Predicting Eyewitness Identification Accuracy with Mock Witness Measures of Lineup Fairness: Quality of Encoding Interacts with Lineup Format:

After viewing a staged crime under varying levels of encoding optimality, eyewitnesses made identifications from lineups that were either presented to them as a simultaneous line of people, or individually, in sequence. Lineups did not contain the perpetrator of the staged crime, and were purposefully constructed to have varying levels of bias. There was an interaction between encoding optimality and type of lineup, with sequential-presentation lineups leading to more correct rejections than simultaneous-presentation lineups for moderate encoding optimality. Sequential-presentation lineups did not provide good protection against mistaken identifications in the two other conditions of encoding optimality. Measures of the fairness of the lineups significantly predicted identification rates for both simultaneous-presentation lineups and sequential-presentation lineups, regardless of encoding optimality.