Enabling witnesses to actively explore faces and reinstate study-test pose during a lineup increases discriminability.

Accurate witness identification is a cornerstone of police inquiries and national security investigations. However, witnesses can make errors. We experimentally tested whether an interactive lineup, a recently introduced procedure that enables witnesses to dynamically view and explore faces from different angles, improves the rate at which witnesses identify guilty over innocent suspects compared to procedures traditionally used by law enforcement. Participants encoded 12 target faces, either from the front or in profile view, and then attempted to identify the targets from 12 lineups, half of which were target present and the other half target absent. Participants were randomly assigned to a lineup condition: simultaneous interactive, simultaneous photo, or sequential video. In the front-encoding and profile-encoding conditions, Receiver Operating Characteristics analysis indicated that discriminability was higher in interactive compared to both photo and video lineups, demonstrating the benefit of actively exploring the lineup members' faces. Signal-detection modeling suggested interactive lineups increase discriminability because they afford the witness the opportunity to view more diagnostic features such that the nondiagnostic features play a proportionally lesser role. These findings suggest that eyewitness errors can be reduced using interactive lineups because they create retrieval conditions that enable witnesses to actively explore faces and more effectively sample features.

Eyewitness memory in the news can affect the strategic regulation of memory reporting.

The public is increasingly exposed to news about eyewitness memory errors. This study draws from the strategic memory regulation framework [Goldsmith, M., Koriat, A., & Weinberg-Eliezer, A. (2002). Strategic regulation of grain size memory reporting. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 131(1), 73-95. https://doi.org/10.1037/0096-3445.131.1.73] to make predictions about how eyewitness memory reporting is affected by exposure to such reports. In Experiment 1, participants (n = 226) viewed a mock crime, were exposed to a fictitious news report about eyewitness memory accuracy (memory is accurate, memory is inaccurate, or a control condition), and then recalled the mock crime. Participants who read that eyewitness memory is inaccurate were less confident in their memory accuracy and reported less information about the mock crime compared to those in the other conditions. The specificity and accuracy of recall did not vary across conditions, however. In Experiment 2, participants (n = 2,491) watched a mock crime and were asked to identify the perpetrator from a simultaneous lineup. Participants who read that eyewitness memory is inaccurate evaluated their memory for the mock crime as relatively poorer but their lineup decisions did not differ compared to other participants. This suggests that news about eyewitness memory inaccuracy affects how people evaluate their memory capability, and differentially affects memory output depending on the memory task.

Psychological Trait Resilience Within Ecological Systems Theory: The Resilient Systems Scales.

This project describes the development of the Resilient Systems Scales, created to address conceptual and methodological ambiguities in assessing the ecological systems model of resilience. Across a number of samples (total N = 986), our findings suggest that the Resilient Systems Scales show equivalence to a previously reported assessment (Maltby, Day, & Hall, 2015 ) in demonstrating the same factor structure, adequate intercorrelation between the 2 measures of resilience, and equivalent associations with personality and well-being. The findings also suggest that the Resilient Systems Scales demonstrate adequate test-retest reliability, compare well with other extant measures of resilience in predicting well-being, and map, to varying degrees, onto positive expression of several cognitive, social, and emotional traits. The findings suggest that the new measure can be used alongside existing measures of resilience, or singly, to assess positive life outcomes within psychology research.

An experimental examination of alcohol consumption, alcohol expectancy, and self-blame on willingness to report a hypothetical rape.

This study experimentally examined the role of victim alcohol intoxication, and self-blame in perceiving and reporting rape to the police using a hypothetical interactive rape scenario. Participants (N = 79) were randomly assigned to consume alcohol (mean BAC = 0.07%) or tonic water before they engaged in the scenario. Alcohol expectancy was manipulated, and participant beliefs about the beverage they thought they had consumed and their feelings of intoxication were measured. Alcohol consumption and expectancy did not affect the likelihood that the nonconsensual intercourse depicted in the scenario was perceived and would be reported as rape. Participants with higher levels of self-blame were less likely to say they would report the hypothetical rape. Self-blame levels were higher for participants who believed they had consumed alcohol, and were associated with increased feelings of intoxication. The implications are discussed.

