Helping Witnesses to Evolve a More Identifiable Composite

Article Adjusting the focus of attention: Helping Witnesses to Evolve a More Identifiable Composite Fodarella, Cristina, Frowd, Charlie, Warwick, Kelly, Hepton, Gemma, Stone, Katie, Date, Louisa Hannah and Heard, Priscilla Available at http://clok.uclan.ac.uk/22022/ Fodarella, Cristina, Frowd, Charlie ORCID: 0000-0002-5082-1259, Warwick, Kelly, Hepton, Gemma, Stone, Katie, Date, Louisa Hannah and Heard, Priscilla (2017) Adjusting the focus of attention: Helping Witnesses to Evolve a More Identifiable Composite. Forensic Research & Criminology International Journal, 5 (1). 00143. ISSN 2469-2794 It is advisable to refer to the publisher’s version if you intend to cite from the work. 10.15406/frcij.2017.05.00143 For more information about UCLan’s research in this area go to http://www.uclan.ac.uk/researchgroups/ and search for <name of research Group>. For information about Research generally at UCLan please go to http://www.uclan.ac.uk/research/ All outputs in CLoK are protected by Intellectual Property Rights law, including Copyright law. Copyright, IPR and Moral Rights for the works on this site are retained by the individual authors and/or other copyright owners. Terms and conditions for use of this material are defined in the http://clok.uclan.ac.uk/policies/ CLoK Central Lancashire online Knowledge www.clok.uclan.ac.uk Forensic Research & Criminology International Journal Adjusting the Focus of Attention: Helping Witnesses to Evolve a More Identifiable Composite Abstract Research Article When perceiving faces under normal circumstances, the focus of attention is Volume 5 Issue 1 - 2017 likely to be on the upper (e.g., hair, eyes) than lower (e.g., mouth, chin) facial the effectiveness of forensic evidence collected from witnesses and victims of half [1]. If such a bias were to extend to face construction, then it may hinder holistic (police) composite system 24 hours after having seen an unfamiliar target 1School of Psychology, University of Central Lancashire, UK identity.crime. In WhenExperiment constructing 1, participants the face, constructed participants a singlewere askedface using to select the EvoFIT items 2Department of Psychology, University of Winchester, UK from face arrays based on the whole face, or for upper and lower facial halves 3Department of Psychology, University of the West of England, separately; these faces were presented in arrays either intact or horizontally- UK More-identifiable composites were predicted from (i) selection of separate *Corresponding author: Cristina Fodarella, School of facialmisaligned halves [2], (cf. and currently-used with external whole-face features selection),(hair, ears, (ii) neck) presence present of horizontalor absent. Psychology, University of Central Lancashire, Preston, UK, Email: same basic design but participants were requested to select for (i) upper-face halfmisalignment during evolution, and (iii) (ii) absence the same of asexternal (i) but features. also for subsequentExperiment adjustments2 used the Received: June 01, 2017 | Published: June 14, 2017 of the face, and (iii) overall face (Control). The composites constructed in both revealed that the Control group produced the highest-named composites. In experiments were named and rated for likeness. Experiment 1 unexpectedly effective composites. In terms of practical implications, for the EvoFIT composite system,Experiment and potentially2, upper face for selectionother holistic during systems, the evolution witnesses stage should produced be instructed more- identification of their composites. to select faces for the upper facial half during evolution, to maximise subsequent Keywords: EvoFIT; Upper facial features; Holistic facial composites; Composite- face effect; Lower facial features; External facial features Introduction to lower features [13], with hair alterations being detected the alterations [14]. Changes made to the eye region also tend to be familiar faces [3-5]. More attention is paid to the eyes than to any detectedfastest, most more accurately readily in familiarand most than confidently, unfamiliar followed faces [3]. by eye otherThe facial eye regionfeature plays [6,7] an possibly important due roleto the for eyes’ the identificationcommunicative of value. Even in situations where individuals need to concentrate Although faces can be recognised by their individual features on lip movements in order to understand speech submerged in [4,14], face perception occurs holistically, as demonstrated with noise, eye-movement data indicate that participants attend to the the so called composite-face effect (CFE1) [2]. In this effect, when eyes for the majority of the time [8]. It would seem that due to the top and bottom facial halves of two different identities are joined fact that