Do intoxicated witnesses produce poor facial composite images?

RATIONALE: The effect of alcohol intoxication on witness memory and performance has been the subject of research for some time, however, whether intoxication affects facial composite construction has not been investigated. OBJECTIVES: Intoxication was predicted to adversely affect facial composite construction. METHODS: Thirty-two participants were allocated to one of four beverage conditions consisting of factorial combinations of alcohol or placebo at face encoding, and later construction. Participants viewed a video of a target person and constructed a composite of this target the following day. The resulting images were presented as a full face composite, or a part face consisting of either internal or external facial features to a second sample of participants who provided likeness ratings as a measure of facial composite quality. RESULTS: Intoxication at face encoding had a detrimental impact on the quality of facial composites produced the following day, suggesting that alcohol impaired the encoding of the target faces. The common finding that external compared to internal features are more accurately represented was demonstrated, even following alcohol at encoding. This finding was moderated by alcohol and target face gender such that alcohol at face encoding resulted in reduced likeness of external features for male composite faces only. CONCLUSIONS: Moderate alcohol intoxication impairs the quality of facial composites, adding to existing literature demonstrating little effect of alcohol on line-up studies. The impact of intoxication on face perception mechanisms, and the apparent narrowing of processing to external face areas such as hair, is discussed in the context of alcohol myopia theory.

An evaluation of U.S. systems for facial composite production.

Witness and victims of serious crime are normally requested to construct a facial composite of a suspect's face. While modern systems for constructing composites have been evaluated extensively in the U.K., this is not the case in the U.S. In the current work, two popular computerized systems in the US, FACES and Identikit 2000, were evaluated against a 'reference' system, PRO-fit, where performance is established. In experiment 1, witnesses constructed a composite with both PRO-fit and FACES using a realistic procedure. The resulting composites were very poorly named, but the PRO-fit emerged best in 'cued' naming and two supplementary measures: composite sorting; and likeness ratings. In experiment 2, PRO-fit was compared with Identikit 2000, a sketch-like feature system. Spontaneous naming was again very poor, but both cued naming and sorting suggested that the systems were similar. The results support previous findings that modern systems do not produce identifiable composites.