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Identification from CCTV: Assessing police super-recogniser ability to spot faces in a crowd and susceptibility to change blindness

Identification from CCTV: Assessing police super-recogniser ability to spot faces in a crowd and susceptibility to change blindness

Davis, Josh P. ORCID: 0000-0003-0017-7159, Forrest, Charlotte, Treml, Felicia and Jansari, Ashok (2018) Identification from CCTV: Assessing police super-recogniser ability to spot faces in a crowd and susceptibility to change blindness. Applied Cognitive Psychology, 32 (3). pp. 337-353. ISSN 0888-4080 (Print), 1099-0720 (Online) (doi:https://doi.org/10.1002/acp.3405)

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Abstract

Police worldwide regularly review CCTV evidence in investigations. This research found 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 recognition ability, and, with higher levels of confidence, outperformed controls at locating actors in a bespoke Spot the Face in a Crowd Test (SFCT). Police were also less susceptible to change blindness errors, and possessed higher levels of conscientiousness, and lower levels of neuroticism and openness. Controls who took part in SFCT actor familiarisation training outperformed untrained controls, suggesting this exercise might enhance identification of persons of interest in real investigations. This research supports an accumulating body of evidence demonstrating that international police forces may benefit from deploying officers with superior face recognition ability to roles such as CCTV review, as these officers may be the most likely to identify persons of interest.

Item Type: Article
Uncontrolled Keywords: Super-recogniser, face recognition, CCTV, face matching, change blindness
Subjects: B Philosophy. Psychology. Religion > BF Psychology
Faculty / School / Research Centre / Research Group: Faculty of Education, Health & Human Sciences
Faculty of Education, Health & Human Sciences > Applied Psychology Research Group
Faculty of Education, Health & Human Sciences > School of Human Sciences (HUM)
Last Modified: 11 Apr 2020 13:54
URI: http://gala.gre.ac.uk/id/eprint/19254

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