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When children go missing and remain missing for long periods of time, authorities sometimes retain forensic artists to age progress the last known picture to provide an estimate of the current appearance. In the present research, undergraduate artists with no training in forensic art were asked to age progress images of children to an adult appearance. Similarity of age progressions produced by undergraduate artists were as similar to the corresponding targets as were age progressions produced by practicing forensic artists. However, age progressions produced by undergraduate artists were rated as being more similar to description matched foils than were the age progressions produced by professional forensic artists, suggesting that professionally produced age progressions might be more useful. Results suggest that untrained individual have sufficient knowledge of facial growth to produce age progressions that are somewhat similar to their corresponding targets.

Eyewitnesses carry out a range of tasks to help the police bring a criminal to justice. They describe what happened during the crime and the people involved. Later, there may be reasonable grounds for the police to believe they know who is responsible for the offence and this person then becomes a suspect. The police may put the suspect into a line-up or identification parade and ask eyewitnesses to see if they recognise the person they saw. If the suspect is picked out, this outcome is taken as evidence that the police have arrested the correct person. The police may then spend time building a case to convict the suspect, or dismiss him or her as either there is a lack of evidence to convict or another person is responsible for the crime. Eyewitnesses also provide testimony in a court of law. The police may use the description of an offender given by an eyewitness to try to locate this person using computer searches of previously convicted people. If a suspect cannot otherwise be identified, such as by using CCTV, DNA, fingerprints or other forensic evidence, eyewitnesses may construct a picture of the offender's face, an image called a facial composite. The police will usually circulate this image internally to police staff; if this does not identify the culprit, the image is often published on police websites, in newspapers, and on TV news and crime programmes in the hope that a member of the public will recognise the image and come forward with a name. Sometimes, the police try to establish identity by circulating a wanted poster; see Figure 12.1 for an example. The focus of this chapter is on the various types of evidence from eyewitnesses. There have been many cases of wrongful conviction, as illustrated later by the conviction of Laszlo Virag, and these woeful outcomes must be minimised. The chapter is guided by the wealth of psychological research that has attempted to understand and improve the performance of human memory. It will be seen that eyewitness ev

There was no abstract as such.

Law enforcement agencies often rely on practical technologies to help witnesses and victims of crimes construct likenesses of faces from memory. These 'face composites' are typically circulated to law enforcement officers and made accessible to the public in the hope that someone familiar with the depicted person will recognise their likeness and thus provide the police with a suspect. We will review methods for constructing such likenesses from memory dating back to the portrait parlé of Alphonse Bertillon (Signaletic instructions including the theory and practice of anthropometrical identification. Werner Company, 1896) and the composite images of Francis Galton (Nature 18:97-100, 1878). We will also review more modern methods, ranging from the overlay techniques of Identi-Kit (McDonald, c 1959) and Photo-Fit (Penry J. The Police Journal 43:307, 1970) to feature-based computerised composite systems such as Identi-Kit 2000, FACES, and ProMat. Most early systems were based on the common-sense notion that sectioning a face is invertible: just as a face can be sectioned into components, so it can be recreated by arrangements of sections. This assumption appears to be unwarranted. The underlying problem with earlier face systems may have been the absence of a representational or computational theory. This led in the late 1990s to the development of the so-called third-generation holistic composite systems, which are based on underlying statistical and mathematical models of face images (e.g. ID [Tredoux et al. South African Computer Journal 2006:90-97, 2006], EvoFIT [Frowd CD, Hancock PJB, & Carson D. ACM Transactions on Applied Psychology (TAP) 1:1-21, 2004a], E-FIT [Gibson et al., International Conference on Visualisation, 146-151, 2003]). A special focus of the chapter will be on these newer technologies and other recent technological innovations. Our approach will be to review (i) the methods of operation, (ii) the techniques identified by psychologists and other r

The presence of a weapon in the perpetration of a crime can impede an observer’s ability to describe and/or recognise the person responsible. In the current experiment, we explore whether weapons when present at encoding of a target identity interfere with construction of a facial composite. Participants encoded an unfamiliar target face seen either on its own or paired with a knife. Encoding duration (10 or 30 seconds) was also manipulated. The following day, participants recalled the face and constructed a composite of it using a holistic system (EvoFIT). Correct naming of the participants’ composites was found to reduce reliably when target faces were paired with the weapon at 10 seconds but not at 30 seconds. These data suggest that the presence of a weapon reduces the effectiveness of facial composites following short encoding duration. Implications for theory and police practice are discussed.

ROUTE MAP OF THE CHAPTER Witnesses and victims may hold the only record of a crime and so their evidence can be invaluable to a criminal investigation. This chapter reviews the different types of evidence provided by eyewitnesses. The initial focus is on their ability to describe details of a crime and those involved, plus interviewing techniques that attempt to maximise this information recall. Next, procedures used to identify offenders are examined. In the final part, face-construction systems are outlined along with methods for improving their effectiveness. Eyewitnesses carry out a range of tasks to help the police bring a criminal to justice. They describe what happened during the crime and the people involved. Later, there may be reasonable grounds for the police to believe they know who is responsible for the offence and this person then becomes a suspect. The police may put the suspect into a line-up or identification parade and ask eyewitnesses to see if they recognise the person they saw. If the suspect is picked out, this outcome is taken as evidence that the police have arrested the correct person. The police then spend time building a case to convict the suspect, or dismiss him or her as either there is a lack of evidence to convict, or another person is responsible for the crime. Sometimes, eyewitnesses provide testimony in a court of law. The police may also use the description given by an eyewitness to try to locate the offender using computer searches of previously convicted people. If a suspect cannot otherwise be identified, such as by using CCTV, DNA or other forensic evidence, eyewitnesses may construct a picture of the offender's face, an image called a facial composite. The police will usually circulate this image internally to police staff; if this does not identify the culprit, the image is published on police websites, in newspapers, and on TV news and crime programmes in the hope that a member of the public will recognise the image and ph

