The research was partly funded by an internal University of Greenwich grant to the first and third authors. Thanks go to Dominic Goodchild, Chris Hughes, Adrian Ibanescu, Corrado Ranelli, and Charlie Shaw for acting as culprit-actors in the crime scene videos, and to Henry DC Williams for filming and directing the crime scene videos. Thanks also to Detective Chief Inspector Mick Neville, Inspector Barry Burnell and Sergeant Nick Milbourn from the Metropolitan Police Service for creating and supplying the PROMAT video line-ups for the project and advising on the design and video line-up procedure. Thanks also to Detective Constable Tony Barnes of the Metropolitan Police Service for providing advice on the use of the specific holistic facial composite system in police investigations, and allowing the second author of this paper, who is the composite operator depicted in the videos, to shadow him while working with eyewitnesses to create facial composites during investigations into real crimes.

Solomon and Gibson are faculty members of the University of Kent and directors of VisionMetric Ltd. VisionMetric Ltd market the EFIT-V facial composite system. Solomon and Gibson&#8217;s contribution to this work was to facilitate operator training that took place at the University of Kent, development of the software and provision of software support, and assistance with manuscript preparation. Data collection, analysis, interpretation, and manuscript preparation were performed by Davis, Jolliffe and Maigut who have nothing to disclose.

The creation of a facial composite may provide the first lead in a police investigation 1. A composite constructing witness may subsequently be asked to view a line-up containing the police suspect. The police suspect may in fact be the guilty culprit, in which case the line-up will be culprit-present, or they may be innocent, and the line-up will be culprit-absent. The applied experimental paradigm described here has been employed in research demonstrating the positive influence of holistic facial composite production on correct culprit-actor selections from culprit-present sequential nine-person video line-up procedures, without having any impact on culprit-absent procedures 11. The paradigm possesses strong forensic and ecological validity as it closely replicates police procedures used in England and Wales. Indeed, although not a central component of the analyses, the protocol closely follows the type of interview procedures (e.g., Cognitive Interview 23-24) that the police may employ in these circumstances, although it would be of interest to vary components of the Cognitive Interview in future research to examine this as a separate variable. Furthermore, even though a description is not actually required for holistic composite construction, an operator will still ask a witness to describe the culprit in order to demonstrate good practice, as if the description and appearance of the composite match, it suggests no undue influence on construction from the operator (for instance, concerns might be raised in court if the composite and police suspect possess blond hair, the description dark hair).
Other aspects of the procedure should be followed to enhance forensic validity. For instance, real witnesses would normally be unaware in advance that they will be witnessing a crime, and pre-warning participants that they will either create a facial composite or be asked to make an identification decision may influence the manner in which they attend to the initial video of the culprit. Therefore it is normal to avoid warning participants that the research is investigating eyewitness procedures, and for this purpose the title may often be slightly misleading (e.g., &#8220;video analysis study&#8221;). Furthermore, to avoid inadvertent experimenter bias, the various experimenter roles (e.g., composite system operator, line-up administrator) should ideally be conducted by different people. For similar reasons, the operator, who should be fully trained in the use of the composite system, and the line-up administrator, should both be unfamiliar with the culprit, and have never seen the culprit videos. Ideally, too, the line-up procedure should be conducted double-blind, to ensure no administrator bias 44-46, although double blind procedures are not prescribed in PACE Code D identification procedures for England and Wales. Similarly, PACE Code D does not require measures of identification confidence to be collected, even though as with this paradigm it is often collected for research purposes. Indeed, confidence may provide a marker for line-up accuracy. As such, there is normally a strong positive relationship between confidence and accuracy in line-up choosers, but not non-choosers 47-49.
The basic paradigm could also easily be adapted for use with different types of facial composite system (see for example 11 in which the influence on video lineup outcomes of creating a feature-based facial composite was compared with creating a holistic system composite). There are a number of available holistic composite systems, and although all work on holistic principles, the interfaces differ 13-15. The paradigm would also allow for comparisons with different types of line-up that may be standard in the UK or other legal jurisdictions. For instance, in the USA, most identification procedures are six-person sequential or simultaneous photographic line-ups 33-36, whereas Poland mainly employs four-person simultaneous line-ups 50. Although nowadays very rare in the UK, some jurisdictions elsewhere may still regularly employ live line-ups with all members present in person. For the purposes of the experimental paradigm described here an additional foil was chosen by random from the nine selected by the police officer line-up administrator to replace the culprit in the culprit-absent line-up. However, some eyewitness identification paradigms, may, in advance, specifically select an &#8216;innocent suspect&#8217; for this purpose. A culprit-absent line-up will therefore be created that might contain a number of different foils from those included in the culprit-present line-up e.g., 51, as a real police line-up will be individualized to the specific suspect. To further examine the influence of composite creation on line-up outcomes, combining the results of culprit-present and culprit-absent line-ups would also inform as to whether memory sensitivity or response bias to make a selection is influenced (see for example 52 which discusses the use of signal detection measures for this type of analysis).
In addition, there are many variables that are known to affect face recognition and eyewitness identification accuracy, and the design could accommodate the testing of these to examine whether they provide an additional influence when facial composite production is followed by a line-up (e.g., culprit-actor gender, age, or ethnicity; participant confidence, delay between procedures; foil selection methods, participant culprit view quality; witness description quality; for a review of &#8216;estimator&#8217; variables of this type see 53). Nevertheless, one issue with this type of design is that large numbers of participants are required for sufficient statistical power, as line-up responses are primarily dichotomous in nature (e.g., correct vs. incorrect), and as with a real police investigation most participants will create one composite and view one line-up only. Furthermore, the design is time-consuming. To replicate police investigations, there should ideally be a delay between the three phases of the study, and composite construction alone can often take over an hour. Despite these issues, it is important that new technology that may be employed by the police during an investigation (e.g., a facial composite system), is empirically tested in the laboratory to investigate the effect this technology has on subsequent investigatory procedures (e.g., line-ups). The fate of a real police suspect, regardless of guilt, may partly depend on whether best practice is followed or not.

