Eyewitness Identification and Context Reinstatement
Document Type
Thesis
Degree Name
Master of Science (MS)
Department
Psychology and Special Education
Date of Award
Spring 5-1-2026
Abstract
Despite context reinstatement producing significant effects in the basic memory literature (see Smith & Vela, 2001), few have applied it to the eyewitness identification paradigm and none have utilized receiver operating characteristic (ROC) analysis, nor looked at the confidence-accuracy relationship using confidence-accuracy characteristic (CAC) calibration analysis or response time (RT). Those who have applied context reinstatement to the eyewitness paradigm have found mixed results (Brown, 2003; Cutler et al., 1986; Cutler et al., 1987; Evans et al., 2009), likely due to methodological issues and differences in the context manipulations utilized. Similarly to context reinstatement, only one study has applied it to lineup performance (see Vredeveldt et al., 2015), despite mental reinstatement yielding similar effect sizes to context reinstatement (see Smith & Vela, 2001) and being a significant component of the cognitive interview (Geiselman, 1984), resulting in countless studies investigating its effect on eyewitness recall. While results indicated no significant differences in correct identifications, false identifications, discriminability, and response criteria between context reinstatement, mental reinstatement, and control conditions, patterns suggest a potential effect may be hidden beneath error variance arising from excessively poor encoding conditions. The confidence-accuracy relationship is quite poor between all conditions, further supporting the proposed idea of too poor encoding conditions. Finally, exploratory analysis revealed a significant effect of both condition and response type on response time. Correct identifications were faster than false identifications across all conditions, replicating previous literature. Interestingly, the physical context reinstatement condition responded faster than both the mental reinstatement and control conditions, which were equivalent.
Advisor
Curt Carlson
Subject Categories
Cognitive Science | Psychology | Social and Behavioral Sciences
Recommended Citation
Brundage, Kaylie, "Eyewitness Identification and Context Reinstatement" (2026). Electronic Theses & Dissertations. 1352.
https://lair.etamu.edu/etd/1352
