Catriona Havard

Research has shown that we are better at discriminating between faces that are our own race, and much less accurate with faces of another race. When the external features of faces were removed, this reduced the accuracy for recognizing other-races faces, more than own-race faces, suggesting that the external features (hair, face shape) are especially important for the recognition of other-race faces. The aim of the current study was to determine whether external features were more useful in matching other-race faces, and whether this was the case for Western and Eastern viewers. The current study employed a face matching task with Caucasian (U.K.) and Asian (Chinese) participants and found that responses were more accurate for own-race faces, and for whole faces when compared with faces where the internal or external features had been removed. Removing the external features of other-race faces increased the own-race bias for Chinese and U.K. participants, demonstrating the importance of viewing whole faces, including the external features when matching other-race faces.

Abstract The present study investigated whether child (six–eight years of age) and adult witnesses (18–29 years of age) would exhibit an own-age bias when trying to identify targets from video lineups. One hundred and eighty-six participants viewed two filmed events that ...

SummaryInternal and external features dominate familiar and unfamiliar face recognition, respectively. However, this finding is not universal; Egyptians showed a robust internal‐feature advantage for processing unfamiliar faces (Megreya & Bindemann, 2009). This bias was speculatively attributed to their long‐term experiences for individuating female faces with headscarves, which completely cover the external features. Here, we provided an empirical test for this suggestion. Participants from Egypt and UK were presented with a staged crime, which was committed by an own‐race woman with or without a headscarf. All participants were then asked to identify the culprit from a line‐up involving 10 faces with or without headscarves. British participants showed an advantage when the culprit left her hair uncovered. In contrast, Egyptian observers showed an advantage when the culprit wore a headscarf. This Egyptian headscarf effect was also replicated using British faces, suggesting that it reflects a specific characteristic of participant nationality rather than face nationality. These results therefore provide evidence for how culture influences cognition. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Identification parades are one of the most common means of identifying a perpetrator of a crime and can be powerful evidence in securing convictions in criminal cases. In an identification parade (also known as a line-up) a suspect is placed amongst a number of similiar-looking people (foils) and the task for the witness is to either select the person they recognise as being the culprit, or state the culprit is not there. Unfortunately, witnesses do not always correctly identify the culprit from a line-up and in some cases innocent people are wrongly identified. This issue has been investigated by the Innocence project, who at the time of writing, have been involved in 251 exonerations based on DNA evidence in the USA. Of these cases approximately 75% of those convicted were cases of mistaken identity (Innocence Project at: http://www.innocenceproject.org/). Several similar organisations have developed worldwide such as the UK Innocent Network, the Australian Innocence Network and the Innocence Project New Zealand, all with the aim to overturn convictions of those who have been wrongfully imprisoned. One real life case of someone who was exonerated by the Innocent Project is Calvin Willis; he was wrongly accused of rape and served 22 years before DNA evidence proved he was innocent. Even though one of the police reports stated the victim did not see her attacker's face, she was shown a line-up and said she was told to pick the man without the full beard. She later testified that she did not choose anyone, although the police said she picked Willis. Willis's name only came into the investigation because the victim's neighbours had mentioned Willis's name when discussing who might have committed the crime. Even with all these flaws in the investigation the jury still convicted Willis and sentenced him to life (for more details of this case see Innocence Projects webpage at: http://www.innocenceproject.org/Content/297.php). This illustrates how powerful eyewitness evidence can be in the courtroom, even when there are obvious flaws in the way it has been obtained. This chapter will explore a number of issues that can influence how accurately witnesses make decisions when viewing a line-up. These issues can be split into two separate strands: system variables and estimator variables (Wells, 1978). System variables are factors that are under control of the police conducting the parade, and include the method of foil selection and the identification format e.g. photo or video line-up. They also include whether the line-up presentation is sequential or simultaneous, instructions given to the witness, and whether they view a mugbook or make a composite prior to viewing a line-up. Estimator variables are factors associated with the witnesses and their view of the crime and are not under any control from the police or the judicial system. These include the witness's age and eyesight, how long they saw the culprit for and also whether the culprit was the same age or ethnic background as the witness. We will examine how system and estimator variables can influence facial identification from line-ups, but first the method used to study the factors influencing eyewitness identification accuracy will be described.

Although children can identify a target from a target present (TP) lineup as accurately as adults, they are more likely to make a misidentification from a target absent (TA) lineup. In the present study children aged 4-7 and 8-11 years viewed a film of a staged theft and 1-2 days later viewed either a TP or TA video lineup. For half of the lineups a ‘mystery man’ (silhouette) was present. When the ‘mystery man’ was present in the lineup, there were significantly fewer false identifications for the TA lineups, and no significant differences in correct identifications for the TP lineups.