If the police have no suspect for a crime, an eyewitness, often the victim; may create a facial composite of the culprit from memory with the assistance of a police system operator 1. The aim is that someone familiar with the culprit will recognize that image. An identified suspect &#8212; who may not be the actual culprit &#8212; may be placed in a line-up to see whether the original eyewitness can identify them or not. Many eyewitnesses make misidentifications. From real police line-ups over 20% identify a foil in the UK 2 and the USA 3, known to be innocent but included in the line-up to provide a test of the witness&#8217; memory of the culprit. Sometimes, witnesses select a factually innocent police suspect. This type of error may be the leading cause of wrongful convictions 4-6. Eyewitnesses created facial composites in 46 of the first 250 US DNA-exoneration miscarriage of justice cases 4, and many subsequently identified the innocent individual from a line-up. There may have been alternative inculpating evidence, so that the facial composite procedure was not necessarily responsible. However, line-up accuracy can be impaired e.g., 7-10, unaffected e.g.,8, or enhanced e.g., 11,12 by composite creation, and the aim of applied research of the type described here is to suggest best practice procedures that may be adopted by the police, when facial composite construction is followed by a line-up.
Police forces in many countries employ computerized holistic facial composite systems e.g., 13-15, replacing the previously ubiquitous feature-based systems (for reviews of composite systems see 16-17). This is mainly because holistic systems more closely match the whole face &#8216;Gestaltic&#8217; manner in which humans of all ages process and recognize faces e.g., 18-20. With feature-based systems, witnesses are required to first, verbally recall the suspect&#8217;s facial features (e.g., eyes, nose, and mouth), second, to locate these individual features from often limited feature databases and third, to assemble them into a whole composite. Each step is cognitively demanding &#8212; few people possess the vocabulary to provide a detailed facial description, feature-by-feature facial analysis is prone to error, and verbal recall tends to be less accurate than recognition, possibly due to a mismatch between the modality in which faces are encoded (visual mode), and the retrieval of the face from memory (verbal mode) 21-22. Not surprisingly feature-based composites are often a poor culprit likeness 16-17.
With holistic facial composite systems 13-15, witnesses select from a series of realistic but computer-generated facial arrays, the image that most closely matches their memory of the culprit. Thus the primary retrieval mode is visual, matching the mode in which faces are encoded. The interfaces of the different systems vary, including whether images are in color or not, array numbers, and whether the witness views whole faces, or faces with the external features removed 17. However, with all holistic systems, successive arrays of images are used to achieve a step-by-step improvement in composite-to-culprit likeness. At each step, the faces comprising an array are determined by the witness&#8217; previous selection(s) and an evolutionary algorithm. The witness selects a face from the array, and the evolutionary algorithm breeds those selections to create the new generation of faces in the following array. Additional tools can add clothing, tattoos, facial hair or other individuating marks, manipulate facial feature size and placement, and adjust holistic properties (e.g., age, distinctiveness). The process is complete when the witness is satisfied with their composite. Throughout, the police operator advises but does not influence the procedure.
In conjunction with an initial Cognitive Interview 23-24, with an emphasis on the free recall component which facilitates information quality and quantity, holistic system production promotes whole face recognition, rather than as required with feature-based systems &#8212; analyses of isolated facial features. Manipulation of facial features and their configurations always occurs within the context of a whole face, and as a consequence, holistic system composites are often of higher quality, and recognized more readily by people familiar with those depicted than composites created using feature-based systems 17, 25-26. Police field surveys also suggest that holistic system composites generate higher rates of suspect identification e.g., 27-28. Furthermore, even children as young as six-years-of age 8, and adults with intellectual disabilities 29 can understand their task demands. For these reasons, particularly if a witness has difficulty in describing a face, the Association of Chief Police Officers (ACPO) in England and Wales recommend the use of holistic systems 30.
Once a potential suspect has been identified by the police, they may ask the composite-creating witness to view that suspect in a line-up or identity parade. Some research has found that composite creation enhances identification accuracy, when performance is compared with non-composite creating controls e.g., 11-12. Other research, primarily employing feature-based systems has found that composite creation negatively impacts identification performance e.g., 7, 9-10. If a composite is a poor likeness to the culprit, identification accuracy appears most susceptible 8, 10. This suggests that for creating witnesses, a facial composite may provide a more salient memory trace than that of the original suspect. Nevertheless, all other things being equal, the chances of a correct identification should be enhanced by the creation of a holistic system composite, as these are likely to be closer in likeness to the culprit than a feature-based composite.
The research paradigm described here closely replicates a design and procedure used with young adult 8, 11, 31, child 8, and older adult 31 participants. Composite creating participant-witnesses and non-composite creating controls view an initial &#8216;culprit-actor&#8217; crime scene video. After a delay, the participant-witnesses construct a holistic system facial composite. Subsequently, after a further delay, all participants attempt to identify the suspect from a video line-up, the technology used in virtually all of approximately 110,000 formal identification procedures per annum in the UK 2,32. The mean delay between crime scene video viewing and line-up will be equal for both groups. Based on a large body of empirical research, there is an ongoing debate as to the best procedure for conducting a line-up. Some researchers have argued in favor of sequential line-ups over the alternative simultaneous line-ups e.g., 33-34. Others have an opposing view e.g.,35-36. However, correct identification rates are higher from video line-ups than the often recommended US sequential procedure 37-38. Regardless, the methodology described here has strong ecological validity as it closely matches procedures used in real police investigations, and could be adapted for use with different line-up types. Methods of ensuring that the line-up is &#8216;fair&#8217; to the suspect are also described 39-40. In addition, the holistic composite system employed is the standard used by the majority of UK police forces, the interviewing techniques are those normally used by police composite operators, and the video line-ups were constructed by the London Metropolitan Police Service as though a real investigation, following guidelines in the Police and Criminal Evidence Act (PACE) Codes of Practice (Code D), which prescribes police identification procedures in England and Wales 41. Furthermore, the design is flexible, allowing for the measurement of alternative variables that might impact on composite quality and identification accuracy (e.g., composite system, culprit-actor gender, age, or ethnicity; delay between procedures).
In making decisions as to whether to publicize a facial composite or not, the police operator will likely ask the creating-witness to assess final composite quality. For this paradigm, following construction, each participant-witness rates their composite for likeness to their memory of the culprit. These ratings are compared to those provided by independent assessors &#8212; highly familiar with the person the composite is supposed to depict, so as to provide a more objective recognisability measure. These ratings serve as a proxy for the more ecologically valid method of asking people familiar with the culprit to attempt to name the composite. However, assessor ratings correlate with naming rates suggesting they are essentially measuring the same construct 42. They also positively correlate with adult, but not child participant-witness creator assessments of quality 8.
In summary, this paradigm employs an independent measures design. The first factor is participant role &#8212; participants are allocated to either the participant-witness composite creating group or the non-composite creating control group. The second factor is culprit presence&#160;&#8212; participants are presented with a culprit-present video line-up containing the culprit viewed in the original crime scene video, or a culprit-absent line-up in which the culprit is replaced by an additional foil. A third factor, if varied, is the delay between viewing the crime scene video and the line-up. The primary dependent variable is line-up accuracy. Within the participant-witness composite-creating group, a correlational design measures the relationship between ratings of composite-culprit similarity provided by participant-witnesses and independent assessors, some of whom should be acquaintances of the culprit. The relationship between the composite-culprit similarity ratings and video line-up accuracy is also examined.

