Does constructing a facial composite affect eyewitness memory? A research synthesis and meta-analysis

Abstract

General rightsCopyright and moral rights for the publications made accessible in the public portal are retained by the authors and/or other copyright owners and it is a condition of accessing publications that users recognise and abide by the legal requirements associated with these rights.• Users may download and print one copy of any publication from the public portal for the purpose of private study or research. • You may not further distribute the material or use it for any profit-making activity or commercial gain • You may freely distribute the URL identifying the publication in the public portal ? Take down policyIf you believe that this document breaches copyright please contact us providing details, and we will remove access to the work immediately and investigate your claim.

Digital Detectives: Websleuthing Reduces Eyewitness Identification Accuracy in Police Lineups

“…However, although some studies have shown impaired identification performance following composite construction (e.g., Wells et al, 2005), others have found that identification accuracy improved (e.g., Davis et al, 2014) with most research tending to find no effect (e.g., Pike G. E. et al, 2019;. A meta-analysis of this research revealed no significant negative effects of composite construction (Tredoux et al, 2020), although it is possible that exposure to a composite created by someone else may have a negative effect if the suspect and composite image share the same misleading feature, or either a positive or no effect if the composite is a more accurate representation (Sporer et al, 2020).…”

Advances in Facial Composite Technology, Utilizing Holistic Construction, Do Not Lead to an Increase in Eyewitness Misidentifications Compared to Older Feature-Based Systems

“…The current results are similar to those of Davis et al (2016), who also found that composite construction using a holistic system did not have an effect on later identification. As noted by Tredoux et al (2016), individual studies of possible composite interference effects do show some variability, with only one outlier article showing a strong, negative relationship between composite construction and identification (Wells et al, 2005), although it should be noted that other research (Topp-Manriquez et al, 2016) using the (piecemeal, feature-based) FACES composite system employed by Wells et al has also reported a large negative effect. Moreover, although some studies show a marginal, if statistically significant, effect in either direction, the general picture that emerges is that creating a composite does not alter a witness’ memory of the target face sufficiently to impact later identification.…”

“…Some studies have found that composite production interferes negatively with later identification accuracy (Wells et al, 2005; Topp-Manriquez et al, 2016), some that it does not have any significant effect (Yu and Geiselman, 1993; Davis et al, 2016; Pike et al, 2019), and some that it actually has a positive effect (Meissner and Brigham, 2001; Davis et al, 2014). Tredoux et al (2016) conducted a meta-analysis of the research exploring the effect composite production might have on subsequent performance at an eyewitness identification procedure and concluded that creating a composite does not appear to have a statistically significant effect. However, many (52 out of 72) of the effect sizes included in the Tredoux et al meta-analysis arose from experiments using older, feature-based composite systems or sketch artists.…”

Does exposure to facial composites damage eyewitness memory? A comprehensive review

“…A second way in which a composite may affect a later identification attempt is when the same Witness (A) first describes and helps in constructing a composite and subsequently participates in a lineup task ( composite construction effect ; see Figure 1). We will not address this issue here, since it has been reviewed in a recent meta‐analysis by Tredoux et al, 2020). 2 Of course, more complex case constellations are conceivable, for example, when both Witnesses A and B (and/or additional witnesses) construct composites and are, or are not, exposed to each other's composites.…”

“…This was due to the fact that (a) there was a small number of studies to begin with, (b) several studies did not report sufficient information (e.g., cell means and cell sizes) to calculate effect sizes and the authors informed us that those data were no longer available, and (c) several studies collapsed the data across different types of control conditions (involving no composite and a good‐quality composite, respectively). We therefore report our meta‐analysis of the composite construction effect in a companion article (Tredoux, Sporer, Vredeveldt, Kempen, & Nortje, 2020) and present a narrative comprehensive review of the composite exposure effect in the present article.…”