Face Recognition in Eyewitness Memory

Lindsay, R. C. L.; Mansour, Jamal K.; Bertrand, Michelle; Kalmet, Natalie; Melsom, Elisabeth I.

doi:10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199559053.013.0016

Cited by 15 publications

(18 citation statements)

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“…The difficulty of a lineup decision is at least partially a function of memory trace strength. People with a weak memory trace-due to poor encoding conditions or delay-tend to perform worse when they view multiple lineups for the same suspect (Godfrey & Clark, 2010;Lindsay, Mansour, Kalmet, Bertrand, & Melsom, 2011). Palmer, Brewer, and Weber (2010) suggested that viewing multiple, non-independent lineups for the same target negatively affects metacognitions about memory strength.…”

Section: Possible Interactions With Multiple Trialsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Are multiple-trial experiments appropriate for eyewitness identification studies? Accuracy, choosing, and confidence across trials

2017

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Eyewitness identification experiments typically involve a single trial: A participant views an event and subsequently makes a lineup decision. As compared to this singletrial paradigm, multiple-trial designs are more efficient, but significantly reduce ecological validity and may affect the strategies that participants use to make lineup decisions. We examined the effects of a number of forensically relevant variables (i.e., memory strength, type of disguise, degree of disguise, and lineup type) on eyewitness accuracy, choosing, and confidence across 12 target-present and 12 target-absent lineup trials (N = 349; 8,376 lineup decisions). The rates of correct rejections and choosing (across both target-present and target-absent lineups) did not vary across the 24 trials, as reflected by main effects or interactions with trial number. Trial number had a significant but trivial quadratic effect on correct identifications (OR = 0.99) and interacted significantly, but again trivially, with disguise type (OR = 1.00). Trial number did not significantly influence participants' confidence in correct identifications, confidence in correct rejections, or confidence in target-absent selections. Thus, multiple-trial designs appear to have minimal effects on eyewitness accuracy, choosing, and confidence. Researchers should thus consider using multiple-trial designs for conducting eyewitness identification experiments. Keywords Eyewitness identification . Simultaneous and sequential lineups . Multiple trials . Multilevel modelling . Eyewitness confidenceEyewitness identification research has contributed significantly to judicial and policing practices over the past few decades and this momentum continues (Innocence Project, n.d.; State v. Henderson, 2011; Technical Working Group for Eyewitness Evidence, 1999; National Research Council, 2014). A major challenge to eyewitness researchers is the balance between ecological validity and methodological rigor: Researchers must decide which aspects of their experimental design are critical for internal validity and which ought to closely resemble those encountered by real-world eyewitnesses to ensure external validity. In the real world, eyewitnesses typically see one crime and (may) participate in an identification procedure for a suspect. Translated into an experimental design, a participant is assigned to one experimental condition and views one mock crime and an accompanying lineup. This between-subjects design has the advantage of closely mirroring the real eyewitness experience but the disadvantage of producing only one recognition and one confidence data point per participant (cf. Brewer, Weber, Clark, & Wells, 2008).Researchers obtaining a single data point per participant (per measure) require a large number of participants to obtain sufficient power to detect reliable differences. Concerns about power are heightened when the measure of interest is Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (doi:10.3758/s13428-017-0855-0) contains suppleme...

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Section: Possible Interactions With Multiple Trialsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Are multiple-trial experiments appropriate for eyewitness identification studies? Accuracy, choosing, and confidence across trials

2017

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“…The perception of facial attributes of our conspecifics, for instance, seems crucial for evaluating whether a person is approachable or avoidable (Oosterhof & Todorov, 2008). Indeed, many of the inferences, judgments, and decisions we make about other people are based on their physical appearance, namely their facial features (for an extensive review, see Calder, Rhodes, Johnson, & Haxby, 2011).…”

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confidence: 99%

“…Watson, Otsuka, & Clifford, 2015). These topics have been investigated by means of a variety of methods, including behavioral, cognitive, computational, and neuroimaging (see Calder et al, 2011). Moreover, faces have also been used as stimulus materials in a multiplicity of research areas, including emotion (e.g., Ekman & Friesen, 1971), mimicry (e.g., Hess & Fischer, 2013), emotional contagion (e.g., Hess & Blairy, 2001), interpersonal attractiveness (e.g., Olson & Marshuetz, 2005), weight estimation (e.g., T. M. Schneider, Hecht, & Carbon, 2012), affective priming (e.g., Murphy & Zajonc, 1993), impression formation and person memory (e.g., Todorov et al, 2015), communication and intergroup relations (e.g., , and eyewitness identification (e.g., Lindsay, Mansour, Bertrand, Kalmet, & Melsom, 2011), and in the study of neuro-and psychological disorders such as autism, prosopagnosia, schizophrenia, and mood disorders (e.g., Behrmann, Avidan, Thomas, & Nishimura, 2011).…”

