The mental health and wellbeing of spouses, partners and children of emergency responders: A systematic review.

Emergency responders (ERs), often termed First Responders, such as police, fire and paramedic roles are exposed to occupational stressors including high workload, and exposure to trauma from critical incidents, both of which can affect their mental health and wellbeing. Little is known about the impact of the ER occupation on the mental health and wellbeing of their families. The aim of the current study was to investigate what mental health and wellbeing outcomes and experiences have been researched internationally in ER families, and to examine the prevalence and associated risk and protective factors of these outcomes.

An international survey of applied face-matching training courses.

Face matching decisions in applied settings are typically carried out by trained face-matching professionals, known as facial reviewers and facial examiners. Recent research has demonstrated that short professional face-matching training courses are limited in improving face-matching accuracy, however, despite the existence of high-level training guidelines produced by the practitioner community the content, duration and delivery of training for facial reviewers and facial examiners are not widely understood in the academic research community. The current study aimed to address this gap in the scientific literature to better understand how different agencies train facial reviewers and facial examiners, using results collected from an international survey.

Digital Detectives: Websleuthing Reduces Eyewitness Identification Accuracy in Police Lineups.

Eyewitnesses to crimes sometimes search for a culprit on social media before viewing a police lineup, but it is not known whether this affects subsequent lineup identification accuracy. The present online study was conducted to address this. Two hundred and eighty-five participants viewed a mock crime video, and after a 15-20 min delay either (i) viewed a mock social media site including the culprit, (ii) viewed a mock social media site including a lookalike, or (iii) completed a filler task.

Advances in Facial Composite Technology, Utilizing Holistic Construction, Do Not Lead to an Increase in Eyewitness Misidentifications Compared to Older Feature-Based Systems.

An eyewitness can contribute to a police investigation both by creating a composite image of the face of the perpetrator and by attempting to identify them during an identification procedure. This raises the potential issue that creating a composite of a perpetrator might then interfere with the subsequent identification of that perpetrator. Previous research exploring this issue has tended to use older feature-based composite systems, but the introduction of new holistic composite systems is an important development as they were designed to be a better match for human cognition and are likely to interact with memory in a different way.

A task- and role-based perspective on super-recognizers: Commentary on 'Super-recognizers: From the lab to the world and back again'.

This article provides a commentary on recent work by Ramon et al. (2019, British Journal of Psychology) on super-recognizers. The commentary advocates a task- and role-based approach to SR research and greater collaboration between researchers and the applied community.

Entitlement to Tell on Police Facebook Sites.

Despite the increased use of social media by the police, little qualitative exploration has been carried out regarding how online spaces such as Facebook might be important sites for Police Force identity. This study qualitatively analyzes a popular story told on the official Facebook site of a rural police force. It analyzes the story which is co-created by both the police and the public, and looks at how identity is created for the police through this online activity.

A Mobile App Delivering a Gamified Battery of Cognitive Tests Designed for Repeated Play (OU Brainwave): App Design and Cohort Study.

Background: Mobile phone and tablet apps are an increasingly common platform for collecting data. A key challenge for researchers has been participant "buy-in" and attrition for designs requiring repeated testing.

Objective: The objective of this study was to develop and assess the utility of 1-2 minute versions of both classic and novel cognitive tasks using a user-focused and user-driven mobile phone and tablet app designed to encourage repeated play.

Circling Around the Uncanny Valley: Design Principles for Research Into the Relation Between Human Likeness and Eeriness.

The uncanny valley effect (UVE) is a negative emotional response experienced when encountering entities that appear almost human. Research on the UVE typically investigates individual, or collections of, near human entities but may be prone to methodological circularity unless the properties that give rise to the emotional response are appropriately defined and quantified. In addition, many studies do not sufficiently control the variation in human likeness portrayed in stimulus images, meaning that the nature of stimuli that elicit the UVE is also not well defined or quantified.

Can rapid integrated polymerase chain reaction-based diagnostics for gastrointestinal pathogens improve routine hospital infection control practice? A diagnostic study.

Background: Every year approximately 5000-9000 patients are admitted to a hospital with diarrhoea, which in up to 90% of cases has a non-infectious cause. As a result, single rooms are 'blocked' by patients with non-infectious diarrhoea, while patients with infectious diarrhoea are still in open bays because of a lack of free side rooms. A rapid test for differentiating infectious from non-infectious diarrhoea could be very beneficial for patients.

Exploring the Williams syndrome face-processing debate: the importance of building developmental trajectories.

Background: Face processing in Williams syndrome (WS) has been a topic of heated debate over the past decade. Initial claims about a normally developing ('intact') face-processing module were challenged by data suggesting that individuals with WS used a different balance of cognitive processes from controls, even when their behavioural scores fell within the normal range. Measurement of evoked brain potentials also point to atypical processes.