RESEARCH PROJECTS & FUNDING
Key Funding
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BA research grant "Facial recognition in the criminal justice system" £33k
with Kun Guo & Robin Kramer (Lincoln psychology), David White & Kristy Martire (UNSW psychology), Mehera San Roque & Gary Edmond (UNSW law)
Facial
Recognition
Technology
Facial recognition technology in the criminal justice system
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The project: This project aims to understand the public’s views on the use of facial recognition technology in the criminal justice system, and provide evidence and recommendations for improving these technologies with non-White faces.
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Biased tech: A lot of these systems are trained on White faces, and so may be good at identifying White people, but less accurate with non-White faces.
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The Metropolitan Police’s use of facial recognition technology has misidentified people in 98% of cases of its use. This statistic is particularly important when considering the use of such systems at events such as the Notting Hill Carnival, with a high percentage of BME attendees.
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What we’re doing about it: We are carrying out focus groups in the UK, Australia and China, and will survey participants in these countries as well as India and the USA. We will understand the experiences and opinions of people of different ethnicities in different countries. Read the paper here.
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We will also build and test a face recognition system trained on different numbers of White and non-White faces.
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Key Publications
Ritchie et al (2021). Cognition.
Noyes et al (2021). Royal Society Open Science.
Ritchie et al (2018). Cognition.
Ritchie & Burton (2017). QJEP.
Ritchie et al. (2015). Cognition.
Article for The Conversation on face recognition technology
Key Funding
University of Guelph-Humber research fund (ALR Sandford PI, KL Ritchie Co-I) CAD $6,507
University of Lincoln CoSS research fund (KL Ritchie PI, ALR Sandford Co-I) £2,978
EPS grant (KL Ritchie PI, R Fitzgerald Co-I) £3,500
Face Recognition
Human and computer face recognition
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We know that humans are very good at recognising people we know, but we are much poorer at recognising people who are unfamiliar to us. My work investigates how we become familiar with new people, and how we can improve our ability to recognise new people. This is particularly important for photo-ID and the people whose job it is to check photo-ID. They are unfamiliar with the person, and must decide whether the photo-ID presented to them pictures the person who is presenting it.
I am currently extending my work on face recognition to include police line-up images with Ryan Fitzgerald at SFU, Canada.
Perception of social traits from faces
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Faces convey more information than identity, emotion, sex, and race. We can also make reliable decisions about social traits such as how attractive or trustworthy someone is from their face. My work in this area looks at how different images of the same person can give rise to different social impressions - one image of you may look more attractive than another.
I have investigated the automaticity of the formation of attractiveness from face images with Gillian Rhodes and Romina Palermo in Perth, Australia. I am also investigating attractiveness judgements for dating website images with Chris Watkins (Abertay, UK) and Clare Sutherland (UWA, Australia).
Social
Traits
Key Publications
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Ritchie et al. (2017). Scientific Reports.
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Key Funding
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Australian government 'Endeavour Research Fellowship' (PI) AUD$21,216
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Attention
&
Awareness
Attention and awareness: familiar and unfamiliar faces
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There is some research which suggests that personally familiar faces have preferential access to our visual awareness compared to unfamiliar faces. A project I am running with Katie Gray (Reading, UK) investigates this further using different techniques such as binocular rivalry and continuous flash suppression.
Key Publications
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Ritchie et al. (2014). Perception.
Ritchie et al (2013). Vision Research.
Ritchie et al (2012). Perception.
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Key Funding
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University of Lincoln College of Social Sciences research funding (PI) - £4,510
UROS undergraduate summer studentship - £1,000
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Key Funding
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ESRC Festival of Social Sciences event funding for "The Community Lab", Skegness Aquarium - £997
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University of York funds for Psych!York (with James Strachan and Charlotte Murphy) ~ £750
Public
Engagement
Public engagement and science communication
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I am currently heading up the University of Lincoln's Pint of Science team. In 2019 the team won a commendation in the Vice Chancellor's Public Engagement with Research award (team).
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I have given public talks, run interactive demonstrations of research, and written science articles for public consumption. In 2017 I ran the ESRC-funded event "The Community Lab", and took part in LiGHTS in Lincoln.
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In 2019 I won the Vice Chancellor's Public Engagement with Research award (individual staff), and in 2018 I won a commendation for this award.