Improving face identification of mask-wearing individuals.

Research has consistently shown that concealing facial features can hinder subsequent identification. The widespread adoption of face masks due to the COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted the critical and urgent need to discover techniques to improve identification of people wearing face coverings. Despite years of research on face recognition and eyewitness identifications, there are currently no evidence-based recommendations for lineup construction for cases involving masked individuals. The purpose of this study was to examine identification accuracy of a masked perpetrator as a function of lineup type (i.e., unmasked or masked lineups) and perpetrator presence (i.e., absent or present). In both experiments, discriminability was superior for masked lineups, a result that was due almost exclusively to higher hits rates in target-present conditions. These data suggest that presenting a masked lineup can enhance identification of masked faces, and they have important implications for both eyewitness identification and everyday face recognition of people with face coverings.

Warning weakens retrieval-enhanced suggestibility only when it is given shortly after misinformation: The critical importance of timing.

Recalling details from an experienced event can sometimes exacerbate eyewitnesses' susceptibility to subsequent misinformation. This finding, known as retrieval-enhanced suggestibility (RES), can be eliminated when participants are warned about possible inaccuracies in the misinformation source (Thomas et al., 2010). In three experiments, we investigated whether this warning benefit persists across delays. When the warning was issued shortly after participants were exposed to misinformation, it inoculated participant witnesses against RES, regardless of whether the final memory test occurred immediately or 48 hr after the warning. However, the warning lost its effectiveness when it was delivered 48 hr after participants were exposed to misinformation. These results applied to both recognition memory and the confidence-accuracy relationship. We considered these data from the perspective of temporal distinctiveness, and we argue that a warning serves a similar function to a forget cue in the directed forgetting paradigm. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).

Do masked-face lineups facilitate eyewitness identification of a masked individual?

Perpetrators often wear disguises like ski masks to hinder subsequent identification by witnesses or law enforcement officials. In criminal cases involving a masked perpetrator, the decision of whether and how to administer a lineup often rests on the investigating officer. To date, no evidence-based recommendations are available for eyewitness identifications of a masked perpetrator. In 4 experiments, we examined lineup identification performance depending on variations in both encoding (studying a full face vs. a partial/masked face) and retrieval conditions (identifying a target from a full-face lineup vs. a partial/masked-face lineup). In addition, we manipulated whether the target was present or absent in the lineup in Experiments 3 and 4. Across all experiments, when participants had encoded a masked face, the masked-face lineup increased identification accuracy relative to the full-face lineup. These data provide preliminary evidence that matching lineup construction to how witnesses originally encoded the perpetrator may enhance the accuracy of eyewitness identifications. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved).

How do associative and phonemic overlap interact to boost illusory recollection?

This project investigated the underlying mechanisms that boost false remember responses when participants receive study words that are both semantically and phonologically similar to a critical lure. Participants completed a memory task in which they were presented with a list of words all associated with a critical lure. Included within the list of semantic associates was a target that was either semantically associated (e.g., yawn) to the critical lure (e.g., sleep) or shared the initial (e.g., slam) or final (e.g., beep) phoneme(s) with the critical lure. After hearing the list, participants recalled each list item and indicated whether they just knew it was on the list or if they instead recollected specific contextual details of that item's presentation. We found that inserting an initial phonemic overlap target boosted experiences of recollection, but only when semantically related associates were presented beforehand. The results are consistent with models of spoken word recognition and show that established semantic context plus initial phonemic overlap play important roles in boosting false recollection.