When selecting fillers to include in a police lineup, one must consider the level of similarity between the suspect and potential fillers. In order to reduce misidentifications, an innocent suspect should not stand out. Therefore, it is important that the fillers share some degree of similarity. Importantly, increasing suspect-filler similarity…

The interplay between facial age and facial identity is evident from several scenarios experienced in daily life, such as when recognising a face several decades after the last exposure. However, the link between age and identity processing, and how age perception abilities might diverge in individuals with different face processing abilities, has…

In the area of security, human cognition remains essential for face recognition despite advancements in technology. Law enforcement agencies (LEAs) are interested in harnessing these abilities, as recognizing people is a fundamental aspect of their work. We conducted two studies to support integrating human face recognition skills into police…

In several applied contexts (e.g., earwitness testimony), the accurate recognition of unfamiliar voices can be a critical part of the person identification process. However, recognising unfamiliar voices is prone to error. While such errors could be reduced by testing the proficiency of listeners, the established tests of unfamiliar voice matching…

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…

Research has consistently shown that concealing facial features can hinder subsequent identification. The widespread adoption of face masks due to the COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted the critical and urgent need to discover techniques to improve identification of people wearing face coverings. Despite years of research on face recognition and…

In co-located, multi-user settings such as multi-touch tables, user interfaces need to be accessible from multiple viewpoints. In this project, we investigated how this goal can be achieved for depictions of data in bar graphs. We designed a laboratory task in which participants answered simple questions based on information depicted in bar graphs…

Meditative mindfulness practices, promoting sustained attention and reducing mind-wandering, have been associated with improvements in cognitive abilities and memory. The present study explored whether a non-meditative practice could be successfully applied in a forensic application; specifically, whether mindfulness instructions can be embedded…

In STEM hands-on learning activities, collaboration with group members can be a significant motivator for students' engagement. This research is based on the 6E Learning by DeSIGN™ model and explores the impact of incorporating reflective strategies on students' learning performance, motivation, and participation in collaborative STEM learning…

The current research conducted a three-level meta-analysis with a total of 159 journal articles on the other-race bias in facial identification, which had been published between 1969 and 2021. The effect size analysis yielded moderate pooled effect sizes of the other-race bias on face identification--people showed higher hit rates and…

Artificial intelligence is already all around us, and its usage will only increase. Knowing its capabilities is critical. A facial recognition system (FRS) is a tool for law enforcement during suspect searches and when presenting photos to eyewitnesses for identification. However, there are no comparisons between eyewitness and FRS accuracy using…

Trying to learn the names of students is a challenging semester ritual for many professors and graduate students. In support of this endeavor, research suggests that learning students' names promotes greater student participation and engagement (Auster and MacRone 1994; Pearson and Lucas 2011). However, both research and practical pedagogical…

Individual differences in face identification ability range from prosopagnosia to super-recognition. The current study examined whether face identification ability predicts voice identification ability (participants: N = 529). Superior-face-identifiers (exceptional at face memory and matching), superior-face-recognisers (exceptional at face memory…

The diagnostic feature-detection theory (DFT) of eyewitness identification is based on facial information that is diagnostic versus non-diagnostic of suspect guilt. It primarily has been tested by discounting non-diagnostic information at retrieval, typically by surrounding a single suspect showup with good fillers to create a lineup. We tested…

Face matching is the act of deciding whether two facial images depict the same person or different people. The real-world face-matching task of checking photo IDs typically occurs under conditions of image-size disparity: A small picture is compared with a life-size face. We examined the effect of image-size disparity on face-matching accuracy. In…