Today I received word from both the Association for Psychological Science (APS) and the Vision Sciences Society (VSS) that my abstracts were accepted at their annual conventions. Both of these presentations are part of my dissertation work that addresses the often-flat confidence-accuracy relationship found in police lineup rejections. Below is a description of each poster and information on the talks themselves.

The VSS conference is the first of the two and will be held in St. Pete Beach, Florida, USA on May 19-24, 2023. My poster (abstract ID: 4576) is on the decision variable that people use when rejecting a set of similar objects (i.e., report them as “new” or “unfamiliar”). Is the rejection based on MAX rule, similar to when an “old” recognition judgment is made? Or is the rejection based on some sort of aggregate memory signal (e.g., an averaging rule) based on the strength of all of the memory signals in the set? This paper aims to get why there is a strong confidence-accuracy relationship in the case of postiveIDs of a police lineup, yet a negligible confidence-accuracy relationship for negativeIDs. The research is viewed through the lens of signal detection theory. Although there was theoretical reason to believe that an averaging rule was used on rejections (an averaging rule could wash out a relationship), in our modeling paper that utilized multiple data sets, we do not find evidence to support this. Instead, it appears that the confidence-accuracy relationship is still based upon the MAX decision rule.

If you’re interested in attending my poster presentation at the VSS conference, you can find me in the Banyan Breezeway of the TradeWinds Island Resort on Tuesday May 23, 2023 from 8:30am-12:30pm (EST). My poster will be a part of the Face Perception: Models session and it is titled “The Latent Decision Variable Underlying Confidence in Lineup Rejections.”

The APS conference will be in Washington D.C. on May 25-28, 2023. My poster (abstract ID: 44180) will be on how response bias affects the confidence-accuracy relationship for positiveIDs and negativeIDs for lineups. Using a signal detection framework: If participants are conservative in making an ID, that should flatten out the confidence-accuracy relationship for positiveIDs and steepen the confidence-accuracy relationship for negativeIDs. In turn, more liberal decision-making would steepen the confidence-accuracy relationship for positive IDs, but flatten the relationship for negativeIDs. We use this approach to explain the flat confidence-accuracy relationship seen for lineup rejections as opposed to other hypotheses such as decision variables or d’.  

If you’re interested in attending my poster presentation at the APS conference, details are forthcoming and will be available soon. (This post will be updated.) The title of my APS poster presentation is: Response Bias Affects the Confidence-Accuracy Relationship for Lineup Rejections in Eyewitness Identification.

As always, thank you for your support. If you are unable to attend these conferences, but want to chat research, shoot me an email.