<table><tbody><tr><td>Video Line-ups</td><td>Promat Envision International</td><td>PROMAT</td><td>Website: http://www.promatenvision.co.uk Contact: info@promatenvision.co.uk&amp;nbsp;</td></tr><tr><td>Statistics Software</td><td>IBM</td><td>SPSS Statistics 20</td><td>Website: http://www-01.ibm.com/software/uk/analytics/spss/ Contact: +44 (0) 870 542 6426</td></tr><tr><td>Online Survey Tool</td><td>Qualtrics</td><td>Qualtrics</td><td>Website:&amp;nbsp; http://www.qualtrics.com Contact: 1-800-340-9194</td></tr><tr><td>Facial Composite System</td><td>VisionMetric Ltd</td><td>EFIT-V 5.006</td><td>Website: http://www.visionmetric.com/ Contact: efit@visionmetric.com.</td></tr></tbody></table>

holistic facial composite creation and subsequent video line-up eyewitness identification paradigm

The paradigm detailed in this manuscript describes an applied experimental method based on real police investigations during which an eyewitness or victim to a crime may create from memory a holistic facial composite of the culprit with the assistance of a police operator. The aim is that the composite is recognized by someone who believes that they know the culprit. For this paradigm, participants view a culprit actor on video and following a delay, participant-witnesses construct a holistic system facial composite. Controls do not construct a composite. From a series of arrays of computer-generated, but realistic faces, the holistic system construction method primarily requires participant-witnesses to select the facial images most closely meeting their memory of the culprit. Variation between faces in successive arrays is reduced until ideally the final image possesses a close likeness to the culprit. Participant-witness directed tools can also alter facial features, configurations between features and holistic properties (e.g., age, distinctiveness, skin tone), all within a whole face context. The procedure is designed to closely match the holistic manner by which humans&#8217; process faces. On completion, based on their memory of the culprit, ratings of composite-culprit similarity are collected from the participant-witnesses. Similar ratings are collected from culprit-acquaintance assessors, as a marker of composite recognition likelihood. Following a further delay, all participants &#8212; including the controls&#160;&#8212; attempt to identify the culprit in either a culprit-present or culprit-absent video line-up, to replicate circumstances in which the police have located the correct culprit, or an innocent suspect. Data of control and participant-witness line-up outcomes are presented, demonstrating the positive influence of holistic composite construction on identification accuracy. Correlational analyses are conducted to measure the relationship between assessor and participant-witness composite-culprit similarity ratings, delay, identification accuracy, and confidence to examine which factors influence video line-up outcomes.

