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The impact of weapons and unusual objects on the construction of facial composites.

Blake Erickson, W., Brown, C., Portch, E., Lampinen, J. M., Marsh, J.E., Fodarella, C., Petkovic, A., Coultas, C., Newby, A., Date, L., Hancock, P. J. B. and Frowd, C. D., 2022. The impact of weapons and unusual objects on the construction of facial composites. Psychology, Crime and Law, 30 (3), 207-228.

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DOI: 10.1080/1068316X.2022.2079643

Abstract

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 the 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 s) 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 s but not at 30 s. These data suggest that the presence of a weapon reduces the effectiveness of facial composites following a short encoding duration. Implications for theory and police practice are discussed.

Item Type:Article
ISSN:1068-316X
Uncontrolled Keywords:Facial composite; weapon; EvoFIT; law enforcement
Group:Faculty of Science & Technology
ID Code:37085
Deposited By: Symplectic RT2
Deposited On:22 Jun 2022 12:39
Last Modified:20 May 2024 13:03

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