Abstract
People with intellectual disabilities (ID) are as likely as the general population to find themselves in the situation of having to identify and/or describe a perpetrator's face to the police. However, limited verbal and memory abilities in people with ID might prevent them to engage in standard police procedures.
Two experiments examined face recognition and description abilities in people with mild intellectual disabilities (mID) and compared their performance with that of people without ID. Experiment 1 used three old/new face recognition tasks. Experiment 2 consisted of two face description tasks, during which participants had to verbally describe faces from memory and with the target in view.
Participants with mID performed significantly poorer on both recognition and recall tasks than control participants. However, their group performance was better than chance and they showed variability in performance depending on the measures introduced.
The practical implications of these findings in forensic settings are discussed.
Original language | English |
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Pages (from-to) | 435-446 |
Number of pages | 12 |
Journal | Journal of Applied Research in Intellectual Disabilities |
Volume | 26 |
Issue number | 5 |
Early online date | 8 Aug 2013 |
DOIs | |
Publication status | Published - Sep 2013 |
Keywords
- Eyewitness
- Face description
- Face recognition
- Intellectual disability
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Dive into the research topics of 'Face recognition and description abilities in people with mild intellectual disabilities'. Together they form a unique fingerprint.Student Theses
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The construction of facial composites by witnesses with mild learning disabilities
Author: Gawrylowicz, J., Oct 2010Supervisor: Carson, D. (Supervisor) & Gabbert, F. (Supervisor)
Student thesis: Doctoral Thesis
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