Age-related differences in spontaneous trait judgments from facial appearance.

We tested whether there are age-related declines in detecting cues to trustworthiness, a skill that has been demonstrated to be rapid and automatic in younger adults. Young (M age = 21.2 years) and older (M age = 70.15 years) adults made criminal appearance judgments to unfamiliar faces, which were presented at a duration of 100, 500 or 1,000 ms. Participants' response times and judgment confidence were recorded. Older were poorer than young adults at judging trustworthiness at 100 ms, and were slower overall in making their judgments. Further, the cues (i.e. perceptions of anger, trustworthiness and happiness) underlying criminality judgments were the same across age groups. Judgment confidence increased with increasing exposure duration for both age groups, while older adults were less confident in their judgments overall than their young counterparts. The implications are discussed.

Forensic science and the right to access to justice: Testing the efficacy of self-examination intimate DNA swabs to enhance victim-centred responses to sexual violence in low-resource environments.

In developed countries, DNA profiling routinely forms part of the forensic strategy in the investigation of sexual violence. Medical examinations provide opportunities for recovering DNA evidence from intimate swabs, which can be particularly probative in cases where the identity of the perpetrator is unknown and proof of intercourse between two people is required. In low-resource environments, such as developing countries, remote geographic locations, conflict (and post-conflict) affected regions and displaced communities where access to medical examinations is lacking, DNA evidence is not available to support prosecutions and perpetrators are rarely identified and held accountable for crimes of sexual violence. This paper reports the results of a proof-of-concept study testing the efficacy of a novel self-examination intimate swab designed for recovering DNA following unprotected sexual intercourse. The results of this study corroborate previous research which has demonstrated that male DNA profiles can be successfully recovered by post-coital, self-examination methods, and discusses how this novel approach could enable the integration of DNA evidence into victim-centred approaches to investigating and prosecuting sexual violence in low-resource environments. The results and discussion challenge the prevailing assumption that intimate DNA swabs must be collected by trained medical professionals in order to be of evidential value.

Alcohol and remembering a hypothetical sexual assault: Can people who were under the influence of alcohol during the event provide accurate testimony?

We examined the influence of alcohol on remembering an interactive hypothetical sexual assault scenario in the laboratory using a balanced placebo design. Female participants completed a memory test 24 hours and 4 months later. Participants reported less information (i.e., responded "don't know" more often to questions) if they were under the influence of alcohol during scenario encoding. The accuracy of the information intoxicated participants reported did not differ compared to sober participants, however, suggesting intoxicated participants were effectively monitoring the accuracy of their memory at test. Additionally, peripheral details were remembered less accurately than central details, regardless of the intoxication level; and memory accuracy for peripheral details decreased by a larger amount compared to central details across the retention interval. Finally, participants were more accurate if they were told they were drinking alcohol rather than a placebo. We discuss theoretical implications for alcohol myopia and memory regulation, together with applied implications for interviewing intoxicated witnesses.

Configural and component processing in simultaneous and sequential lineup procedures.

Configural processing supports accurate face recognition, yet it has never been examined within the context of criminal identification lineups. We tested, using the inversion paradigm, the role of configural processing in lineups. Recent research has found that face discrimination accuracy in lineups is better in a simultaneous compared to a sequential lineup procedure. Therefore, we compared configural processing in simultaneous and sequential lineups to examine whether there are differences. We had participants view a crime video, and then they attempted to identify the perpetrator from a simultaneous or sequential lineup. The test faces were presented either upright or inverted, as previous research has shown that inverting test faces disrupts configural processing. The size of the inversion effect for faces was the same across lineup procedures, indicating that configural processing underlies face recognition in both procedures. Discrimination accuracy was comparable across lineup procedures in both the upright and inversion condition. Theoretical implications of the results are discussed.

The impact of beliefs about face recognition ability on memory retrieval processes in young and older adults.

