二元决策，且难以纳入列队辨认中的陪衬人。本文提出了一种多项目信号检测理论（mSDT）模型，以帮助理解证人的决策过程。mSDT模型阐明了考虑嫌疑人和陪衬人信号联合分布的重要性。该模型还在多变量决策空间中直观呈现了联合分布，这使得能够纳入所有目击者的反应，包括对嫌疑人的辨认、对陪衬人的辨认以及拒绝辨认。本文首先提出一组简单假设来构建mSDT模型，然后探讨了可能容纳更复杂考量的替代假设。本文进一步讨论了mSDT模型的意义。通过数学建模和可视化方法，mSDT模型为理解目击者辨认决定以及解决围绕目击者信号检测理论（SDT）和接受者操作特征（ROC）应用的争论提供了一个新颖的理论框架。