Although children can identify a target from a target present (TP) lineup as accurately as adults, they are more likely to make a misidentification from a target absent (TA) lineup. In the present study children aged 4-7 and 8-11 years viewed a film of a staged theft and 1-2 days later viewed either a TP or TA video lineup. For half of the lineups a ‘mystery man’ (silhouette) was present. When the ‘mystery man’ was present in the lineup, there were significantly fewer false identifications for the TA lineups, and no significant differences in correct identifications for the TP lineups.

Previous research on disfluency types has focused on their distinct cognitive causes, prosodic patterns, or effects on the listener. This paper seeks to add to this taxonomy by providing a psycholinguistic account of the dialogue and gaze behaviour speakers ...

A wealth of research has investigated how good people are at being eyewitnesses. This involves investigating how accurate witnesses are at correctly identifying a previously seen culprit from a line-up, and also whether witnesses choose someone from a line-up, even if the culprit is not there. Many of these studies have found that children and adults over the age of 60, are more likely to make false identifications when shown a line-up that does not contain a culprit. To reduce false identifications a new technique called the Mystery Man procedure was developed, which involves placing a silhouette in the line-up. The two studies discussed here, found that using the mystery man procedure can significantly reduce false identifications, without reducing correct identifications, for both children and older adults. The results of this research suggest that this technique could easily be implemented in police line-ups to make eyewitness identifications more accurate.

In the UK, identification lineups have a standard background, either grey for VIPER lineups, or green for PROMAT lineups. However, as lineup fillers and suspects are filmed under a variety of lighting conditions, there can be a large variation in the colours of the background on which lineup members are presented, potentially causing some faces to appear more salient than others. Using the 1-in-10 face recognition paradigm (Bruce et al., 1999), we investigated whether manipulating the background colour of faces influenced identification for target present (TP) and target absent (TA) arrays. The first experiment used faces that were the same race (SR) as the participants, and found the colour manipulation significantly increased accuracy for TP lineups. The second experiment investigated the relationship between this effect and the own race effect (ORE). The ORE predicts individuals are more likely to correctly identify SR as compared to OR faces from TP lineups, and falsely identify OR faces from TA lineups at a higher rate to SR faces (Brigham, Bennett, Meissner & Mitchell, 2007). Results are discussed in terms of the implications for the creation and use of lineups and the relationship between background colour variation and the own race effect (ORE).

At the beginning of the year, a questionnaire for Video Identification Procedure Electronic Recording (VIPER) operators was distributed to all the Scottish Police Forces. This is the first archival analysis to be undertaken on VIPER parades and the results from the survey will provide officers with valuable information on the usefulness of VIPER for obtaining evidence from witnesses. The survey is nearly half way through and over one thousand completed questionnaires have been collected so far. The questionnaire focused on the demographics of the witnesses, suspects and also the behaviour of the witnesses’ whilst viewing VIPER parades. The questionnaires obtained so far have revealed that half of witnesses were male and the majority were under the age of 35, with over a third being vulnerable witnesses. When it came to suspects, the majority were male and also under the age of 35. The crimes that appeared to be the most common for suspects in the VIPER parades were crimes of violence. When viewing the VIPER lineups the majority of witnesses made a positive identification, that is picking out the suspect. In the analysis of witnesses behaviour whilst viewing the parade, the majority of witnesses appeared calm before viewing the parade, during the viewing and afterwards. The results obtained so far appear to show that the VIPER parades are a good medium for allowing witnesses to identify a suspect without the emotional stress of facing an accused in a live setting.

A wealth of research has investigated how good people are at being eyewitnesses. This involves investigating how accurate witnesses are at correctly identifying a previously seen culprit from a line-up, and also whether witnesses choose someone from a line-up, even if the culprit is not there. Many of these studies have found that children and adults over the age of 60, are more likely to make false identifications when shown a line-up that does not contain a culprit. To reduce false identifications a new technique called the Mystery Man procedure was developed, which involves placing a silhouette in the line-up. The two studies discussed here, found that using the mystery man procedure can significantly reduce false identifications, without reducing correct identifications, for both children and older adults. The results of this research suggest that this technique could easily be implemented in police line-ups to make eyewitness identifications more accurate.

Eyewitnesses to crimes sometimes search for a culprit on social media before viewing a police lineup, but it is not known whether this affects subsequent lineup identification accuracy. The present online study was conducted to address this. Two hundred and eighty-five participants viewed a mock crime video, and after a 15–20 min delay either (i) viewed a mock social media site including the culprit, (ii) viewed a mock social media site including a lookalike, or (iii) completed a filler task. A week later, participants made an identification from a photo lineup. It was predicted that searching for a culprit on social media containing the lookalike (rather than the culprit) would reduce lineup identification accuracy. There was a significant association between social media exposure and lineup accuracy for the Target Present lineup (30% more of the participants who saw the lookalike on social media failed to positively identify the culprit than participants in the other conditions), ...

