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Journal Article 6.1: Wells, G. L., & Hasel, L. E. (2007, February). Facial composite production by eyewitnesses. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 16(1), 6-10.

Abstract: The creation of facial images by eyewitnesses using composite-production systems can be important for the investigation of crimes when the identity of the perpetrator is at issue. Despite technological advances, research indicates that composite production systems produce poor likenesses of intended faces, even familiar faces. Furthermore, producing a composite appears to harm later recognition performance. Although morphing composites from multiple witnesses helps, likeness is still limited. The problem might stem from a mismatch between how faces are represented in memory (holistically) and how composite systems attempt to retrieve the memories (at the feature level). New methods of face recall involving judgments of whole faces hold greater promise.

Journal Article 6.2: Wells, G. L., Olson, E. A., & Charman, S. D. (2002, October). The confidence of eyewitnesses in their identifications from lineups. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 11(5), 151-154.

Abstract: The confidence that eyewitnesses express in their lineup identifications of criminal suspects has a large impact on criminal proceedings. Many convictions of innocent people can be attributed in large part to confident but mistaken eyewitnesses. Although reasonable correlations between confidence and accuracy can be obtained under certain conditions, confidence is governed by some factors that are unrelated to accuracy. An understanding of these confidence factors helps establish the conditions under which confidence and accuracy are related and leads to important practical recommendations for criminal justice proceedings.