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Recovering faces from memory: the distracting influence of external facial features.

Frowd, Charlie D; Skelton, Faye C; Atherton, Chris; Pitchford, Melanie; Hepton, Gemma; Holden, Laura; McIntyre, Alex H; Hancock, Peter J B

Authors

Charlie D Frowd

Chris Atherton

Melanie Pitchford

Gemma Hepton

Laura Holden

Peter J B Hancock



Abstract

Recognition memory for unfamiliar faces is facilitated when contextual cues (e.g. head pose, background environment, hair and clothing) are consistent between study and test. By contrast, inconsistencies in external features, especially hair, promote errors in unfamiliar face-matching tasks. For the construction of facial composites, as carried out by witnesses and victims of crime, the role of external features (hair, ears and neck) is less clear, although research does suggest their involvement. Here, over three experiments, we investigate the impact of external features for recovering facial memories using a modern, recognition-based composite system, EvoFIT. Participant-constructors inspected an unfamiliar target face and, one day later, repeatedly selected items from arrays of whole faces, with ‘breeding’, to ‘evolve’ a composite with EvoFIT; further participants (evaluators) named the resulting composites. In Experiment 1, the important internal-features (eyes, brows, nose and mouth) were constructed more identifiably when the visual presence of external features was decreased by Gaussian blur during construction: higher blur yielded more identifiable internal-features. In Experiment 2, increasing the visible extent of external features (to match the target’s) in the presented face-arrays also improved internal-features quality, although less so than when external features were masked throughout construction. Experiment 3 demonstrated that masking external-features promoted substantially more identifiable images than using the previous method of blurring external-features. Overall, the research indicates that external features are a distractive rather than a beneficial cue for face construction; the results also provide a much better method to construct composites, one that should dramatically increase identification of offenders.

Citation

Frowd, C. D., Skelton, F. C., Atherton, C., Pitchford, M., Hepton, G., Holden, L., …Hancock, P. J. B. (2012). Recovering faces from memory: the distracting influence of external facial features. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Applied, 18, 224-238. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0027393

Journal Article Type Article
Publication Date 2012-04
Deposit Date Jun 10, 2015
Publicly Available Date Mar 29, 2024
Print ISSN 1076-898X
Electronic ISSN 1939-2192
Publisher American Psychological Association
Peer Reviewed Peer Reviewed
Volume 18
Pages 224-238
DOI https://doi.org/10.1037/a0027393
Keywords Recognition memory; facial composites; EvoFit; witness memory; victim recall;
Public URL http://researchrepository.napier.ac.uk/id/eprint/8530
Publisher URL http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/a0027393

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