The data reported here are a subset of data collected in two studies in which the described experimental paradigm was partially followed 8, 11.
Line-up fairness checks
The pilot mock witness paradigm described in Section 6, is designed to ensure that the line-up is not biased against a suspect, in that they should not stand out in any manner to induce selection more often than would be expected by chance 39, 40. From this procedure, a measure of line-up fairness is calculated by ensuring no member is selected significantly more often than would be expected by chance alone by the mock witnesses (e.g., 1/9 = 11.1%). Tredoux&#8217;s E 39 measure of functional size is applied to assess the number of line-up members who are &#8216;plausible&#8217;, and in a real line-up would provide a suitable test of the witness&#8217; memory. Ideally this value should be close to the maximum (e.g., nine). For the representative data reported in 11 the line-up was found to be fair as mock witnesses selected the culprit at close to chance levels (10.9%), and the vast majority of foils were plausible (Tredoux&#8217;s E = 7.05).
Matched condition checks
The next analysis uses an independent-measures t-test 43 to ensure that the ratings of prospective confidence in being able to recognize the culprit, collected shortly after the participants view the crime scene video are approximately equal in the two experimental conditions (see 1.6). The outcome should be non-significant. In 11, the responses on this scale described in 1.6 were as expected approximately equal, t(266) = .57, p &#62; .2, indicating the participants were matched prior to any other procedure.
Composite-culprit similarity ratings
To test hypotheses concerning the objectivity of the participant-witness&#8217; self-assessments of their own composites, the second analysis examines whether there is a relationship between the composite-suspect similarity ratings provided by the participant-witnesses to their own composite only (see Section 3), and those provided by the independent culprit-acquaintance assessors (see Section 4). In 8, a Pearson&#8217;s correlation test 43 on the ratings provided to all 57 holistic facial composites was non-significant. However, when follow-up analyses were conducted with child- and adult-participant-witness data separated, there was a positive relationship between these ratings to the 26 adult composites, r(26) = .46, p &#60; .05; but not to the 31 children&#8217;s composites, r(31) = .01, p &#62; .2; an indication that adult witnesses, but not children, can provide objective assessments of the quality of their own composites.
Video line-up responses
To test hypotheses related to line-up performance, hierarchical loglinear analyses 43, or chi-square tests 43 examine the effects of experimental condition on line-up outcomes (see 7.9). The reported effect size measure for these nominal data analyses is &#934;, although odds ratios (OR) are also reported to provide a measure of the association between the two reported variables. As with most eyewitness research, culprit-present and culprit-absent video line-up data are separated. Each participant makes one line-up decision only.
The influence of composite construction on eyewitness identification is measured by comparing the line-up selections of participant-witnesses and controls. Table 3 displays representative results taken from a subset of the data collected in Experiment 1 of 11 in which control line-up outcomes were compared with participant-witnesses who created a holistic facial composite using the system described in this protocol. The delay between viewing the initial culprit crime scene video and the video line-up in this experiment was approximately 2 hr.
Culprit-present line-ups provide an indication of the sensitivity of an identification procedure as measured primarily by suspect identification rates, which in this paradigm are correct culprit identifications. Other outcomes are incorrect foil identifications or incorrect line-up rejections.
Culprit-absent line-ups provide an indication of the fairness of the procedure, as measured by correct line-up rejection rates. Other outcomes are incorrect foil identifications. There was no designated &#8216;innocent suspect&#8217; in this research, and therefore the first column in Table 3 is blank for culprit-absent trials.
Culprit-present choosing behavior: From the data reported in Table 3 originally presented in Experiment 1 in 11, the first analysis examines whether composite creation influences choosing behavior from a line-up as this may be indicative of a response bias. A 2 (participant role - participant-witness vs. control) x 2 (choosing behavior &#8211; chooser: culprit identification or foil identification vs. non-chooser: incorrect line-up rejection) chi-squared test 43 on the rates of selection of each outcome was not significant, &#967;2(1, n = 108) &#60; 1, p &#62; .2, &#934; = .072. Participant-witnesses (80.0%) were roughly equally likely as controls to be line-up choosers (73.1%, OR = 1.09).
Culprit-present correct identifications: The second and most critical culprit-present analysis examines response accuracy only. A 2 (participant role) x 2 (accuracy &#8212; correct: culprit identification vs. incorrect: foil identification or line-up rejection) chi-squared test 43 on the data from Table 3 first presented in Experiment 1 in 11 was significant, &#967;2(1, n = 108) = 5.48, p = .019, &#934; = .225. Participant-witnesses (70.0%) made approximately one-and-a-half times more correct culprit line-up selections than controls (44.9%, OR = 1.56).
