Parental reference photos do not always improve the accuracy of forensic age progressions

During long-term missing children cases, forensic artists construct age-progressions to estimate the child’s current appearance. It is commonly believed that incorporating information about the child’s biological relatives is critical in accurately estimating the child’s current appearance. However, some evidence suggests that predicting appearance based on inheritance of features may be error prone. The present studies examine whether age-progressions constructed with the aid of a biological reference photos led to better recognition than those constructed without a biological reference. We also investigated whether there would be any variation depending on the age-range of the age-progressions. Eight professional forensic artists created age-progressions based upon photographs provided by each of our eight targets. Half of their age progressions with the aid of parental reference photos and half without parental reference photos. Furthermore, half were age-progressed across a longer age-range (5-20 years) and half covered a shorter age-range (12-20 years). In Experiment 1 similarity scores were higher over shorter age-ranges. Further, across longer age-ranges age-progressions created with the aid of a parental reference were lower than those without a reference. In Experiment 2 recognition performance was higher across shorter age-ranges. Additionally, across longer age-ranges age-progressions created with the aid of a parental reference were recognized worse than those without a reference. These results suggest that in long-term missing person cases, forensic artists may benefit from not relying on biological references. Finally, consistent with previous research (e.g. Lampinen et al., 2012) age-progressions provided no benefit over using outdated photographs

The Impact of Weapons and Unusual Objects on the Construction of Facial Composites

The presence of a weapon in the perpetration of a crime can impede an observer’s ability to describe and/or recognise the person responsible. In the current experiment, we explore whether weapons when present at encoding of a target identity interfere with construction of a facial composite. Participants encoded an unfamiliar target face seen either on its own or paired with a knife. Encoding duration (10 or 30 seconds) was also manipulated. The following day, participants recalled the face and constructed a composite of it using a holistic system (EvoFIT). Correct naming of the participants’ composites was found to reduce reliably when target faces were paired with the weapon at 10 seconds but not at 30 seconds. These data suggest that the presence of a weapon reduces the effectiveness of facial composites following short encoding duration. Implications for theory and police practice are discussed

HIV-1 Superinfection in the Antiretroviral Therapy Era: Are Seroconcordant Sexual Partners at Risk?

Acquisition of more than one strain of human immunodeficiency virus type 1 (HIV-1) has been reported to occur both during and after primary infection, but the risks and repercussions of dual and superinfection are incompletely understood. In this study, we evaluated a longitudinal cohort of chronically HIV-infected men who were sexual partners to determine if individuals acquired their partners' viral strains.Our cohort of HIV-positive men consisted of 8 couples that identified themselves as long-term sexual partners. Viral sequences were isolated from each subject and analyzed using phylogenetic methods. In addition, strain-specific PCR allowed us to search for partners' viruses present at low levels. Finally, we used computational algorithms to evaluate for recombination between partners' viral strains.All couples had at least one factor associated with increased risk for acquisition of new HIV strains during the study, including detectable plasma viral load, sexually transmitted infections, and unprotected sex. One subject was dually HIV-1 infected, but neither strain corresponded to that of his partner. Three couples' sequences formed monophyletic clusters at the entry visit, with phylogenetic analysis suggesting that one member of the couple had acquired an HIV strain from his identified partner or that both had acquired it from the same source outside their partnership. The 5 remaining couples initially displayed no evidence of dual infection, using phylogenetic analysis and strain-specific PCR. However, in 1 of these couples, further analysis revealed recombinant viral strains with segments of viral genomes in one subject that may have derived from the enrolled partner. Thus, chronically HIV-1 infected individuals may become superinfected with additional HIV strains from their seroconcordant sexual partners. In some cases, HIV-1 superinfection may become apparent when recombinant viral strains are detected

Fair Lineups Improve Outside Observers' Discriminability, Not Eyewitnesses' Discriminability: Evidence for Differential Filler-Siphoning Using Empirical Data and the WITNESS Model