This study examined whether beliefs about face recognition ability differentially influence memory retrieval in older compared to young adults. Participants evaluated their ability to recognise faces and were also given information about their ability to perceive and recognise faces. The information was ostensibly based on an objective measure of their ability, but in actuality, participants had been randomly assigned the information they received (high ability, low ability or no information control). Following this information, face recognition accuracy for a set of previously studied faces was measured using a remember-know memory paradigm. Older adults rated their ability to recognise faces as poorer compared to young adults. Additionally, negative information about face recognition ability improved only older adults' ability to recognise a previously seen face. Older adults were also found to engage in more familiarity than item-specific processing than young adults, but information about their face recognition ability did not affect face processing style. The role that older adults' memory beliefs have in the meta-cognitive strategies they employ is discussed.

Receiver operating characteristic analysis of age-related changes in lineup performance.

In the basic face memory literature, support has been found for the late maturation hypothesis, which holds that face recognition ability is not fully developed until at least adolescence. Support for the late maturation hypothesis in the criminal lineup identification literature, however, has been equivocal because of the analytic approach that has been used to examine age-related changes in identification performance. Recently, receiver operator characteristic (ROC) analysis was applied for the first time in the adult eyewitness memory literature to examine whether memory sensitivity differs across different types of lineup tests. ROC analysis allows for the separation of memory sensitivity from response bias in the analysis of recognition data. Here, we have made the first ROC-based comparison of adults' and children's (5- and 6-year-olds and 9- and 10-year-olds) memory performance on lineups by reanalyzing data from Humphries, Holliday, and Flowe (2012). In line with the late maturation hypothesis, memory sensitivity was significantly greater for adults compared with young children. Memory sensitivity for older children was similar to that for adults. The results indicate that the late maturation hypothesis can be generalized to account for age-related performance differences on an eyewitness memory task. The implications for developmental eyewitness memory research are discussed.

Selecting fillers on emotional appearance improves lineup identification accuracy.

Mock witnesses sometimes report using criminal stereotypes to identify a face from a lineup, a tendency known as criminal face bias. Faces are perceived as criminal-looking if they appear angry. We tested whether matching the emotional appearance of the fillers to an angry suspect can reduce criminal face bias. In Study 1, mock witnesses (n = 226) viewed lineups in which the suspect had an angry, happy, or neutral expression, and we varied whether the fillers matched the expression. An additional group of participants (n = 59) rated the faces on criminal and emotional appearance. As predicted, mock witnesses tended to identify suspects who appeared angrier and more criminal-looking than the fillers. This tendency was reduced when the lineup fillers matched the emotional appearance of the suspect. Study 2 extended the results, testing whether the emotional appearance of the suspect and fillers affects recognition memory. Participants (n = 1,983) studied faces and took a lineup test in which the emotional appearance of the target and fillers was varied between subjects. Discrimination accuracy was enhanced when the fillers matched an angry target's emotional appearance. We conclude that lineup member emotional appearance plays a critical role in the psychology of lineup identification. The fillers should match an angry suspect's emotional appearance to improve lineup identification accuracy.

A Systematic Review of Criminal Justice Initiatives to Strengthen the Criminal Investigation and Prosecution of Sexual Violence in East Africa.

Sexual violence (SV) is a widespread public health and human rights problem, with countries in East Africa having higher rates than the global average. Prosecutions of SV in East Africa are rare, and survivors face many challenges accessing medico-legal justice and services. Developing initiatives that support survivors in navigating the criminal justice system is vital, yet there is limited research on efforts to improve the criminal justice system's management and treatment of survivors. We conducted a scoping review of research on initiatives to strengthen responses toward investigating and prosecuting cases. We identified 25 academic articles and reports through a search of electronic databases and gray literature that address these initiatives in East Africa. The results reveal that seven types of initiatives have been studied: one-stop centers (OSCs), multisectoral referral networks, gender desks, community interventions, mobile applications, and specialized police and prosecution units. Upon review, we found that barriers to success include a lack of resources and facilities, a lack of trained health care, police, and judicial personnel to perform services, weak medico-legal partnerships, and stigma and impunity restricting the uptake and fair distribution of services. Overall, limited systematic evidence on the effectiveness and adaptability of initiatives exists, showing that SV interventions in East Africa remain an under-researched and under-resourced area, and need greater scientific rigor to inform practice and coordinated advocacy. This review is a call to action for policy makers and service providers working in East Africa-and for international bodies working toward achieving Sustainable Development Goals 5-to improve criminal justice initiatives.

