Diagnostic Featural Detection or Filler Siphoning: A Redbox Study

Author: Brynn Schuetter | Major: Criminology, Psychology, Sociology

My name is Brynn Schuetter. I’m a senior here at the University of Arkansas in the Fulbright College of Arts and Sciences, and I’m finishing up my Bachelor of Arts in Psychology, Criminology, and Sociology. In the spring of 2020, I joined Dr. James Lampinen’s LAMP lab on campus. This is a psychology lab that is interested in doing research on eyewitness memory, false memories, and missing/wanted persons. I first joined the lab as a research assistant, but in the spring of 2021, I joined the lab as an honors student hoping to complete my honors thesis in the lab. I found the lab through one of my professors who at the time was a graduate student in the lab. I thought the interests of the lab lined up really well with all three of my majors and I thought it was a good opportunity to learn more about real-world applications of my interests.

After becoming an honors student in the lab, Dr. Lampinen was very helpful in helping me decide on a topic for my research. Initially, I was going to complete another study, but COVID restrictions didn’t allow me to complete that study. Instead, my study needed to be something that could be completed online. Dr. Lampinen provided me with some research papers to read and then asked which topic I was most interested in. From there, Dr. Lampinen helped take my interests and turn them into a study that would further research in psychology and the law. My research is interested in how fillers in identification procedures affect identification decisions. More specifically, my study explored two different theories that have been proposed as to why lineups produce more accurate identifications than showups: diagnostic feature detection theory and filler siphoning theory. This research is extremely important because although eyewitness misidentification plays a role in nearly 70% of DNA exonerations, it is still one of the most highly held pieces of evidence in court against a defendant.

Overcoming COVID, was one of the hardest challenges that I had to face while completing my thesis. I had a previous project that I had everything set up for and IRB approval for, but due to COVID, we weren’t able to get that project off the ground. Instead, I had to create a whole new project in an extremely small window of time so that it would be up and running by the beginning of the fall 2021 semester. It was also a challenge to balance doing work for the thesis with doing work for all of my other classes. Because there aren’t many deadlines to complete a thesis, everything is on the students to keep up with their own research and not fall behind. It can be easy to put it on the back burner and just work on school things.

There were a lot of people who helped me throughout the process of completing my thesis. Obviously, Dr. Lampinen was a really big help and led me through every step of the process. He made sure I knew what I was doing but gave me enough independence that it felt like I was doing the work and learning along the way. My graduate student mentor Amber Giacona was also a really big help through the process in showing me how to do certain tasks and the best ways to approach research. The other graduate students and research assistants were also helpful in creating materials and completing tasks needed to get the study running.

This research has taught me so much and given me so many experiences that I wouldn’t have been able to have otherwise. I was able to be a part of every step in the research process and see what all goes into research behind the scenes. I also had the opportunity to present my research at an MPA conference in Chicago this spring. After graduation, I hope to attend graduate school and earn a master’s degree in sociology with a concentration in criminology.