Facial Composite Construction Research Articles

The role of visual imagery in face recognition and the construction of facial composites. Evidence from Aphantasia

People with aphantasia have a markedly impaired ability to form visual images in the mind's eye. Here, by testing people with and without aphantasia, we examine the relationship between visual imagery and face processing. We show that aphantasics have weaker face recognition than people with visual imagery, using both self-report (Prosopagnosia Index) and behavioural measures (Cambridge Face Memory Test). However, aphantasics nonetheless have a fully intact ability to construct facial composites from memory (i.e., composites produced using EFIT6 by aphantasics and imagers were rated as equally accurate in terms of their resemblance to a target face). Additionally, we show that aphantasics were less able than imagers to see the resemblance between composites and a target face, suggestive of potential issues with face matching (perception). Finally, we show that holistic and featural methods of composite construction using EFIT6 produce equally accurate composites. Our results suggest that face recognition, but not face composite construction, is facilitated by the ability to represent visual properties as ‘pictures in the mind’. Our findings have implications for the study of aphantasia, and also for forensic settings, where face composite systems are commonly used to aid criminal investigations.

Construction of Facial Composites from Eyewitness Memory.

Law enforcement agencies often rely on practical technologies to help witnesses and victims of crimes construct likenesses of faces from memory. These 'face composites' are typically circulated to law enforcement officers and made accessible to the public in the hope that someone familiar with the depicted person will recognise their likeness and thus provide the police with a suspect. We will review methods for constructing such likenesses from memory dating back to the portrait parlé of Alphonse Bertillon (Signaletic instructions including the theory and practice of anthropometrical identification. Werner Company, 1896) and the composite images of Francis Galton (Nature 18:97-100, 1878). We will also review more modern methods, ranging from the overlay techniques of Identi-Kit (McDonald, c 1959) and Photo-Fit (Penry J. The Police Journal 43:307, 1970) to feature-based computerised composite systems such as Identi-Kit 2000, FACES, and ProMat. Most early systems were based on the common-sense notion that sectioning a face is invertible: just as a face can be sectioned into components, so it can be recreated by arrangements of sections. This assumption appears to be unwarranted. The underlying problem with earlier face systems may have been the absence of a representational or computational theory. This led in the late 1990s to the development of the so-called third-generation holistic composite systems, which are based on underlying statistical and mathematical models of face images (e.g. ID [Tredoux et al. South African Computer Journal 2006:90-97, 2006], EvoFIT [Frowd CD, Hancock PJB, & Carson D. ACM Transactions on Applied Psychology (TAP) 1:1-21, 2004a], E-FIT [Gibson et al., International Conference on Visualisation, 146-151, 2003]). A special focus of the chapter will be on these newer technologies and other recent technological innovations. Our approach will be to review (i) the methods of operation, (ii) the techniques identified by psychologists and other researchers for improving the quality of information obtained from memory, and (iii) the empirical data on the effectiveness of these systems at representing faces from memory. We will consider related issues, too, including the question of whether face composites damage witness memory, and the ethics of face composition.

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

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.

Composite communication: how dissemination of facial composites in the media affects police investigations

Abstract When looking for a crime suspect, the police may ask an eyewitness to construct a visual likeness (‘facial composite’) of the perpetrator, to be distributed to the public via newspaper articles, television programmes, or social media. The dissemination of facial composites can have a major impact on police investigations. It often results in a deluge of tips and could potentially influence the memory of other eyewitnesses in the case. In this article, we review research on how to interview eyewitnesses for the optimal construction of facial composites from memory. We discuss types of composite systems and their effectiveness, including the ‘gold standard’ of measuring effectiveness. We compare the question posed to the public when a facial composite is disseminated to face-matching tasks faced by immigration officials and store clerks, but then with the added difficulty of the image being a composite of unknown resemblance to the target. We also discuss the potential danger of composites contaminating other eyewitnesses’ memory, highlighting the lessons learnt from research on unconscious transference. We pose several challenges for future researchers and practitioners. We conclude that evidence-based guidance is lacking to inform the police on whether and how to use facial composites in their investigations.

Does constructing a facial composite affect eyewitness memory? A research synthesis and meta-analysis

We conducted a meta-analysis to assess whether the construction of facial composites affects witnesses’ lineup identification decisions. We located 23 studies (56 effects, 2276 participants). We consider effects of constructing composites on (a) correct identifications, and (b) incorrect identifications, from target-present lineups, and (c) incorrect identifications from target-absent lineups. Log odds ratio effect sizes were entered into a random-effects meta-analysis. We also present novel signal detection theory analyses in an online supplement. There were no significant negative effects of composite construction, but some weak evidence that composite construction reduced incorrect identifications in target-present lineups. Because effect sizes showed little hetereogeneity for any of the outcomes (after outlier removal), there were no moderator analyses. Results for SDT measures also showed no effects. Empirical evidence suggests no effects of composite construction on identifications. We identify gaps in knowledge and make recommendations for more ecologically valid research.

