HUMAN MEMORY AND THE IDENTIFICATION PROCESS

• NCJ Number: 8810
• Author(s): K R Laughery; P K Fessler
• Date Published: 1971
• Length: 76 pages
• Grant Number(s): NI-70-065-PG-15
• Sponsoring Agency: US Dept of Justice; US Dept of Justice NIJ Pub
• Corporate Author: State University of New York at Buffalo
• Sale Source: National Institute of Justice/
• Language: English
• Country: United States of America

Annotation

THE EFFECT OF THREE VARIABLES - TIME DELAY, SIMILARITY IN FACIAL FEATURES, AND CROSS RACIAL IDENTIFICATION - ON THE IDENTIFICATION PROCESS.

Abstract

EXPERIMENTS WERE CONDUCTED TO DETERMINE THE RELATIVE IMPORTANCE OF THE NUMBER OF INTERVENING FACES AND TIME DELAY AS FACTORS IN A FACIAL RECOGNITION TASK, THE EFFECTS OF INTERFERENCE THAT RESULTED FROM VARYING LEVELS OF SIMILARITY BETWEEN THE TARGET SLIDE AND DECOY SLIDES THAT PRECEDED THE TARGET, A STUDY OF THE SIMILARITY IN PHYSICAL CHARACTERISTICS OF PICTURES IN A FILM LIBRARY, AND BLACK AND WHITE SUBJECT IDENTIFICATION OF CAUCASIAN AND NEGRO TARGETS AND DECOYS. THE IMPLICATION OF THIS STUDY ARE THAT SUBJECTS ARE MORE CONFUSED IN ATTEMPTING TO IDENTIFY TARGETS OF A DIFFERENT RACE. THE RESULTS OF THE TIME DELAY AND SIMILARITY EXPERIMENTS INDICATE THAT THE TWO MOST IMPORTANT FACTORS AFFECTING RECOGNITION ARE THE NUMBER OF DECOY PICTURES PRECEEDING THE TARGET PICTURE IN THE SEARCH SEQUENCE, AND THE SIMILARITY BETWEEN THESE DECOYS AND THE TARGET. (AUTHOR ABSTRACT MODIFIED)