These results are consistent with a follow-up experiment (Experiment 2 11) in which newly qualified police operators were recruited, the crime scene videos depicted six different culprits, and the mean delay between crime scene video viewing and viewing the video line-up was approximately 30 hr (participant-witness correct culprit identification rates = 48.8%; controls = 35.0%), and a meta-analysis finding positive effects of composite construction on line-up identification 12. However, other research 8, using the same basic experimental paradigm, holistic facial composite system, and line-up type, but with different culprit-actors found no significant differences in correct identification rates between adult composite-creating participant-witnesses (34.6%) and controls (31.7%). Furthermore, in that research 8, child controls between the ages of 6- and 11-years made more correct identifications (42.9%) than child participant-witnesses of the same age (19.4%). The latter result may be a consequence of the children&#8217;s facial composite being significantly inferior to the adult&#8217;s, children&#8217;s initial memory for the culprit being worse or they struggled to understand the use of confidence scales. However, this result is consistent with research finding a positive relationship between composite quality and rates of correct identification from line-ups 10. This explanation is also consistent with most previous research of this type, which has used the often inferior feature-based composite systems, finding that identification accuracy was reduced following composite construction e.g., 7, 9-10.
Culprit-present foil identifications: The third culprit&#8211;present analysis examines whether the proportion of foil identifications differs by condition. A 2 (participant role) x 2 (foil or not &#8212; foil identification vs. other decision: correct culprit identification or incorrect line-up rejection) chi-squared test 43 on the data reported in Table 3 and 11 was significant, &#967;2(1, n = 108) = 4.04, p = .045, &#934; = .193. Controls (28.2%) made nearly three times as many foil selections as participant-witnesses (10.0%; OR = 2.82).
Culprit-absent lineup rejections: As there are only two outcomes associated with the culprit-absent data from Table 3 as originally reported in 11, only one test is conducted. A 2 (condition) x 2 (accuracy &#8212; correct line-up rejection vs. incorrect foil identification) chi-squared test 43 was not significant, &#967;2(1, n = 100) &#60; 1, p &#62; .2, &#934; = .055. There were no differences in correct line-up rejection rates between participant-witnesses (44.4%) and controls (38.4%; OR = 1.16). These results are consistent with previous research finding similar null effects in culprit-absent trials 10.
Relationship between composite quality and participant-witness line-up accuracy
A further analysis examines the relationship between the quality of the facial composites and the likelihood of correct culprit video line-up identifications. The representative data reported here are from the second experiment reported in 11 in which all line-ups were culprit-present. A point biserial correlation test 43 conducted on the relationship between line-up accuracy (1 = correct; 0 = incorrect) and culprit-acquaintance ratings of culprit-composite similarity, was not significant, r(45) = -.05, p &#62; .2, suggesting that unlike some previous research 8, 10, there was no relationship between the quality of the participant-witness&#8217; facial composite and the accuracy of their video line-up responses. This unexpected non-significant finding may be the result of a number of extraneous variables (e.g., delay, multiple culprit-actor variables).
<table fo:keep-together.within-page="1">
	<tbody>
		<tr>
			<td></td>
			<td>Total</td>
			<td colspan="2">Suspect ID</td>
			<td colspan="2">Foil ID</td>
			<td colspan="2">Line-up rejection</td>
		</tr>
		<tr>
			<td></td>
			<td>n</td>
			<td>n</td>
			<td>%</td>
			<td>n</td>
			<td>%</td>
			<td>n</td>
			<td>%</td>
		</tr>
		<tr>
			<td colspan="8">Culprit-present</td>
		</tr>
		<tr>
			<td>Controls</td>
			<td>78</td>
			<td>35</td>
			<td>44.9</td>
			<td>22</td>
			<td>28.2</td>
			<td>21</td>
			<td>26.9</td>
		</tr>
		<tr>
			<td>Witnesses</td>
			<td>30</td>
			<td>21</td>
			<td>70.0</td>
			<td>3</td>
			<td>10.0</td>
			<td>6</td>
			<td>20.0</td>
		</tr>
		<tr>
			<td colspan="8">Culprit-absent</td>
		</tr>
		<tr>
			<td>Controls</td>
			<td>73</td>
			<td>-</td>
			<td></td>
			<td>45</td>
			<td>61.6</td>
			<td>28</td>
			<td>38.4</td>
		</tr>
		<tr>
			<td>Witnesses</td>
			<td>27</td>
			<td>-</td>
			<td></td>
			<td>15</td>
			<td>55.6</td>
			<td>12</td>
			<td>44.4</td>
		</tr>
	</tbody>
</table>
Table 3. Culprit-present and culprit-absent video line-up outcomes. Number of participants (n) and percentage of each type of line-up outcome as a function of culprit presence, and participant role from the subset of data originally published in Experiment 1 of 11, in which adult participant-witnesses used the same holistic composite system as described in the current protocol.

