1. 3rd International Conference on Missing Children and Adults
Know Your Audience: Targeting Public Beliefs about Forensic Age Progressions
James Michael Lampinen Charlie Frowd William Blake Erickson Gregory Mahoney
3rd International Conference on Missing Children and Adults
2017
Some of the research reported in this talk was funded by grant # from the National Science Foundation, Law and Social Sciences Program. Opinions expressed are entirely those of the presenter.

2. Missing Children 8 million cases / year world wide
U.S ,000 cases / year
U.K ,000 cases / year
Germany 100,000 cases / year
Canada 50,000 cases / year
Mexico 45,000 cases / year
Brazil, 40,000 cases / year
France 39,000 cases / year
Spain 20,000 cases /year

3. Background
In most cases, when a child goes missing, she/he is recovered relatively quickly
In an important subset of cases, however, a child may go missing and remain missing for years
Archival Analysis of Missing Persons Cases Listed with the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC) in the United States

4. Background
This complicates recovery efforts, because a child’s appearance changes as they get older
Forensic age progression is one technique that is sometimes used in an attempt to deal with this problem

5. Proportion of posters including age progressions in
Archival study of posters on NCMEC website

6. How Age Progressions Are Made
Growth trends
Forensic artists receive training in typical growth patterns as applied to human face
Artists take last known picture of child and apply those growth patterns to child’s image

7. How Age Progressions Are Made
Family Resemblance
Forensic artists obtain reference photographs of biological relatives of the missing child on the assumption that people in the same family may appear similar in appearance
May incorporate specific features from relatives, or may use family photographs to get a better estimate of growth patterns

8. Research on Forensic Age Progression
Dad (AGE 12) ? +
BT’s Projected
Appearance
Age 12
BT at Age 7
Mom (AGE 12)
Lampinen, J., Miller, J. T., & Dehon, H. (2012). Depicting the missing: Prospective and retrospective person memory for age progressed images. Applied Cognitive Psychology, 26,
Lampinen, J., Arnal, J. D., Adams, J., Courtney, K., & Hicks, J. L. (2012). Forensic age progression and the search for missing children. Psychology, Crime & Law, 18,
Sister (AGE 12)

9. Dad (AGE 12) + BT’s Projected Appearance BT at Age 7 Mom (AGE 12)
Lampinen, J., Miller, J. T., & Dehon, H. (2012). Depicting the missing: Prospective and retrospective person memory for age progressed images. Applied Cognitive Psychology, 26,
Lampinen, J., Arnal, J. D., Adams, J., Courtney, K., & Hicks, J. L. (2012). Forensic age progression and the search for missing children. Psychology, Crime & Law, 18,
Sister (AGE 12)

10. Dad (AGE 12) + BT’s Actual Appearance Age 12 BT’s Projected Appearance
BT at Age 7
Mom (AGE 12)
Lampinen, J., Miller, J. T., & Dehon, H. (2012). Depicting the missing: Prospective and retrospective person memory for age progressed images. Applied Cognitive Psychology, 26,
Lampinen, J., Arnal, J. D., Adams, J., Courtney, K., & Hicks, J. L. (2012). Forensic age progression and the search for missing children. Psychology, Crime & Law, 18,
Sister (AGE 12)

11. Prospective Person Memory Based on Age Progressed Images
Lampinen, J., Miller, J. T., & Dehon, H. (2012). Depicting the missing: Prospective and retrospective person memory for age progressed images. Applied Cognitive Psychology, 26,
Lampinen, J., Arnal, J. D., Adams, J., Courtney, K., & Hicks, J. L. (2012). Forensic age progression and the search for missing children. Psychology, Crime & Law, 18,

12. Retrospective Person Memory Based on Age Progressed Images
Lampinen, J., Miller, J. T., & Dehon, H. (2012). Depicting the missing: Prospective and retrospective person memory for age progressed images. Applied Cognitive Psychology, 26,

13. Perceptual Matching Task
Charman, S. D., & Carol, R. N. (2012). Age-progressed images may harm recognition of missing children by increasing the number of plausible targets. Journal of Applied Research in Memory and Cognition, 1(3),

14. Similarity of Age Progressions to Target and Foil Images
How similar is the image on the left to the person on the right?
1 = extremely dissimilar
2 = moderately dissimilar
3 = somewhat dissimilar
4 = neither similar nor dissimilar
5 = somewhat similar
6 = moderately similar
7 = extremely similar
How similar is the image on the left to the person on the right?
1 = extremely dissimilar
2 = moderately dissimilar
3 = somewhat dissimilar
4 = neither similar nor dissimilar
5 = somewhat similar
6 = moderately similar
7 = extremely similar

15. Similarity of Age Progressions to Targets and Foils

16. 12-20 Age Progressions
12-20 Age Range

17. 5-20 Age Progressions

18. Consistency of Age Progressions Produced by Different Forensic Artists
Erickson, W. B., Lampinen, J. M., Frowd, C. D., & Mahoney, G. (2016). When age-progressed images are unreliable: The roles of external features and age range. Science & Justice.

21. Improving recognition from age progressions
1. Age progressions produced by highly qualified forensic artists produce about chance recognition and similarity ratings
2. However, recognition and similarity is often not high in absolute terms, and age progressions often don’t outperform outdated images
3. Most attempts to improve recognition from age progressions involves increasing the physical correspondence between the age progression and the target
4. A complimentary approach would be to work to improve witness’s ability to note similarities between age progressions and targets
A. Witnesses may assume that correspondence between age progression and target should be spot on
B. Teaching witnesses that age progressions are estimates of appearance may allow perceptual system to better compensate for differences and note similarities

22. Method Obtained childhood and family photos from eight adults
Picture of volunteer at age 12 years
Pictures of biological parents at age 12 years and approximately 20 years
Highly experienced forensic artists, who specialize in producing age progressions, age progressed images to age 20
438 participants recruited through Mechanical Turk
Study phase
Study 8 outdated images
Outdated
Age Progressed
Instructions
Standard
Augmented
Test
16 photos of adults at approximately 20 years old
8 targets
8 Foils

23. Augmented Instructions

25. Discussion
Providing cautionary instructions about the nature of age progression, as well as an example, significantly increased recognition based on age progressions
Unanswered questions
Optimal instructions
Importance of example images
Timing/repetition
Even with instructions, age progressions did not outperform outdated images. So work remains to be done, but instruction manipulations in conjunction with better methods for producing age progressions may result in optimal outcomes.

26. Thank You and Questions
Contact:
Jim Lampinen
Blake Erickson
Charlie Frowd
Gregory Mahoney