Intoxicated witnesses and suspects: an archival analysis of their involvement in criminal case processing.

Research about intoxicated witnesses and criminal suspects is surprisingly limited, considering the police believe that they are quite ubiquitous. In the present study, we assessed the involvement of intoxicated witnesses and suspects in the investigation of rape, robbery, and assault crimes by analyzing cases that were referred by the police to a prosecutor's office. Results indicated that intoxicated witnesses and suspects played an appreciable role in criminal investigations: Intoxicated witnesses were just as likely as sober ones to provide a description of the culprit and to take an identification test, suggesting criminal investigators treat intoxicated and sober witnesses similarly. Moreover, intoxicated suspects typically admitted to the police that they had consumed alcohol and/or drugs, and they were usually arrested on the same day as the crime. This archival analysis highlights the many ways in which alcohol impacts testimony during criminal investigations and underscores the need for additional research to investigate best practices for obtaining testimony from intoxicated witnesses and suspects.

Does presenting perpetrator and innocent suspect faces from different facial angles influence the susceptibility of eyewitness memory? An investigation into the misinformation effect and eyewitness misidentification.

Introduction: This study investigated the effects of face angle congruency across stages of a misinformation paradigm on lineup discrimination accuracy. Methods: In a between-subjects design, participants viewed a mock crime with the perpetrator's face from the front or profile angle. They then read a news report featuring an innocent suspect's image from the same or different angle as the perpetrator had been shown. A subsequent lineup manipulated perpetrator presence and viewing angle of the lineup members, who were all shown either from the front or in profile. Results: No significant difference emerged in identification errors based on angle congruency between stages. However, accuracy was higher when faces were shown from the front angle, both during the initial event and the lineup, compared to the profile angle. Discussion: The results of this research underscore the importance of considering viewing angles in the construction of lineups.

Impact evaluation and economic benefit analysis of a domestic violence and abuse UK police intervention.

This study evaluated the impact and economic benefit of Cautioning and Relationship Abuse (CARA), an intervention which aims to reduce re-offending of first-time low-level domestic violence and abuse perpetrators. The analysis was based on two samples drawn from separate UK police force areas. CARA's impact was assessed using a matched sample of similar offenders from a time when CARA was not available. The matching was based on a host of offender and victim characteristics and machine learning methods were employed. The results show that the CARA intervention has a significant impact on the amount of recidivism but no significant reduction in the severity of the crimes. The benefit-cost ratio in both police force areas is greater than one and estimated to be 2.75 and 11.1, respectively, across the two police force areas. Thus, for each pound (£) invested in CARA, there is an economic benefit of 2.75-11.1 pounds, annually.

A critical analysis of gender-based violence reporting and evidence building applications (GBVxTech) for capturing memory reports.

Introduction: Gender-based violence (GBV) is under-reported to the authorities owing to the stigma, shame, and fear of reprisal that surrounds these crimes. To address this, there has been an influx of technologies, including mobile phone and online applications that allow victim-survivors (hereafter, victims) to document and report GBV (hereafter referred to as GBVxTech). We critically analysed the extent to which GBVxTech applications align with the scientific knowledge base on gathering accounts of crimes from victims and witnesses. Methods: We identified 41 reporting and evidence building applications from around the world but found many (n = 19) were no longer accessible. A total of 13 applications met the study criteria and were available for download. We evaluated each application on how well its design and features align with established minimum best practice standards for gathering complete and accurate accounts from witnesses and victims, such as the pre-interview instructions (e.g., setting ground rules), questioning approach (e.g., using open-ended questions), and the adequacy of security features (e.g., password protection). Results and Discussion: We found most applications employ open questions, encourage victims to report information in an independent voice, and seek to elicit information pertinent to a criminal investigation. None of the applications use leading questions. However, most applications do not establish ground rules, and many use forced-choice questions, do not time stamp the information gathered, or document when users change their answers. Many applications have limited security features, potentially compromising users' safety. Further, some applications do not provide information about how to use the app, an informed consent procedure, or data usage information. We discuss the findings and offer recommendations for future GBVxTech development.

The effects of computerised metacognitive cognitive bias modification training on the development of adaptive metacognitive beliefs and post-traumatic stress disorder symptoms.