Watch this Scientific Journal Video about Holistic Facial Composite Creation and Subsequent Video Line-up Eyewitness Identification Paradigm at JoVE.com

Holistic Facial Composite Creation and Subsequent Video Line-up Eyewitness Identification Paradigm

This applied experimental paradigm replicates circumstances by which an eyewitness to a real crime may create a holistic facial composite of the culprit from memory, and then attempt to identify the culprit from a video line-up containing the culprit or one in which he or she is not present.

The paradigm detailed in this manuscript describes an applied experimental method based on real police investigations during which an eyewitness or victim ...

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14.0K Views.  University of Greenwich. This applied experimental paradigm replicates circumstances by which an eyewitness to a real crime may create a holistic facial composite of the culprit from memory, and then attempt to identify the culprit from a video line-up containing the culprit or one in which he or she is not present.

Video: Holistic Facial Composite Creation and Subsequent Video Line-up Eyewitness Identification Paradigm

Perceptual and Category Processing of the Uncanny Valley Hypothesis' Dimension of Human Likeness: Some Methodological Issues

Mori's Uncanny Valley Hypothesis1,2 proposes that the perception of humanlike characters such as robots and, by extension, avatars (computer-generated characters) can evoke negative or positive affect (valence) depending on the object's degree of visual and behavioral realism along a dimension of human likeness (DHL) (Figure 1). But studies of affective valence of subjective responses to variously realistic non-human characters have produced inconsistent findings 3, 4, 5, 6. One of a number of reasons for this is that human likeness is not perceived as the hypothesis assumes. While the DHL can be defined following Mori's description as a smooth linear change in the degree of physical humanlike similarity, subjective perception of objects along the DHL can be understood in terms of the psychological effects of categorical perception (CP) 7. Further behavioral and neuroimaging investigations of category processing and CP along the DHL and of the potential influence of the dimension's underlying category structure on affective experience are needed. This protocol therefore focuses on the DHL and allows examination of CP. Based on the protocol presented in the video as an example, issues surrounding the methodology in the protocol and the use in "uncanny" research of stimuli drawn from morph continua to represent the DHL are discussed in the article that accompanies the video. The use of neuroimaging and morph stimuli to represent the DHL in order to disentangle brain regions neurally responsive to physical human-like similarity from those responsive to category change and category processing is briefly illustrated.

Investigation of the Uncanny Valley Hypothesis and affective experience requires an understanding of the hypothesis' dimension of human likeness (DHL). This protocol allows representation of the DHL and examination of categorical perception. Use of the same stimuli and fMRI to distinguish brain regions responsive to physical and category change is illustrated.

Mori's Uncanny Valley Hypothesis1,2 proposes that the perception of humanlike characters such as robots and, by extension, avatars (computer-generated ...

Conscious and Non-conscious Representations of Emotional Faces in Asperger's Syndrome

Several neuroimaging studies have suggested that the low spatial frequency content in an emotional face mainly activates the amygdala, pulvinar, and superior colliculus especially with fearful faces1-3. These regions constitute the limbic structure in non-conscious perception of emotions and modulate cortical activity either directly or indirectly2. In contrast, the conscious representation of emotions is more pronounced in the anterior cingulate, prefrontal cortex, and somatosensory cortex for directing voluntary attention to details in faces3,4. Asperger&#39;s syndrome (AS)5,6 represents an atypical mental disturbance that affects sensory, affective and communicative abilities, without interfering with normal linguistic skills and intellectual ability. Several studies have found that functional deficits in the neural circuitry important for facial emotion recognition can partly explain social communication failure in patients with AS7-9. In order to clarify the interplay between conscious and non-conscious representations of emotional faces in AS, an EEG experimental protocol is designed with two tasks involving emotionality evaluation of either photograph or line-drawing faces. A pilot study is introduced for selecting face stimuli that minimize the differences in reaction times and scores assigned to facial emotions between the pretested patients with AS and IQ/gender-matched healthy controls. Information from the pretested patients was used to develop the scoring system used for the emotionality evaluation. Research into facial emotions and visual stimuli with different spatial frequency contents has reached discrepant findings depending on the demographic characteristics of participants and task demands2. The experimental protocol is intended to clarify deficits in patients with AS in processing emotional faces when compared with healthy controls by controlling for factors unrelated to recognition of facial emotions, such as task difficulty, IQ and gender.

An EEG experimental protocol is designed to clarify the interplay between conscious and non-conscious representations of emotional faces in patients with Asperger&#39;s syndrome. The technique suggests that patients with Asperger&#39;s syndrome have deficits in non-conscious representation of emotional faces, but have comparable performance in conscious representation with healthy controls.

Several neuroimaging studies have suggested that the low spatial frequency content in an emotional face mainly activates the amygdala, pulvinar, and ...

Protocol for Data Collection and Analysis Applied to Automated Facial Expression Analysis Technology and Temporal Analysis for Sensory Evaluation

We demonstrate a method for capturing emotional response to beverages and liquefied foods in a sensory evaluation laboratory using automated facial expression analysis (AFEA) software. Additionally, we demonstrate a method for extracting relevant emotional data output and plotting the emotional response of a population over a specified time frame. By time pairing each participant's treatment response to a control stimulus (baseline), the overall emotional response over time and across multiple participants can be quantified. AFEA is a prospective analytical tool for assessing unbiased response to food and beverages. At present, most research has mainly focused on beverages. Methodologies and analyses have not yet been standardized for the application of AFEA to beverages and foods; however, a consistent standard methodology is needed. Optimizing video capture procedures and resulting video quality aids in a successful collection of emotional response to foods. Furthermore, the methodology of data analysis is novel for extracting the pertinent data relevant to the emotional response. The combinations of video capture optimization and data analysis will aid in standardizing the protocol for automated facial expression analysis and interpretation of emotional response data.

