Circadian Variations in Eyewitness Identifications: Identification Performance is not Affected by Time-of-day Optimality

DOI

The circadian rhythm regulates arousal levels throughout the day and determines optimal periods for engaging in mental activities. Individuals differ in the time of day at which they reach their peak: Morning-type individuals are at their best in the morning and evening types perform better in the evening. Performance in recall and recognition of non-facial stimuli is generally superior at an individual’s circadian peak. In two studies (Ns = 103 and 324), we tested the effect of time-of-testing optimality on eyewitness identification performance. Morning- and evening-type participants viewed stimulus films depicting staged crimes and made identification decisions from target-present and target-absent lineups either at their optimal or non-optimal time-of-day. We expected that participants would make more accurate identification decisions and that the confidence-accuracy and decision time-accuracy relationships would be stronger at optimal compared to non-optimal time of day. In Experiment 1, identification accuracy was unexpectedly superior at non-optimal compared to optimal time of day in target-present lineups. In Experiment 2, identification accuracy did not differ between the optimal and non-optimal time of day. Contrary to our expectations, testing at optimal time of day did not consistently strengthen the confidence-accuracy and decision time-accuracy relationships.

Identifier
DOI https://doi.org/10.34894/0VERPQ
Metadata Access https://dataverse.nl/oai?verb=GetRecord&metadataPrefix=oai_datacite&identifier=doi:10.34894/0VERPQ
Provenance
Creator Yaremenko, Sergii ORCID logo
Publisher DataverseNL
Contributor faculty data manager FPN; Yaremenko, Sergii
Publication Year 2020
Rights info:eu-repo/semantics/restrictedAccess
OpenAccess false
Contact faculty data manager FPN (Maastricht University); Yaremenko, Sergii (Maastricht University)
Representation
Resource Type Experimental data; Dataset
Format application/zip
Size 30562; 36871
Version 1.0
Discipline Agriculture, Forestry, Horticulture, Aquaculture; Agriculture, Forestry, Horticulture, Aquaculture and Veterinary Medicine; Life Sciences; Social Sciences; Social and Behavioural Sciences; Soil Sciences