on and later use as a cue for recognition.
Unfortunately, hair changes are very easy to achieve
and can be used to avoid eyewitness identification.
Other fairly easy changes that can prove problematic
for eyewitnesses include removing or adding eye-
glasses and growing or shaving off of facial hair.
The degree to which a change in appearance or
disguise is successful in evading later recognition/
identification is determined by the extent of the
change. For example, framed eyeglasses will likely
have a weaker effect than tinted sunglasses; removing
a partial beard will likely be less concealing than
removing a full beard. It has been suggested that eye-
witnesses’ ability for accurate identification declines
because of cue mismatch; that is, a witness’s memory
trace of the target/culprit does not match the person
they are currently examining. This incongruent mem-
ory trace may lead a witness to identify an innocent
person, or they may not identify the culprit.Children
Although it is generally accepted that adults are capa-
ble of encoding faces holistically, less is known about
children’s encoding abilities. Some researchers believe
that children encode faces featurally until approxi-
mately age 10 and then switch to a more holistic
encoding strategy. Most research on children’s facial
recognition abilities has suggested that younger
children are more likely to pay attention to (and thus
encode) specific features of the face. In fact, some
studies find that younger children, 6 to 7 years old, are
better at identifying individual features of a face
(especially the eyes) than older children, aged 9 to 10.
Certain types of changes may be more challenging for
children than for adults, especially if younger children
are relying more on a featural encoding strategy than a
holistic one. When children below 10 years are providing
descriptions of strangers seen for a brief time (e.g.,
2 minutes), often only two or three descriptors are
reported. (It is important to note that although children
may have more descriptors to report, they may not have
the language skills or verbal ability to describe the fea-
tures to report them.) Descriptors provided by children
often pertain to hair characteristics. If hair changed from
the time of encoding to recognition, children may have
difficulty in correctly identifying the stranger’s face.
Research that has examined the influence of
change in appearance on children’s recognition abili-
ties finds that children can be misled when parapher-
nalia is used. For example, a number of facialrecognition studies that initially show children photos
of targets wearing hats and glasses find that children
are likely to misidentify others provided they are
wearing the same paraphernalia worn by the targets.
Moreover, if the target removes the paraphernalia,
children are unlikely to identify the person as some-
one who was previously seen.Identification Procedures
It has been recommended that lineup members, other
than the suspect, be selected by matching the descrip-
tors that eyewitnesses provide in their description of the
culprit. For example, if the witness describes the culprit
as having short, dark hair, medium build, and a fair
complexion, all lineup members should fit this descrip-
tion. The exception to this recommendation occurs
when the suspect does not match one or more descrip-
tors provided by the witness. In such a case, the other
lineup members should match the suspecton the par-
ticular features reported by the eyewitness. The remain-
ing features in the eyewitness’s description should
match all the lineup members. This strategy allows for
some variation among lineup members but also tries to
ensure that the suspect does not stand out. Having the
suspect stand out may lead to wrongful identification.
If a mask or another disguise is used, it may be pos-
sible for the police to construct a lineup for the mask or
disguise. Similar to a person lineup, a lineup for a mask
or disguise would allow the witness to view the sus-
pected item, such as sunglasses, along with other dis-
tractors (e.g., other pairs of sunglasses). Witnesses can
attempt to identify the sunglasses worn by the culprit
during the crime, for example. Alternatively, the sus-
pect and other lineup members may be requested to
wear the disguise or mask for the lineup identification.
The police may choose from a number of lineup
procedures when conducting an identification. In the
simultaneous lineup procedure, the witness looks at
the lineup members all at once. In a sequential lineup,
witnesses look at lineup members one at a time. With
the latter procedure, witnesses are required to make an
identification decision for each lineup member with-
out being able to look at other members. More specif-
ically, witnesses are not able to move forward or
backward in the sequence.
Both the simultaneous and sequential lineup proce-
dures have been tested in laboratory studies when a
culprit has changed appearance following the com-
mission of a crime. Overall, when a culprit changes
appearance (i.e., change in hairstyle, removal of aEyewitness Identification: Effect of Disguises and Appearance Changes——— 289E-Cutler (Encyc)-45463.qxd 11/18/2007 12:42 PM Page 289