Fair lineups (good fillers) better sort between innocent and guilty suspect identifications than do biased lineups (poor fillers). Why are fair lineups better? Some argue that the fair-lineup advantage is an improvement in eyewitness discriminability through some mechanism such as diagnostic-feature detection. Others argue that the fair lineups do not improve eyewitnesses’ discriminability at all but instead improve the discriminability of outside observers who are privy to which lineups members are known-fillers (the differential filler-siphoning mechanism). Experiment 1 used a forced-choice paradigm to show that fair lineups do not improve eyewitness discriminability. The second experiment used the WITNESS model to show that differential filler-siphoning and the fair-lineup advantage readily surfaces and nicely patterns experimental data based on minimal assumptions even though witness memory strength was held constant. Together, these two experiments support differential filler-siphoning and the idea that fair lineups enhance the outside observer’s discriminability, not the eyewitness’s discriminability.This Unpublished paper published as Smith, Andrew & Smalarz, Laura & Wells, Gary & Lampinen, James & Mackovichova, Simona. (2020). Fair Lineups Improve Outside Observers' Discriminability, Not Eyewitnesses' Discriminability: Evidence for Differential Filler-Siphoning Using Empirical Data and the WITNESS Model. 10.13140/RG.2.2.23329.22887/1

SmithSupplementalMaterial – Supplemental material for Increasing the Similarity of Lineup Fillers to the Suspect Improves the Applied Value of Lineups Without Improving Memory Performance: Commentary on Colloff, Wade, and Strange (2016)

<p>Supplemental material, SmithSupplementalMaterial for Increasing the Similarity of Lineup Fillers to the Suspect Improves the Applied Value of Lineups Without Improving Memory Performance: Commentary on Colloff, Wade, and Strange (2016) by Andrew M. Smith, Gary L. Wells, Laura Smalarz and James Michael Lampinen in Psychological Science</p

Deviation from Perfect Performance Measures the Diagnostic Utility of Eyewitness Lineups but Partial Area Under the ROC Curve Does Not

When one lineup identification procedure leads to both fewer innocent–suspect identifications and fewer culprit identifications than does some other lineup procedure, it is difficult to determine whether the procedures differ in diagnostic accuracy. In an influential article, Wixted and Mickes (2012) argued that measures of probative value do not inform diagnostic accuracy in these situations but that the partial area under the receiver operator characteristic curve (pAUC) does. In more recent research, we have found that pAUC does not necessarily indicate which of two lineup procedures has higher expected utility. When two lineup procedures produce different innocent-suspect identification rates, it leads to differential truncation of the ROC curves. As a result, diagnostic utility as measured by the pAUC is confounded with witness confidence level. We introduce a novel receiver operator characteristic measure, deviation from perfect performance (DPP), that unconfounds diagnostic utility and witness confidence level and consistently indicates which of two lineup procedures has higher expected utility. Our findings suggest that eyewitness scientists should abandon pAUC as a measure of diagnostic accuracy and embrace deviation from perfect performance

A decade of evolving composites: regression- and meta-analysis

Purpose– The purpose of this paper is to assess the impact of seven variables that emerge from forensic research on facial-composite construction and naming using contemporary police systems: EvoFIT, Feature and Sketch. Design/methodology/approach– The paper involves regression- and meta-analyses on composite-naming data from 23 studies that have followed procedures used by police practitioners for forensic face construction. The corpus for analyses contains 6,464 individual naming responses from 1,069 participants in 41 experimental conditions. Findings– The analyses reveal that composites constructed from the holistic EvoFIT system were over four-times more identifiable than composites from “Feature” (E-FIT and PRO-fit) and Sketch systems; Sketch was somewhat more effective than Feature systems. EvoFIT was more effective when internal features were created before rather than after selecting hair and the other (blurred) external features. Adding questions about the global appearance of the face (as part of the holistic-cognitive interview (H-CI)) gives a valuable improvement in naming over the standard face-recall cognitive interview (CI) for all three system types tested. The analysis also confirmed that composites were considerably less effective when constructed from a long (one to two days) compared with a short (0-3.5 hours) retention interval. Practical implications– Variables were assessed that are of importance to forensic practitioners who construct composites with witnesses and victims of crime. Originality/value– Using a large corpus of forensically-relevant data, the main result is that EvoFIT using the internal-features method of construction is superior; an H-CI administered prior to face construction is also advantageous (cf. face-recall CI) for EvoFIT as well as for two further contrasting production systems