Laypersons’ Performance in the Determination of Authorship from a Homogenous Group Of Writers

In 2009, the authors reported a study involving 49 FDEs from 5 countries who attempted to determine authorship of writing samples from 52 writers who had grown up in the same neighborhood, attended the same school, and who had all learned to write using the Palmer method. In that initial study, FDEs were able to successfully attribute authorship with average accuracy scores of approximately 98%. A subsequent study was conducted involving a group of 46 Laypersons who were assigned the same comparison tasks as the FDEs involving the same writing specimens. This secondary study compared accuracy and error rates attained by the Laypersons with those attained by the FDEs. Findings demonstrated that the Laypersons in this study were able to determine authorship with average accuracy scores of approximately 76%. A comparison of error rates between the two groups showed an error rate of approximately 39% for the Laypersons Group, compared to approximately 3% for the FDE Group. Additional findings showed there were profound differences between both groups in the number of writing specimens that were problematic for the examiners, and in the strategies they used in examination and comparison of the handwriting samples.