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Updated: Aug 14, 2026

Holistic Facial Composite Creation and Subsequent Video Line-up Eyewitness Identification Paradigm
Published on: December 24, 2015
A successful and unsuccessful replication of William Stern's eyewitness research
M W Bringmann1, K E Tyler, P E McAhren
1Department of Computer Science, Tulane University, New Orleans, Louisiana 70118.
Abstract:
Research on age and sex differences in eyewitness memory has attracted the attention of applied cognitive psychologists for almost a century. The present work is a repetition of Stern's classic research (1903-1904) with 35 boys and 30 girls in primary school. Stern's original claims concerning the superior observational skills of older subjects were fully confirmed. However, in sharp contrast, the present investigation did not yield significant differences in either accuracy of recall or resistance to incorrect information between boys and girls.
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