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES: Maladaptive metacognitive beliefs are associated with the development of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) symptoms following trauma, however it remains unclear whether training people to adopt healthy metacognitive beliefs helps to protect against the development of PTSD symptoms. We developed and tested a new cognitive bias modification training protocol (CBMMetacog) that aimed to prevent analogue PTSD by training people to adopt healthy metacognitive beliefs prior to watching a distressing film. METHODS: Participants (N = 135) received CBMMetacog or a control CBM training and then watched a trauma film. We assessed participants' metacognitive appraisal style/beliefs, analogue PTSD symptoms, including intrusions and meta-awareness of their intrusions. RESULTS: CBMMetacog led participants to adopt healthier metacognitive beliefs relative to the control training. Importantly, CBMMetacog participants reported fewer film intrusions over a 7-day period compared to the control group. CBMMetacog did not increase participants' meta-awareness of their intrusions. LIMITATIONS: As this was the first study to manipulate metacognitive beliefs related to an analogue trauma via CBM, we chose to use a healthy participant sample. Therefore, further research is needed before these results can be generalised to clinical samples. CONCLUSIONS: Overall, these results suggest that training people to adopt healthy metacognitive beliefs, prior to trauma exposure, may help reduce vulnerability to PTSD.

Acute alcohol intoxication and alcohol expectancy effects on women's memory for consensual and non-consensual sexual activity.

Objective: To test whether acute alcohol intoxication and alcohol expectancy affects how accurately women remember consensual and non-consensual sexual activity that occurred during an interactive hypothetical dating scenario. Design: A balanced placebo randomized study that varied alcohol dose (mean Breath Alcohol Content; BrAC = 0.06%) and alcohol expectancy prior to participants encoding a hypothetical interactive rape scenario was implemented. Participants could elect to consent to sexual activity with a male partner in the hypothetical scenario. If they stopped consenting, non-consensual sexual intercourse (i.e., rape) was described. Seven days later, participants' memory for consensual and non-consensual sexual activity in the scenario was tested. Main outcome measures: Memory accuracy, confidence, and feelings of intoxication. Results: A total of 90 females (M age = 20.5, SD = 2.2) were tested regarding their memory accuracy for the consensual and non-consensual sexual activities in the scenario. A multi-level logistic regression predicting memory accuracy for the perpetrator's behaviors during the rape indicated no effect of alcohol intoxication. However, a main effect of alcohol expectancy was found, whereby participants who expected to consume alcohol, compared to those who did not, recalled the perpetrator's behaviors during the rape more accurately. A second regression predicting memory accuracy for consensual sexual activity found no main effects for alcohol intoxication or alcohol expectancy. Participants recalled consensual sexual activity with a high degree of accuracy. Calibration analyses indicated that accuracy increased with confidence level, regardless of intoxication level or alcohol expectancy condition, but that women tended to be overconfident in general. Conclusion: This study provides an important test of how accurately women remember consensual and non-consensual sexual activities. The accuracy of this information is important for forensic medical examinations and police investigations following an allegation of sexual assault. Increased memory accuracy was found for offence details when participants expected to consume alcohol, suggesting there may be important differences in attentional processes (e.g., hypervigilance) depending on whether threat is present. Further research is necessary to investigate memory for sexual violence in real-world settings and to test methods for ascertaining the most complete and reliable accounts.

Government responses to gender-based violence during COVID-19.

Gender-based violence (GBV) significantly and substantially threatens women's health. The COVID-19 pandemic has exacerbated existing risks and patterns of GBV. The impact of COVID-19 on GBV is not inevitable, however, and can be mediated by the policies of governments. In this study we developed the Government GBV Response Index to systematically examine how countries (N = 60) performed in response to the pandemic with respect to the government 1) enacting specific national-level GBV policy; 2) making dedicated COVID-19 specific funding available; and 3) adapting existing GBV responses to COVID-19 related restrictions and challenges. Most countries (N = 33) delivered fewer than two policy responses. We also performed rapid case study analyses to investigate what might contribute to countries having more comprehensive government policy. We find that civil society organizations played a key role in facilitating GBV policy during the pandemic, especially if they are well-funded and well-connected to the government, and if the country has a high-level government official responsible for gender issues.