ABSTRACT Eyewitness testimony is central to criminal investigations, yet facial identification accuracy varies as a function of retention interval. This study examined eyewitness identification performance across delays ranging from 1 min to 90 days in two experiments. Participants viewed a target face and later completed lineup identification tasks following varying intervals. Results revealed a non‐monotonic, three‐phase forgetting trajectory: a rapid decline within the first hour, a period of relative stability between 1 h and 1 day and a more gradual decline extending to 90 days. The early and late phases were well described by logarithmic functions, whereas the intermediate phase showed a near‐zero gradient, indicating a temporary plateau in performance. The primary contribution of this work is a detailed characterisation of the shape of the forgetting function across forensically relevant timescales, with practical implications for the timing and evaluation of eyewitness identification evidence.
Farmer et al. (Fri,) studied this question.