eyes reveal a considerable amount of information with regard to communication, mood and emotions, more attention is paid to them [7-9]. The fact that individuals with social issues, regionstogether, of people the face have (in difficulty this case identifying the facial halves)the individual are perceived halves such as autism, show an impairment in judging eye manipulations in the resulting face [2,15,16]. The finding indicates that the [10], reinforces the theory that, typically, we attend to eyes more (‘composite’) face. By misaligning (‘splitting’) a compound face than any other internal feature due to their social communicative horizontallydifferently when (as illustrated seen separately in Figure or in1, theright), context both ofaccuracy a complete and nature. In line with that research, upper facial features (eyes, speed-of-response increase [2,15-18]. This indicates that holistic brows and hair) tend to be more indicative of an individual’s processing is interrupted under this condition; that is, when a identity than lower facial features (mouth and chin) [1,11]. Not face is horizontally-misaligned. This holistic effect not only occurs upper as opposed to lower features [12]. Attention to upper or [2,15], but also in other face-processing tasks where judgment for loweronly adults, features but canalso also newborns, be investigated show a preference by applying for changesfixating onto for identification and same-different judgments of facial halves by the bottom face of a different half when aligned, but not when the top half of a face is significantly slower and also influenced these changes (by speed and accuracy) [13,14]. Results indicate 1Note that the current paper makes a distinction between the composite thatdifferent changes facial to features upper andfeatures exploring are detected participants’ faster ability than tochanges detect face effect (CFE), as described by Young et al. [2], and facial composites, as used by forensic practitioners. Submit Manuscript | http://medcraveonline.com Forensic Res Criminol Int J 2017, 5(1): 00143 Adjusting the Focus of Attention: Helping Witnesses to Evolve a More Identifiable Copyright: 2/11 Composite ©2017 Fodarella et al. misaligned [19-23]. The CFE also occurs in faces where eyes are perception of a face is only improved in this instance, and not in distorted by moving either one eye or two eyes upwards by an normal faces, where both the upper and lower region is of the same identity, age, race, emotional congruence, etc. even in unnatural-looking faces. extensive amount [24], indicating that holistic processing persists The perceptual importance of upper features is also evident In a classic psychological study, Young et al. [2] found that in facial-composite research. Upper features have been shown the CFE diminishes when such novel faces are misaligned but also when they are inverted (i.e., turned upside down). Inversion featuresto be selected of constructed first, and composites for a longer also seemperiod to of receive time, greaterduring physical distances between individual facial features), and faces construction using the archaic Photofit system [27]. Upper tendgenerally to be leadsrecognised to concealment by featural informationof configural [25,26]. information Young et(i.e., al. than lower features [28-30]. Further research has revealed that [2] theorised that the CFE occurs from interference to inaccurate same-differentattention during judgments naming, andof Identikit are more composites helpful for are identification made faster for upper than for lower facial regions [31]. More recent research halves, and inverting or splitting a face assists by concealing this configural properties created from fusing the two separate observers perceive upper and lower features in a horizontally issue: the general holistic processing of a face [2,21,24] versus misalignedsuggests that format recognition [32]. Althoughof finished evidence composites of this is facilitated processing if theinaccurate misalignment information. of a faceIt may for seemimproved that perceptionthere is a conflicting[2,15-18]. bias towards the upper face stems from old composite systems, when dealing with a novel face consisting of upper and lower “holistic” systems, such as EFIT-V, ID and EvoFIT [33]. As to date, halvesHowever, from the misalignmenttwo different ofidentities. a face only Due appears to natural to be beneficial holistic theit may upper extend face to salience face construction has not been of composites investigated from in thesethe newer new processing of faces, judgment of the upper half of a face is worse systems, the current paper aims to plug this gap. when aligned with a different, lower half [19,21-23]. Therefore, Figure 1 : Example EvoFIT screens showing

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