Memory is facilitated by reflecting upon, or revisiting, the environment in which information was encoded. We investigated these ‘context reinstatement’ (CR) techniques to improve the effectiveness of facial composites—visual likenesses of a perpetrator’s face constructed by eyewitnesses. Participant-constructors viewed a face and, after a one-day-delay, revisited (Physical CR) or recalled the environmental context (Mental/Detailed CR) before recalling the face and constructing an EvoFIT or a PRO-fit composite. Detailed CR increased correct naming of ensuing composites, but only when participant-constructors suitably encoded the environment. Detailed CR was also effective when combined with another interviewing tech-nique (Holistic-Cognitive Interview), with focus on a target’s character; it was no more effec-tive prompting constructors to engage in greater environmental recall. Analyses indicate that the Detailed CR advantage was mediated by an increase in face recall. Results are applicable by forensic practitioners to aid eyewitness memory, thereby potentially increasing suspect identification and subsequent arrest rates

There are many types of evidence available after a crime has been committed. Some evidence is physical, including fingerprints, footprints and DNA (e.g., Bradbury & Feist, 2005). Forensic officers attempt to recover information of this type from a crime scene for analysis. The hope, of course, is that the outcome will lead to identification the person(s) responsible. Success usually depends on recidivism: an offender has been convicted of a previous offence and his or her identifying information is available to be searched on a database of fingerprints, footprints, DNA, etc. A similar situation applies to CCTV footage (e.g., Davies & Thasen, 2000). The hope now is that the offender has been caught on camera and a clear image of the face can be extracted. The image can then be compared against a database of known offenders for potential matches. It can also be circulated within a police force, or in the media, with the aim that someone who is familiar with the person will report him or her to the authorities. This use of evidence is psychological in nature due to the need for a human to recognise the face; it is considered by Richard Kemp and colleagues in Chapter 1 of this volume. A different situation also involving human recognition occurs when police officers have only seen a photograph of a wanted person, and so the face is unfamiliar, as discussed by Kara Moore and James Lampinen in Chapter 3. As part of collecting all available evidence, the police will interview victims or bystanders who were present when the crime took place. Specific interviewing techniques have been developed for observers who may be able to provide an account of the crime and those involved (e.g., Fisher, 1995). Evidence collected in this way can be particularly important in the absence of the aforementioned evidence, or when recovering useful evidence may take a long time such that further crime occurs. One (or more) of these observers might also be able to construct a composite image of

During long-term missing children cases, forensic artists construct age-progressions to estimate the child’s current appearance. It is commonly believed that incorporating information about the child’s biological relatives is critical in accurately estimating the child’s current appearance. However, some evidence suggests that predicting appearance based on inheritance of features may be error prone. The present studies examine whether age-progressions constructed with the aid of a biological reference photos led to better recognition than those constructed without a biological reference. We also investigated whether there would be any variation depending on the age-range of the age-progressions. Eight professional forensic artists created age-progressions based upon photographs provided by each of our eight targets. Half of their age progressions with the aid of parental reference photos and half without parental reference photos. Furthermore, half were age-progressed across a longer age-range (5-20 years) and half covered a shorter age-range (12-20 years). In Experiment 1 similarity scores were higher over shorter age-ranges. Further, across longer age-ranges age-progressions created with the aid of a parental reference were lower than those without a reference. In Experiment 2 recognition performance was higher across shorter age-ranges. Additionally, across longer age-ranges age-progressions created with the aid of a parental reference were recognized worse than those without a reference. These results suggest that in long-term missing person cases, forensic artists may benefit from not relying on biological references. Finally, consistent with previous research (e.g. Lampinen et al., 2012) age-progressions provided no benefit over using outdated photographs.

Recognition following long delays is superior for highly attractive and highly unattractive faces (cf. medium-attractive faces). In the current work, we investigated participants’ ability to recreate from memory faces of low-, medium- and high physical attractiveness. In Experiment 1, participants constructed composites of familiar (celebrity) faces using the holistic EvoFIT system. When controlling for other variables that may influence face recognition (memorability, familiarity, likeability and age), correct naming and ratings of likeness were superior for composites of low attractiveness targets. Experiment 2 replicated this design using the feature based PRO-fit system, revealing superiority (by composite naming and ratings of likeness) for medium attractiveness. In Experiment 3, participants constructed composites of unfamiliar faces after a forensically-relevant delay of 1 day. Using ratings of likeness as a measure of composite effectiveness, these same effects were observed for EvoFIT and PRO-fit. The work demonstrates the importance of attractiveness for method of composite face construction.

Recognition following long delays is superior for highly attractive and highly unattractive faces (cf. medium-attractive faces). In the current work, we investigated participants’ ability to recreate from memory faces of low-, medium- and high physical attractiveness. In Experiment 1, participants constructed composites of familiar (celebrity) faces using the holistic EvoFIT system. When controlling for other variables that may influence face recognition (memorability, familiarity, likeability and age), correct naming and ratings of likeness were superior for composites of low attractiveness targets. Experiment 2 replicated this design using the feature based PRO-fit system, revealing superiority (by composite naming and ratings of likeness) for medium attractiveness. In Experiment 3, participants constructed composites of unfamiliar faces after a forensically-relevant delay of 1 day. Using ratings of likeness as a measure of composite effectiveness, these same effects were observed for EvoFIT and PRO-fit. The work demonstrates the importance of attractiveness for method of composite face construction.