In the UK, identification lineups have a standard background, either grey for VIPER lineups, or green for PROMAT lineups. However, as lineup fillers and suspects are filmed under a variety of lighting conditions, there can be a large variation in the colours of the background on which lineup members are presented, potentially causing some faces to appear more salient than others. Using the 1-in-10 face recognition paradigm (Bruce et al., 1999), we investigated whether manipulating the background colour of faces influenced identification for target present (TP) and target absent (TA) arrays. The first experiment used faces that were the same race (SR) as the participants, and found the colour manipulation significantly increased accuracy for TP lineups. The second experiment investigated the relationship between this effect and the own race effect (ORE). The ORE predicts individuals are more likely to correctly identify SR as compared to OR faces from TP lineups, and falsely identify...

This document is the author deposited version. You are advised to consult the publisher's version if you wish to cite from it. Published version THIRKETTLE, Martin, HAVARD, C and RICHTER, S (2016). Variability of background colour in suspect line-ups and identification accuracy. In: European Association of Psychology and Law 2016, University of Toulouse, Toulouse, 5th 8th July 2016. (Unpublished)

Research has undoubtedly led to a number of important changes to the way police obtain eyewitness identification evidence in a number of countries. However, despite these successes and the significant effort made by researchers to communicate key findings to public agencies, policy-makers and influential law enforcement personnel using a broad range of evidence, relevant policy and practice have either been very slow to respond or have not changed to incorporate the suggestions at all. In this article we employed an online survey to explore the knowledge and opinions of front-line policing practitioners in the UK regarding eyewitness research and practice. This was undertaken to determine how familiar less-senior, operational staff were with key research findings, what their opinions of current practice were and crucially, their views on how identification procedures should be improved compared with the recommendations made by researchers. The results revealed a fundamental mismatch...

To explore the tensions between therapeutic and forensic settings, the chapter starts with a discussion of the different agendas and values in both fields that are difficult to integrate when working at the intersection of both disciplines. In a therapeutic setting, the aims are to help the patient/client and to promote well-being. In forensic settings, the main objective is to punish offenders, prevent re-offending and protect society, rather than to specifically help individuals with mental health issues. The chapter then explores different professional roles in forensic and mental health settings and the dual position often experienced by professionals working therapeutically in forensic settings. This is followed by a discussion of consent, risk, disclosure and power - common themes and challenges in therapeutic and forensic work that run through the book and are picked up in the following chapters.

This study investigated the own-race bias in British school children using an eyewitness paradigm. Some 319 participants viewed films of two similar staged thefts, one that depicted a Caucasian culprit and the other an Asian culprit, and then after a delay of 2–3 days, viewed a line-up for each culprit. One hundred and seventy-six of the participants were Caucasian and 143 were Asian. There were also two age groups: 164 were aged 7–9 years and 152 were 12–14 years. There was a significant own-race bias for Caucasian participants from both age groups that resulted in more correct identifications for the own-race culprit from target present line-ups and more false identifications for the target absent line-ups. Asian participants from both age groups showed no own-race bias and performed equally accurately for culprits of both races. Measures of inter-racial contact were associated with correct responses for other-race targets and revealed that the majority of Caucasian participants i...

Previous research on disfluency types has focused on their distinct cognitive causes, prosodic patterns, or effects on the listener. This paper seeks to add to this taxonomy by providing a psycholinguistic account of the dialogue and gaze behaviour speakers ...

Despite a burgeoning research effort directed at the design and modelling of effective urban spaces for pedestrians, remarkably little is known about how pedestrians actually negotiate urban spaces. This paper reports the results of a video-based observational study aimed at exploring: (1) individuals' movement preferences within uncluttered environments, in particular: (a) desired walking speed, (b) microscopic position preferences, and (c) interpersonal distances between companions while walking; and (2) the ways in which these variables might be influenced by the various personal, situational, and environmental factors that characterise the context in which pedestrians move. The microscopic movement trajectories of 2613 participants were investigated in a covert, video-based observational study of three mixed-use (residential/retail) urban environments close to the city centres of Edinburgh and York, United Kingdom. Age, gender, level of mobility, group size, time of day, and...

Internal and external features dominate familiar and unfamiliar face recognition, respectively. However, this finding is not universal; Egyptians showed a robust internal-feature advantage for processing unfamiliar faces (Megreya & Bindemann, 2009). This ...