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confidence: 99%

The many faces of a face: Comparing stills and videos of facial expressions in eight dimensions (SAVE database)

et al. 2016

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This article presents subjective rating norms for a new set of Stills And Videos of facial Expressions-the SAVE database. Twenty nonprofessional models were filmed while posing in three different facial expressions (smile, neutral, and frown). After each pose, the models completed the PANAS questionnaire, and reported more positive affect after smiling and more negative affect after frowning. From the shooting material, stills and 5 s and 10 s videos were edited (total stimulus set = 180). A different sample of 120 participants evaluated the stimuli for attractiveness, arousal, clarity, genuineness, familiarity, intensity, valence, and similarity. Overall, facial expression had a main effect in all of the evaluated dimensions, with smiling models obtaining the highest ratings. Frowning expressions were perceived as being more arousing, clearer, and more intense, but also as more negative than neutral expressions. Stimulus presentation format only influenced the ratings of attractiveness, familiarity, genuineness, and intensity. The attractiveness and familiarity ratings increased with longer exposure times, whereas genuineness decreased. The ratings in the several dimensions were correlated. The subjective norms of facial stimuli presented in this article have potential applications to the work of researchers in several research domains. From our database, researchers may choose the most adequate stimulus presentation format for a particular experiment, select and manipulate the dimensions of interest, and control for the remaining dimensions. The full stimulus set and descriptive results (means, standard deviations, and confidence intervals) for each stimulus per dimension are provided as supplementary material.

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“…Research in eyewitness and face recognition literature greatly considers the impact of disguising individual facial features in memory accuracy. Some studies point out that masking eyes, hair or mouth significantly impairs latter recognition of the suspect, highlighting the role of specific features in memory consolidation of faces (Lindsay et al, 2011;Shapiro & Penrod, 1986;Terry, 1993). Brewer, Weber and Semmler (2005) argue that disguises can impair witnesses' memories in two non-exclusive ways, affecting the quantity of features codified and/or increasing the perceived difficulty of the identification task.…”

Section: Estimator Variablesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Facial composites are created with the purpose of reducing the number of suspects and to help identify a perpetrator, relying on someone's ability to recognize his or her face (Zahradnikova et al, 2016). Accurate composites work well as an investigative tool, but unfortunately an extensive literature shows that eyewitness memory can also be unreliable (Lindsay, Mansour, Kalmet, Bertrand, & Melsom, 2011;Lindsay et al, 2013;Memon, Mastroberardino, & Fraser, 2008), and that composites generated by eyewitnesses are usually not easily recognized (Davies & Valentine, 2013;Wells & Hasel, 2007). A great number of individual and situational factors account for eyewitness identification accuracy, often categorized as estimator or system variables (Wells, 1978;Wells & Olson, 2003).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Eyewitnesses memory for faces in actual criminal cases: An archival analysis of positive facial composites

Saraiva

Castilho²,

Nogueira³

et al. 2017

Estud. psicol. (Natal)

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Facial composites are crucial in the criminal justice system. In this archival study, we investigated the assumption that the success of facial composites depends partly on variables related to the crime, which either impairs or facilitates mnemonic processes. When a facial composite is successful in taking an offender to court it is sometimes archived as a positive facial composite, including a photo of the culprit and information about the crime. A total of 88 positive facial composites were investigated. The accuracy of facial composites was tested as a function of five variables related to the crime: type of crime, presence of weapon, retention interval, exposure duration, and disguise. Participants judged the resemblance of the perpetrators' photo with their correspondent facial composite. The results pointed out that only exposure duration was significantly associated with facial composites accuracy. Possible implications and future directions for research using archived facial composites are discussed.

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Face Recognition in Eyewitness Memory

Cited by 15 publications

References 0 publications

Are multiple-trial experiments appropriate for eyewitness identification studies? Accuracy, choosing, and confidence across trials

Are multiple-trial experiments appropriate for eyewitness identification studies? Accuracy, choosing, and confidence across trials

The many faces of a face: Comparing stills and videos of facial expressions in eight dimensions (SAVE database)

Eyewitnesses memory for faces in actual criminal cases: An archival analysis of positive facial composites

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