Alicia Nortje

• University of Cape Town

Identification parades are essential when obtaining evidence of identity from eyewitnesses. Eyewitnesses are shown a line of people containing the suspect(s) and innocent fillers, and witnesses are asked to point out the perpetrator(s) of the crime, noting that the perpetrator(s) might not be present. Corporeal (‘live’) parades are required in Sout...

Facial identification evidence obtained from eyewitnesses, such as person descriptions and facial composites, plays a fundamental role in criminal investigations and is regularly regarded as valuable evidence for apprehending and prosecuting perpetrators. However, the reliability of such facial identification information is often queried. Person de...

Face recognition is biased in favour of in-group identity, particularly strongly for race or ethnicity but to some extent also for sex and age. This ‘own group bias’ (OGB) can have profound implications in practical settings, with incorrect identification of black suspects by white witnesses constituting 40% of criminal exonerations investigated by...

Identifying a suspect is critical for successful criminal investigations. Research focused on two decision processes during lineup identification, namely ‘automatic recognition’ and ‘elimination’ strategy, and their relation to identification accuracy. In this article, we report two experiments conducted in France and South Africa, which further ex...

Objectives We conducted a meta-analysis to assess whether the construction of facial composites affects witnesses’ lineup identification decisions.Methods We located 23 studies (56 effects, 2276 participants). We consider effects of constructing composites on (a) correct identifications, and (b) incorrect identifications, from target-present lineup...

Eyewitnesses often create face likenesses, which are published in the hope that potential suspects will be reported to the police. Witnesses exposed to another witness's composite, however, may be positively or negatively influenced by such composites.. A good likeness may facilitate identification, but a bad likeness that resembles an innocent sus...

The task of discerning truth from untruth has long interested psychologists; however, methods for doing so accurately remain elusive. In this article, we provide an overview and evaluation of methods of detecting deception used in the laboratory and the field. We identify and discuss three broad approaches to detecting deception: measurement of non...

Most research on eyewitness memory has focused on single-perpetrator crimes. However, crimes to which eyewitnesses may bear testimony are often committed by groups of perpetrators. A consequence of researching only single-perpetrator crimes is that we know very little about how set size (i.e., the number of faces) at encoding impacts recognition pe...

Eye-closure improves event recall. We investigated whether eye-closure can also facilitate subsequent performance on lineup identification (Experiment 1) and face recognition tasks (Experiment 2). In Experiment 1, participants viewed a theft, recalled the event with eyes open or closed, mentally rehearsed the perpetrator's face with eyes open or cl...

Laboratory research shows that eye-closure during memory retrieval improves both the amount and the factual accuracy of memory reports about witnessed events. Based on these findings, we developed the Eye-Closure Interview, and examined its feasibility (in terms of compliance with the instructions) and effectiveness (in terms of the quantity and qu...

The transfer-inappropriate processing shift is one explanation for the verbal overshadowing effect: a phenomenon that prevents accurate face recognition following a verbal description of that same face. Rather than examining a shift from configural to featural processing, this experiment investigated whether a shift from automatic to controlled pro...