A protocol for capturing and statistically analyzing emotional response of a population to beverages and liquefied foods in a sensory evaluation laboratory using automated facial expression analysis software is described.

We demonstrate a method for capturing emotional response to beverages and liquefied foods in a sensory evaluation laboratory using automated facial ...

Creating Virtual-hand and Virtual-face Illusions to Investigate Self-representation

Studies investigating how people represent themselves and their own body often use variants of &#34;ownership illusions&#34;, such as the traditional rubber-hand illusion or the more recently discovered enfacement illusion. However, these examples require rather artificial experimental setups, in which the artificial effector needs to be stroked in synchrony with the participants&#39; real hand or face&#8212;a situation in which participants have no control over the stroking or the movements of their real or artificial effector. Here, we describe a technique to establish ownership illusions in a setup that is more realistic, more intuitive, and of presumably higher ecological validity. It allows creating the virtual-hand illusion by having participants control the movements of a virtual hand presented on a screen or in virtual space in front of them. If the virtual hand moves in synchrony with the participants&#39; own real hand, they tend to perceive the virtual hand as part of their own body. The technique also creates the virtual-face illusion by having participants control the movements of a virtual face in front of them, again with the effect that they tend to perceive the face as their own if it moves in synchrony with their real face. Studying the circumstances that illusions of this sort can be created, increased, or reduced provides important information about how people create and maintain representations of themselves.

Here, we describe virtual-hand and virtual-face illusion paradigms that can be used to study body-related self-perception/-representation. They have already been used in various studies to demonstrate that, under specific conditions, a virtual hand or face can be incorporated into one&#39;s body representation, suggesting that body representations are rather flexible.

Studies investigating how people represent themselves and their own body often use variants of &#34;ownership illusions&#34;, such as the traditional ...

A Methodology for Capturing Joint Visual Attention Using Mobile Eye-Trackers

With the advent of new technological advances, it is possible to study social interactions at a microlevel with unprecedented accuracy. High frequency sensors, such as eye-trackers, electrodermal activity wristbands, EEG bands, and motion sensors provide observations at the millisecond level. This level of precision allows researchers to collect large datasets on social interactions. In this paper, I discuss how multiple eye-trackers can capture a fundamental construct in social interactions, joint visual attention (JVA). JVA has been studied by developmental psychologists to understand how children acquire language, learning scientists to understand how small groups of learners work together, and social scientists to understand interactions in small teams. This paper describes a methodology for capturing JVA in colocated settings using mobile eye-trackers. It presents some empirical results and discusses implications of capturing microobservations to understand social interactions.

Using multimodal sensors is a promising way to understand the role of social interactions in educational settings. This paper describes a methodology for capturing joint visual attention from colocated dyads using mobile eye-trackers.

With the advent of new technological advances, it is possible to study social interactions at a microlevel with unprecedented accuracy. High frequency ...

EEG Study on Recognizing Familiar Speakers in Expressive Speech

Memorization-Based Training and Testing Paradigm for Robust Vocal Identity Recognition in Expressive Speech Using Event-Related Potentials Analysis

Recognizing familiar speakers from vocal streams is a fundamental aspect of human verbal communication. However, it remains unclear how listeners can still discern the speaker's identity in expressive speech. This study develops a memorization-based individual speaker identity recognition approach and an accompanying electroencephalogram (EEG) data analysis pipeline, which monitors how listeners recognize familiar speakers and tell unfamiliar ones apart. EEG data captures online cognitive processes during new versus old speaker distinction based on voice, offering a real-time measure of brain activity, overcoming limits of reaction times and accuracy measurements. The paradigm comprises three steps: listeners establish associations between three voices and their names (training); listeners indicate the name corresponding to a voice from three candidates (checking); listeners distinguish between three old and three new speaker voices in a two-alternative forced-choice task (testing). The speech prosody in testing was either confident or doubtful. EEG data were collected using a 64-channel EEG system, followed by preprocessing and imported into RStudio for ERP and statistical analysis and MATLAB for brain topography. Results showed an enlarged late positive component (LPC) was elicited in the old-talker compared to the new-talker condition in the 400-850 ms window in the Pz and other wider range of electrodes in both prosodies. Yet, the old/new effect was robust in central and posterior electrodes for doubtful prosody perception, whereas the anterior, central, and posterior electrodes are for confident prosody condition. This study proposes that this experiment design can serve as a reference for investigating speaker-specific cue-binding effects in various scenarios (e.g., anaphoric expression) and pathologies in patients like phonagnosia.

Author Spotlight: Investigating the Impact of Emotional Prosodies on Voice Recognition and Perception

The study introduces a training-testing paradigm to investigate old/new effects of event-related potentials in confident and doubtful prosodic scenarios. Data reveals an enhanced late positive component between 400-850 ms at Pz and other electrodes. This pipeline can explore factors beyond speech prosody and their influence on cue-binding target identification.

Recognizing familiar speakers from vocal streams is a fundamental aspect of human verbal communication. However, it remains unclear how listeners can ...

