Identifying unfamiliar voices: examining the system variables of sample duration and parade size

Pautz, N ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5366-5925, Mcdougall, K, Mueller-Johnson, K, Nolan, F, Paver, A and Smith, H ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2712-5527, 2023. Identifying unfamiliar voices: examining the system variables of sample duration and parade size. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology. ISSN 1747-0218

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Abstract

Voice identification parades can be unreliable due to the error-prone nature of earwitness responses. UK government guidelines recommend that voice parades should have nine voices, each played for 60 seconds. This makes parades resource-consuming to construct. In the present paper we conducted two experiments to see if voice parade procedures could be simplified. In Experiment 1 (N=271, 135F), we investigated if reducing the duration of the voice samples on a nine-voice parade would negatively affect identification performance using both conventional logistic and signal detection approaches. In Experiment 2 (N=270, 136F), we first explored if the same sample duration conditions used in Experiment 1 would lead to different outcomes if we reduced the parade size to include only six voices. Following this, we pooled the data from both experiments to investigate the influence of target-position effects. The results show that 15s sample durations result in statistically equivalent voice identification performance to the longer 60s sample durations, but that the 30s sample duration suffers in terms of overall signal sensitivity. This pattern of results was replicated using both a nine- and a six-voice parade. Performance on target-absent parades were at chance-levels in both parade sizes and response criteria were mostly liberal. Additionally, unwanted position effects were present. The results provide initial evidence that the sample duration used in a voice parade may be reduced, but we argue that the guidelines recommending a parade with nine-voices should be maintained to provide additional protection for a potentially innocent suspect given the low target-absent accuracy.

Item Type:	Journal article
Publication Title:	Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology
Creators:	Pautz, N., Mcdougall, K., Mueller-Johnson, K., Nolan, F., Paver, A. and Smith, H.
Publisher:	SAGE Publications
Date:	31 January 2023
ISSN:	1747-0218
Identifiers:	Number Type 10.1177/17470218231155738 DOI 1641374 Other
Divisions:	Schools > School of Social Sciences
Record created by:	Jeremy Silvester
Date Added:	03 Feb 2023 15:27
Last Modified:	03 Feb 2023 16:55
Related URLs:	Publisher
URI:	https://irep.ntu.ac.uk/id/eprint/48165

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