The Culprit in Target-Absent Lineups: Understanding Young Children’s False Positive Responding

Young children (4- to 7-years old; N = 59) and adults (N = 53) were shown a series of targets that were either familiar (i.e., popular cartoon characters) or unfamiliar (unknown
human faces) to assess whether children’s false positive responding with target-absent lineups is driven by social factors
to a greater degree than cognitive factors. Although children were able to produce correct identification rates with virtually
100% accuracy for the cartoon characters, they produced a significantly lower correct rejection rate compared to adults. Children
also produced a significantly lower correct rejection rate for the human faces compared to adults. These data are discussed
for understanding children’s identification evidence.