Hyper-realistic silicone masks provide a viable route to identity fraud. Over the last decade, more than 40 known criminal acts have been committed by perpetrators using this type of disguise. With the increasing availability and bespoke sophistication of these masks, research must now focus on ways to enhance their detection. In this study, we…

Witnesses to crime often experience stress during the witnessed event. However, most laboratory studies examining eyewitness memory do not include a stressful encoding event. Participants (N = 129) completed an experimental stress induction procedure--a modified version of the Trier Social Stress Test. We designed three conditions to manipulate…

This study investigates the Asymmetric Information Management (AIM) technique's ability to detect fraudulent insurance claims submitted online. The AIM instructions inform claimants that, inter alia, more detailed statements are easier to accurately classify as genuine or fabricated. To test this, truth tellers (n = 55) provided an honest…

The current experiment examined the effects of combining two interview techniques on information elicitation and lie detection in multiple interviews. Participants were interviewed online over three weeks. Two-thirds of the participants (n = 114) were presented with the model statement (MS) interview technique in Interview 1 and were asked to…

People have difficulty sighting missing persons, partially because the task requires people's limited cognitive resources. We examined whether empathy increases search behaviors and performance. We manipulated empathy felt toward a formerly (E1) and actively (E2) missing person. We measured willingness to volunteer to search for missing people in…

Lifeguard drowning detection in swimming pools and beach settings is influenced by experience. The current experiment explores the cognitive skills that might underlie this experience effect. Lifeguard and non-lifeguard performance in a domain-free multiple object avoidance (MOA) task and a partially domain-free functional field of view (FFOV)…

In the area of security, human cognition remains essential for face recognition despite advancements in technology. Law enforcement agencies (LEAs) are interested in harnessing these abilities, as recognizing people is a fundamental aspect of their work. We conducted two studies to support integrating human face recognition skills into police…

Previous research has produced mixed results on the question of whether confidence in ad hoc veracity judgments can be used as an indicator of judgment accuracy. These studies have used a variety of measures to analyze the confidence-accuracy relationship; however, they have rarely explicitly addressed why a particular measure was chosen and what…

Research has consistently shown people predominantly rely on undiagnostic nonverbal cues when detecting deceit, whereas verbal cues are more accurate. In three experiments, we investigated whether the simple instruction not to focus on nonverbal cues would make people focus more on diagnostic verbal cues and hence more accurate in detecting lies.…

In a comparable truth baseline (CTB), a knowingly truthful baseline statement is compared to a statement of interest, and deviations in verbal details possibly indicate deceit. In two experiments, we investigated whether a CTB can improve truth/lie discrimination when verbal details are coded by independent raters (Experiment 1) and when judged by…

Nahari, Vrij, and Fischer [(2014b), "Applied Cognitive Psychology," 28, 122-128] found that, when participants were forewarned that their statements would be checked for verifiable details, truth tellers gave much more verifiable details than liars. In this direct replication (n = 72), participants wrote a statement claiming they had…

The "prevalence effect" is a phenomenon whereby target prevalence impacts performance in visual search (e.g., baggage screening) and visual comparison (e.g., face-matching) tasks -- people more often 'miss' infrequent target stimuli. The current study investigated prevalence effects in fingerprint identification -- an important visual…

The current meta-analysis examines the cognitive approach to lie detection. Our goal was to assess the practical utility of this approach by examining whether it improves the lie detection ability of human observers. The cognitive approach to lie detection led to an average accuracy rate of 60.00%, 95% CI [56.42; 63.53] and a bias corrected…

In several applied contexts (e.g., earwitness testimony), the accurate recognition of unfamiliar voices can be a critical part of the person identification process. However, recognising unfamiliar voices is prone to error. While such errors could be reduced by testing the proficiency of listeners, the established tests of unfamiliar voice matching…

Facial examiners make visual comparisons of face images to establish the identities of persons in police investigations. This study utilised eye-tracking and an individual differences approach to investigate whether these experts exhibit specialist viewing behaviours during identification, by comparing facial examiners with forensic fingerprint…