Effect of racial bias on composite construction

SummaryWe investigated how prior bias about a face's racial characteristics can affect its encoding and resultant facial composite construction. In total, 61 participants (24 Europeans, 18 Indians living in India and 19 Indians living in Europe) saw a racially ambiguous unfamiliar face and were led to believe it was either European or Indian. They created a composite of this face, using EFIT6. Two groups of independent raters (one Indian, the other European) then assessed the apparent race of each composite. A different two groups (one Indian, one European) assessed each composite's degree of resemblance to the target face, to determine whether this was influenced by the constructors' initial categorisation of the target face as “own‐race” or “other‐race.” Composites appeared significantly more “Asian” or “European” according to the bias induced in their creators, but there was no evidence of any own‐race bias in the resemblance ratings for the composites.

The impact of external facial features on the construction of facial composites

Witnesses may construct a composite face of a perpetrator using a computerised interface. Police practitioners guide witnesses through this unusual process, the goal being to produce an identifiable image. However, any changes a perpetrator makes to their external facial-features may interfere with this process. In Experiment 1, participants constructed a composite using a holistic interface one day after target encoding. Target faces were unaltered, or had altered external-features: (i) changed hair, (ii) external-features removed or (iii) naturally-concealed external-features (hair, ears, face-shape occluded by a hooded top). These manipulations produced composites with more error-prone internal-features: participants’ familiar with a target’s unaltered appearance less often provided a correct name. Experiment 2 applied external-feature alterations to composites of unaltered targets; although whole-face composites contained less error-prone internal-features, identification was impaired. Experiment 3 replicated negative effects of changing target hair on construction and tested a practical solution: selectively concealing hair and eyes improved identification.Practitioner Summary: The research indicates that when a target identity disguises or changes hair, this can lead to a witness (or victim) constructing a composite that is less readily identified. We assess a practical method to overcome this forensic issue.Abbreviation: GEE: Generalized Estimating Equations

The Effect of Facial Composite Construction on Eyewitness Identification Accuracy in an Ecologically Valid Paradigm

Previous research has produced equivocal results with regard to whether facial composite creation affects subsequent eyewitness identification accuracy, but the most widely publicized view is that creating a composite impairs the ability to later recognize the perpetrator from a line-up. In our first experiment, we examined this effect using several ecologically valid elements including a live staged crime, trained police officers, and a long delay between construction and identification, albeit with only a short delay between crime and composite construction. Composite construction did not significantly affect line-up identification accuracy. Experiment 2 replicated this result using a laboratory-based design and sequential line-up task, eliminating the possibly confounding effect of differential levels of motivation and relative judgments. Taken together, the experiments suggest composite creation may not negatively impact subsequent line-up accuracy, regardless of whether an ecologically valid method or more standard laboratory testing was used.

Do intoxicated witnesses produce poor facial composite images?

RationaleThe effect of alcohol intoxication on witness memory and performance has been the subject of research for some time, however, whether intoxication affects facial composite construction has not been investigated.ObjectivesIntoxication was predicted to adversely affect facial composite construction.MethodsThirty-two participants were allocated to one of four beverage conditions consisting of factorial combinations of alcohol or placebo at face encoding, and later construction. Participants viewed a video of a target person and constructed a composite of this target the following day. The resulting images were presented as a full face composite, or a part face consisting of either internal or external facial features to a second sample of participants who provided likeness ratings as a measure of facial composite quality.ResultsIntoxication at face encoding had a detrimental impact on the quality of facial composites produced the following day, suggesting that alcohol impaired the encoding of the target faces. The common finding that external compared to internal features are more accurately represented was demonstrated, even following alcohol at encoding. This finding was moderated by alcohol and target face gender such that alcohol at face encoding resulted in reduced likeness of external features for male composite faces only.ConclusionsModerate alcohol intoxication impairs the quality of facial composites, adding to existing literature demonstrating little effect of alcohol on line-up studies. The impact of intoxication on face perception mechanisms, and the apparent narrowing of processing to external face areas such as hair, is discussed in the context of alcohol myopia theory.

