Humans matching fingerprints: Sequence and Size

Television shows like ‘CSI ’ can give the impression that matching crime-scene fingerprints is fully automated. But it is actually humans (fingerprint experts) who ultimately decide whether a crime-scene print belongs to a suspect or not. Despite this fact, there have been no published, peer-reviewed studies directly examining the extent to which experts can correctly match fingerprints to one another. In two experiments presented here we aim to determine the factors affecting accuracy using non-expert participants and test (1) whether the advantage found for the sequential presentation of faces applies to prints and (2) whether the amount of information in a print matters