Witness artistic rendition and its impacts on visual memory for forensic facial composite creation

Davidson, CI ORCID: 0009-0002-4390-0378, Frowd, CD and Houlton, TMR (2025) Witness artistic rendition and its impacts on visual memory for forensic facial composite creation. Journal of Forensic Practice. ISSN 2050-8794

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Abstract

In the absence of photographic or other identifying evidence, composites provide crucial intelligence in police investigations, though their accuracy depends on a witness’s facial memory and recall. The purpose of this study is to investigate a novel technique aimed at increasing face recall and composite effectiveness. In this study, participants viewed a facial photograph, recalled the face using a cognitive interview and created a composite with a forensic artist. One group of participants (control) who worked with an artist, the usual procedure, were compared with another group (experimental) who sketched the face themselves prior to the cognitive interview. Witness memory was then measured by assessing the number of “units of information” produced during free recall of the face, as well as the identifiability of the composites, evaluated by an additional group of participants who attempted to name the sketched composites. Results showed, relative to the control group, that the experimental witness group provided more detailed descriptions of the face and that this improvement to memory led to the creation of more identifiable composites. Therefore, the findings suggest that this artistic rendition technique enhances both the cognitive interview and the accuracy of forensic facial composites. It was also found that participants’ self-rated measures of drawing and observant behaviour were positively related to the accuracy of the participants’ composites. This simple technique could be implemented by police forces with minimal effort and impact on budget. It presents a straightforward and cost-efficient way to increase the identifiability of composite images without the need for additional lengthy training for forensic practitioners. Results suggest that the witness artistic rendition technique represents a novel, low-cost and simple method that could be used to increase composite accuracy.

Item Type:	Article
Additional Information:	This author accepted manuscript is deposited under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-commercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC) licence. This means that anyone may distribute, adapt, and build upon the work for non-commercial purposes, subject to full attribution. If you wish to use this manuscript for commercial purposes, please contact permissions@emerald.com
Uncontrolled Keywords:	forensic art; facial identification; forensic psychology; forensic sketch; police sketch; facial composite; composite sketch; cognitive interview; facial memory; memory recall; face recognition
Subjects:	N Fine Arts > N Visual arts (General) For photography, see TR H Social Sciences > HV Social pathology. Social and public welfare. Criminology > HV7231 Criminal Justice Administrations > HV7551 Police. Detectives. Constabulary
Divisions:	Art and Design
Publisher:	Emerald
Date of acceptance:	27 May 2025
Date of first compliant Open Access:	1 July 2025
Date Deposited:	01 Jul 2025 13:01
Last Modified:	03 Jul 2025 12:45
DOI or ID number:	10.1108/JFP-03-2025-0026
URI:	https://researchonline.ljmu.ac.uk/id/eprint/26677

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