Variaciones en el campo visual del espacio de trabajo del artista forense, durante la realización de retratos hablados mediante video llamadas: proyecciones para Chile y América Latina

Introducción: este artículo expone los resultados de un estudio ya finalizado, cuyo objetivo consistió en determinar si, durante la realización de retratos hablados a través de videollamadas, es posible evidenciar una correlación entre la amplitud del campo visual que tiene el testigo o víctima respecto del espacio de trabajo del artista forense, y el parecido resultante entre el retrato y el rostro de la persona a identificar.
 Enfoque: el énfasis está puesto en la aplicabilidad de estos nuevos medios tecnológicos en el contexto latinoamericano, particularmente hacia la superación de las distancias físicas existentes entre las víctimas y autoridades judiciales de algunos países de la región.
 Metodología: un primer grupo de 24 personas voluntarias situadas en Santiago de Chile tomó parte de entrevistas cognitivas individuales con un artista forense instalado en Dundee (Reino Unido) mediante videollamadas, 24 horas después de haber observado brevemente la fotografía de uno de los personajes de una serie de TV británica no transmitida en Chile. Durante las entrevistas, 12 de ellas tuvieron acceso visual a la imagen del tronco superior del artista y su espacio de trabajo, mientras que las otras 12 solo observaron en la pantalla una muralla blanca. Posteriormente, un segundo grupo de 24 personas, también ubicadas en Chile, evaluó el parecido de los retratos con respecto a las imágenes originales mediante una escala Likert.
 Resultados: los datos obtenidos sugieren que no existe correlación directa entre las variables consideradas, lo cual implica que los cambios en el entorno de realización de las entrevistas no tendrían un efecto significativo en la composición de los retratos.
 Conclusión: la ilusión de copresencia parece no ser imperativa para la creación de rapport entre el entrevistado y el artista forense.

Are two views better than one? Investigating three-quarter view facial composites

Purpose – The introduction of a three-quarter-view database in the PRO-fit facial-composite system has enabled an investigation into the effects of image view in face construction. The purpose of this paper is to examine the impact of constructing full-face and three-quarter-view composites under different encoding conditions. It also examines the potential value of three-quarter-view composites that can be generated automatically from a front-view composite. The authors also investigate whether there is an identification benefit for presenting full-face and three-quarter composites together. Design/methodology/approach – Three experiments examine the impact of encoding conditions on composite construction and presentation of composites at the evaluation stage. Findings – The work revealed that while standard full-face composites perform well when all views of the face have been encoded, care should be taken when a person has only seen one view. When a witness has seen a side view of a suspect, a three-quarter-view composite should be constructed. Also, it would be beneficial for a witness to construct two composites of a suspect, one in full-face view and one in a three-quarter-view, particularly when the witness has only encoded one view. No benefit emerged for use of three-quarter-view composites generated automatically. Research limitations/implications – This is the first study to examine viewpoint in facial composite construction. While a great deal of research has examined viewpoint dependency in face recognition tasks, composite construction is a reconstruction task involving both recall and recognition. The results indicate that there is a viewpoint effect that is similar to that described in the recognition literature. However, more research is needed in this area. Practical implications – The practical implications of this research are that it is extremely important for facial composite operators in the field (police operators) to know who will make a good likeness of the target. Research such as this which examines real-life issues is incredibly important. This research shows that if a witness has seen all views of a perpetrator’s face then standard composite construction using a full-face view will work well. However, if they have only seen a single view then it will not. Social implications – There are obvious wider societal implications for any research which deals with eyewitness memory and the potential identification of perpetrators. Originality/value – No research to date has formally examined the impact of viewpoint in facial-composite construction.

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.

The benefit of context for facial-composite construction

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to investigate whether the presence of a whole-face context during facial composite production facilitates construction of facial composite images. Design/methodology/approach – In Experiment 1, constructors viewed a celebrity face and then developed a facial composite using PRO-fit software in one of two conditions: either the full-face was visible while facial features were selected, or only the feature currently being selected. The composites were named by different participants. The authors then replicated the study using a more forensically valid procedure: in Experiment 2 non-football fans viewed an image of a premiership footballer and 24 hours later constructed a composite of the face with a trained software operator. The resulting composites were named by football fans. Findings – In both studies, the presence of the facial context promoted more identifiable facial composites. Research limitations/implications – Current composite software was deployed in a conventional and unconventional way to demonstrate the importance of facial context. Practical implications – Results confirm that composite software should have the whole-face context visible to witnesses throughout construction. Although some software systems do this, there remain others that present features in isolation and these findings show that these systems are unlikely to be optimal. Originality/value – This is the first study to demonstrate the importance of a full-face context for the construction of facial composite images. Results are valuable to police forces and developers of composite software.

Forensic procedures for facial-composite construction

Purpose – The paper provides a detailed description of standard procedures for constructing facial composites. These procedures are relevant to forensic practice and are contained in the technical papers of this special issue; the purpose of this paper is also to provide an expanding reference of procedures for future research on facial composites and facial-composite systems. Design/methodology/approach – A detailed account is given of the interaction between practitioner and witness for producing a facial composite. This account involves an overview of the Cognitive Interview (CI) and the Holistic CI (H-CI) techniques used to obtain a description of the face of an offender (target); the authors then describe how this information is used to produce a composite from five popular face-production systems: Sketch, PRO-fit, Electronic Facial Identification Technique (E-FIT), EvoFIT and EFIT-V. An online annex is also made available to provide procedural information for additional composite systems. Practical implications – The work is valuable to forensic practitioners and researchers as a reference for interviewing techniques (involving a CI or an H-CI) and using facial-composite systems. Originality/value – The authors provide an accessible, current guide for how to administer interviewing techniques and how to construct composites from a range of face-production systems.

