People have difficulty sighting missing persons, partially because the task requires people's limited cognitive resources. We examined whether empathy increases search behaviors and performance. We manipulated empathy felt toward a formerly (E1) and actively (E2) missing person. We measured willingness to volunteer to search for missing people in…

In existing studies of investigative interviewing, the effects of interviewing contexts have often been measured with little consideration of the reciprocal interviewee's stable characteristics. To clarify the factors and conditions under which adults are likely to retain accurate information and be resistant (or vulnerable) to suggestions during…

Facial examiners make visual comparisons of face images to establish the identities of persons in police investigations. This study utilised eye-tracking and an individual differences approach to investigate whether these experts exhibit specialist viewing behaviours during identification, by comparing facial examiners with forensic fingerprint…

According to the Diagnostic Feature-Detection (DFD) hypothesis, the presence of fillers that match the eyewitness's description of the perpetrator will boost discriminability beyond a showup, and very few fillers may suffice to produce the advantage. We tested this hypothesis by comparing showups with simultaneous lineups of size 3, 6, 9, and 12.…

People have difficulty sighting missing persons, partially because people's limited cognitive resources are required for searching. As a result, people sometimes do not devote resources to searching. This research will examine whether empathy increases the resources devoted to searching and search performance. In Experiment 1, we will manipulate…

Attaining an uninterrupted free report (FR) is at the heart of best practice investigative interviewing guidance. However, witnesses/victims do not naturally provide detailed accounts. Techniques have been developed to counter-act this, such as a report everything (RE) instruction. This research examined the relative effectiveness of "an…

This study examined the effectiveness of ground rules--simple instructions outlining the communication expectations of an investigative interview--with 73 younger (age 18-40) and 57 older (age 60+) adults. Participants watched a film depicting an implied sexual assault and were interviewed after a brief delay. One third received no ground rules,…

The effectiveness of a sketch procedure for enhancing the recall of a live interactive event was assessed. Participants (N = 88) engaged in an interaction with a confederate, were administered a sketch, mental reinstatement of context (MRC), or control procedure and then asked to recall the experienced event. Results showed that participants who…

Investigators sometimes use timelines (visual depictions of time) to help children identify temporal information from experienced events or details from a particular instance of a repeated event. However, little is actually known about the efficacy of this visual aid on children's memories. Six- to 9-year-olds participated in four occurrences of a…

This study examined how a principle of social influence--reciprocity--affects the informational elements produced in an investigative interview. Participants from 3 ethnic/cultural groups recruited from the community either received a bottle of water or not prior to their engaging in an investigative interview, in which they either told the truth…

Police worldwide regularly review closed-circuit television (CCTV) evidence in investigations. This research found that London "police experts" who work in a full-time "Super-Recogniser Unit" and front line "police identifiers" regularly making suspect identifications from CCTV possessed superior unfamiliar face…