Student Presenter(s): Kevin Narine, Ryan Murphy, Angelica Mei, Brian Smith
Faculty Mentor: Andrew Costello
Department: Behavioral Sciences
School/College: College of Arts and Sciences, Long Island

Eyewitness identification is a mainstay of criminal prosecutions and is actively sought by prosecutors for presentation to jurors. In many jurisdictions, identification by a witness is a requirement to move forward on prosecutions of violent and intimate property crimes such as robbery or theft from a person.

Photo arrays are the most common form of eyewitness identification. Previous research at this institution has determined that photo arrays with the addition of contextual clues improves successful eyewitness identification over the standard 18% gray background used in arrest photographs in target present conditions. This previous research did not test for target absent conditions. Through a controlled experiment of a video of staged crime scene of the theft of a laptop from a professor in a lecture hall by a confederate posing as an IT technician, undergraduate students will be divided into a 2x2 factorial design of photo arrays with 18% gray backgrounds and the background of the crime scene placed behind the suspect and fillers in target present and target absent conditions. With this design, results may be obtained to prove the validity of the inclusion of context in photo arrays in improving successful eyewitness identification and also testing for correct rejection of photo arrays when the suspect is not present.