Does visual attention to diagnostic facial features predict eyewitness identification accuracy? Implications for diagnostic feature detection theory
Pia Pennekamp, Michelle M. Ramey, Dilhan Töredi, James Michael Lampinen, Michael B. Steinborn · 2026
Read Does visual attention to diagnostic facial features predict eyewitness identification accuracy? Implications for diagnostic feature detection theory by Pia Pennekamp, Michelle M. Ramey, Dilhan Töredi, James Michael Lampinen, Michael B. Steinborn (2026) in the Tower of Babel, a free online library of public-domain works preserved in clean, searchable text. No sign-up. The full text is served as a plain-text file at a predictable URL, where text is present: https://antarctic-labs.com/tower-of-babel/PMC13596790.txt.
Description
Pia Pennekamp and colleagues used eye tracking to test a theory of how eyewitnesses decide in police lineups. Diagnostic feature detection theory holds that witnesses compare faces. They lean on features only one person has, since shared features cannot distinguish anyone. The team checked whether gaze behavior actually follows that logic.
One hundred participants memorized twelve faces, then viewed lineups in which one feature, the nose, eyes, or mouth, had been digitally copied onto every member, making it useless for telling them apart. Eye movements showed no extra attention to the genuinely distinguishing features, and viewing patterns did not differ between lineup types or between accurate and mistaken witnesses. The authors conclude that whatever witnesses do with shared features, they do not appear to do it through overt visual attention, which trims one proposed mechanism of the theory.
Catalog record
| CREATOR | Pia Pennekamp, Michelle M. Ramey, Dilhan Töredi, James Michael Lampinen, Michael B. Steinborn |
|---|---|
| YEAR | 2026 |
| COLLECTION | PAPERS |
| FORMAT | TXT |
| FILE SIZE | 56 KB |
| LICENSE | https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0 |
| RIGHTS | CC BY |
| SOURCE | Europe PMC |