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Related Experiment Videos

Building face composites can harm lineup identification performance.

Gary L Wells1, Steve D Charman1, Elizabeth A Olson1

  • 1Department of Psychology.

Journal of Experimental Psychology. Applied
|October 14, 2005
PubMed
Summary
This summary is machine-generated.

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Creating a facial composite may impair eyewitness memory. Building a composite of a target face reduced later identification accuracy in lineup tests, even in simulated crime scenarios.

Area of Science:

  • Cognitive Psychology
  • Eyewitness Testimony
  • Forensic Science

Background:

  • Face composite programs are tools used by eyewitnesses to reconstruct target faces.
  • Previous research indicates that facial composites are often poor likenesses of the original face.
  • The impact of composite generation on the eyewitness's own memory remains an area of investigation.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To investigate whether the process of building a facial composite negatively affects an eyewitness's memory of the target face.
  • To determine if composite generation leads to reduced accuracy in subsequent identification procedures.

Main Methods:

  • Two experiments were conducted involving participants (n=150 and n=200) and various facial stimuli.
  • Participants either created facial composites, were exposed to composites, or had no composite exposure (control conditions).

Related Experiment Videos

  • Eyewitness memory was assessed through lineup identification tasks, including a simulated crime video.

    • Main Results:

    • Building a facial composite significantly decreased the likelihood of correctly identifying the target face in a lineup compared to control groups.
    • This memory impairment effect was observed in both direct composite creation and simulated crime contexts.
    • Composite building did not increase the rate of mistaken identifications from target-absent lineups.

    Conclusions:

    • The process of constructing a facial composite can inadvertently harm an eyewitness's memory for the original face.
    • This finding has significant implications for the use and interpretation of eyewitness-generated composites in legal and investigative settings.
    • While composite creation may reduce target identification accuracy, it does not appear to inflate false positives in identification procedures.