Prosodic-Acoustic Features and L2 Speech Production for Forensic Applications

Foreign Accent and Forensic Speaker Identification in Voice Lineups: The Influence of Acoustic Features Based on Prosody

This research aims to examine both the prosodic-acoustic features and the perceptual correlates of foreign-accented English and foreign-accented Brazilian Portuguese and check how the speakers&#39; productions of foreign and native accents are correlated to the listeners&#39; perception. In the Methodology, we conducted a speech production procedure with a group of American speakers of L2 Brazilian Portuguese and a group of Brazilian speakers of L2 English, and a speech perception procedure in which we performed voice lineups for both languages.For the speech production statistical analysis, we ran Generalized Additive Models to evaluate the effect of the language groups on each class (metric or prosodic-acoustic) of features controlled for the smoothing effect of the covariate(s) of the opposite class. For the speech perception statistical analysis, we ran a Kruskal-Wallis test and a post-hoc Dunn&#39;s test to evaluate the effect of the voices of the lineups on the scores judged by the listeners. We nevertheless conducted acoustic (voice) similarity tests based on Cosine and Euclidean distances. Results showed significant acoustic differences between the language groups in terms of variability of the f0, duration, and voice quality. For the lineups, the results indicated that prosodic features of f0, intensity, and voice quality correlated to the listeners&#39; perceived judgments.

This research aimed to make a comparison between L1-L2-English and L1-L2 Portuguese to check how much the effect of a foreign accent accounts for both metrics and prosodic-acoustic parameters, as well as for the choice of the target voice in a voice lineup.

This research aims to examine both the prosodic-acoustic features and the perceptual correlates of foreign-accented English and foreign-accented Brazilian ...

Post-Movie Subliminal Measurement (PMSM), for Investigating Implicit Social Bias

New knowledge is continuously gained from a social environment that can influence how people respond to each other. Such responses often occur implicitly, at a subliminal perceptual level, and related brain mechanisms can be experimentally isolated by presenting the stimuli quickly. Subliminal presentation of faces that belong to different ethnicity groups, races, or gender has been shown to be successful in investigating social implicit responses. However, many implicit responses are based on knowledge previously gained about the faces (e.g., sexual orientation, political views, and socioeconomic status) and not solely on physical appearance. Here, a novel method called post-movie subliminal measurement (PMSM) is presented. When watching a socially engaging movie, a spectator gains knowledge about the protagonist and becomes familiar with his/her identity and world views. When the face of the protagonist is presented subliminally after the movie, it evokes an implicit neural response depending on what is learned about the protagonist. With a vast number of movies available, each depicting a variety of people with different identities, the PMSM method enables investigation of the brain&#39;s complex implicit biases in a manner that resembles real-life social perceptions.

Post-Movie Subliminal Measurement PMSM, for Investigating Implicit Social Bias

This protocol describes the use of movies to investigate brain mechanisms underlying implicit social biases during functional magnetic resonance imaging. When the face of a protagonist is presented after a movie subliminally, it evokes an implicit response based on knowledge of the protagonist gained during the movie.

New knowledge is continuously gained from a social environment that can influence how people respond to each other. Such responses often occur implicitly, ...

Neuroscience

The Inverted-face Effect

Source: Laboratory of Jonathan Flombaum&#8212;Johns Hopkins University
In perception, it is often the case that the ability to recognize and interpret complex stimuli feels effortless but actually demands complicated and intensive processing. This is because processing is specialized and automated for certain types of very important stimuli. Among the best examples of this phenomenon is face processing. People do not try to detect and recognize faces. It just seems to happen. However, detecting faces and telling them apart from one another is actually a demanding computational task.

Human facial recognition abilities rely on specialized computations and dedicated brain networks. One simple demonstration of this is the inverted-face effect. Recognizing upside-down faces is far more difficult than recognizing them right-side up, but the same is not true for many other kinds of visual objects. The inverted-face effect is demonstrated in a variety of ways. This video shows an incidental encoding memory paradigm for investigating facial processing and the inverted-face effect.

The Inverted-face Effect: Face Recognition Using Incidental Encoding Memory

Source: Laboratory of Jonathan Flombaum&#8212;Johns Hopkins University
In perception, it is often the case that the ability to recognize and interpret ...

Education

JoVE Science Education

Psychology

Sensation and Perception

Nonconscious Mimicry Occurs when Affiliation Goals are Present

Source: Diego Reinero &#38; Jay Van Bavel&#8212;New York University
People are social chameleons and regularly engage in nonconscious behavioral mimicry. This occurs when an individual unwittingly imitates the behaviors of another person, such as crossing one's legs moments after a person sitting adjacent does so, or adjusting one's body posture to match a conversation partner. Rapport between two people increases behavioral mimicry, just as mimicry also increases rapport. Psychologists have posited that this mimicry is attributed to a perception-behavior link;1 seeing a person engage in a behavior activates that behavioral representation, which then makes the perceiver more likely to engage in that behavior him- or herself.
The following experiment expands on these previous findings by testing whether people, without intention or awareness, use mimicry to their advantage. Because goals activate behavioral strategies and plans of action that help people pursue those goals,2 Lakin and Chartrand hypothesized that individuals would mimic another person more when they have a goal to affiliate than when they do not.3

Effects of Affiliation Goals on Nonconscious Mimicry

Source: Diego Reinero &#38; Jay Van Bavel&#8212;New York University
People are social chameleons and regularly engage in nonconscious behavioral mimicry. ...