Dror - Top-down biases

• Who did Dror blame for misidentification and why?

  Human experts > machines (when making a match)

  Could be due to confirmation bias = when people observe and given emphasis on what to look for to validate their beliefs
• What two processes did Dror come up with that are involved in fingerprint processing?

  • Bottom-up processes
  • Top-down processes
• What is bottom-up processes?

  Purely data driven, operates of 3 different levels

  1. Examination of overall pattern of friction ridges
  2. Examination of characteristics of specific ridges
  3. 'Zooming in' = examine things like location and distribution of sweat pores etc
• What is top-down processes?

  Can include biases that override objective decisions of BUP:

  • Conforming effect = FP expert asking to validate decision of people or superior = may lead to unconscious bias to agree
  • Selective attention = prior expectations lead to 'filtering out' ambiguous elements or prints where 'close calls' have to be made to create a match