Holistic Facial Composite Construction and Subsequent Lineup Identification Accuracy: Comparing Adults and Children

ABSTRACTWhen the police have no suspect, they may ask an eyewitness to construct a facial composite of that suspect from memory. Faces are primarily processed holistically, and recently developed computerized holistic facial composite systems (e.g., EFIT-V) have been designed to match these processes. The reported research compared children aged 6–11 years with adults on their ability to construct a recognizable EFIT-V composite. Adult constructor's EFIT-Vs received significantly higher composite-suspect likeness ratings from assessors than children's, although there were some notable exceptions. In comparison to adults, the child constructors also overestimated the composite-suspect likeness of their own EFIT-Vs. In a second phase, there were no differences between adult controls and constructors in correct identification rates from video lineups. However, correct suspect identification rates by child constructors were lower than those of child controls, suggesting that a child's memory for the suspect can be adversely influenced by composite construction. Nevertheless, all child constructors coped with the demands of the EFIT-V system, and the implications for research, theory, and the criminal justice system practice are discussed.

Toward DNA-based facial composites: preliminary results and validation.

The potential of constructing useful DNA-based facial composites is forensically of great interest. Given the significant identity information coded in the human face these predictions could help investigations out of an impasse. Although, there is substantial evidence that much of the total variation in facial features is genetically mediated, the discovery of which genes and gene variants underlie normal facial variation has been hampered primarily by the multipartite nature of facial variation. Traditionally, such physical complexity is simplified by simple scalar measurements defined a priori, such as nose or mouth width or alternatively using dimensionality reduction techniques such as principal component analysis where each principal coordinate is then treated as a scalar trait. However, as shown in previous and related work, a more impartial and systematic approach to modeling facial morphology is available and can facilitate both the gene discovery steps, as we recently showed, and DNA-based facial composite construction, as we show here. We first use genomic ancestry and sex to create a base-face, which is simply an average sex and ancestry matched face. Subsequently, the effects of 24 individual SNPs that have been shown to have significant effects on facial variation are overlaid on the base-face forming the predicted-face in a process akin to a photomontage or image blending. We next evaluate the accuracy of predicted faces using cross-validation. Physical accuracy of the facial predictions either locally in particular parts of the face or in terms of overall similarity is mainly determined by sex and genomic ancestry. The SNP-effects maintain the physical accuracy while significantly increasing the distinctiveness of the facial predictions, which would be expected to reduce false positives in perceptual identification tasks. To the best of our knowledge this is the first effort at generating facial composites from DNA and the results are preliminary but certainly promising, especially considering the limited amount of genetic information about the face contained in these 24 SNPs. This approach can incorporate additional SNPs as these are discovered and their effects documented. In this context we discuss three main avenues of research: expanding our knowledge of the genetic architecture of facial morphology, improving the predictive modeling of facial morphology by exploring and incorporating alternative prediction models, and increasing the value of the results through the weighted encoding of physical measurements in terms of human perception of faces.

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

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.

Familiarity effects in the construction of facial-composite images using modern software systems

We investigate the effect of target familiarity on the construction of facial composites, as used by law enforcement to locate criminal suspects. Two popular software construction methods were investigated. Participants were showna target face that was either familiar or unfamiliar to them and constructed a composite of it from memoryusing a typical ‘feature’ system, involving selection of individual facial features, or one of the newer ‘holistic’ types, involving repeated selection and breeding from arrays of whole faces. This study found that composites constructed of a familiar face were named more successfully than composites of an unfamiliar face; also, naming of composites of internal and external features was equivalent for construction of unfamiliar targets, but internal features were better named than the external features for familiar targets. These findings applied to both systems, althoughbenefit emerged for the holistic type due to more accurate construction of internal features and evidence for a whole-face advantage. Statement of Relevance: This work is of relevance to practitioners who construct facial composites with witnesses to and victims of crime, as well as for software designers to help them improve the effectiveness of their composite systems.

New methodology in facial composite construction: from theory to practice

Existing commercial, computerised techniques for constructing facial composites generated from eyewitness memory are essentially electronic versions of the original, mechanical feature-based systems such as PhotoFIT and Identikit. The effectiveness of this feature-based approach is fundamentally limited by the witness's ability to recall and verbalise accurate descriptions of facial features from memory. Recent advances in facial composite methodology have led to software systems that do not rely on this process but instead exploit a cognitively less demanding process of recognition. We provide a technical overview of the EFIT-V system, currently being used by a number of police services in the UK.