‘Seeing is Believing’: The Effect of Viewing and Constructing a Composite on Identification Performance

Abstract

This experiment investigated the effects of composite construction and viewing on later identification recognition accuracy. A total of 122 participants were exposed to a composite target for five seconds and then randomly assigned to one of three groups: control, view, or construction. Participants in the construction group were required to produce a composite of the original target. Participants in the view group were exposed to a composite created by another participant (a constructor). The control group completed a distractor task. After a delay, all participants returned to select the target from a lineup. Individual lineups were created for each participant. Lineups were constructed by blending the participant's construction with the target face to form a graded lineup of similar faces. The construction group performed significantly more poorly than the control group (51.22% vs. 23.26%) and target identifications were also lower for the view group compared to the control group (26.23% vs. 51.22%). This study showed similar results to those of previous work, indicating that composite construction decreases identification performance. Furthermore, mere exposure to a composite may also contaminate the memory trace for the original target.

Keywords

blends composites construction eyewitness identification lineups morphing recognition testimony

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