14 DAY TRIAL // Since photos of missing children don't provide as many results as would be necessary, it is clear that something about them has to be changed in order to infer more info from them. With this thought in mind, Mississippi State University-Meridian researcher and assistant professor of psychology Vicki S. Gier came up with an alternative approach, which she has tested and proved to be more efficient in the process of recognition of missing children.
The basics of this approach are quite logical. Since the photos provided by family in such sad cases show happy, clean kids, the researcher believes they don't provide an accurate image to anyone who may happen to observe a missing kid. “My question was: ‘If you, as a person in the community, happened to see a missing child with his or her perpetrator and that child is dirty, has been physically or […] abused, has bruising on the face, then would you be able to recognize that child from a photo of him or her smiling, clean and happy?’” Gier shared.
A study she conducted after she got the idea indicated that she was right. More specifically, “if an adult sees a picture of child who is clean in appearance and at a later time sees another picture of the same child with the same appearance, then recognition is good,” as Gier explained. “Likewise, if an adult sees a picture of a child with a dirty face and later sees a picture of the same child with a dirty face, then recognition is also good. However, if the child appears very differently between their original appearance and the later appearance, recognition is poor.”
That's why she insists that modern programs and tools that help in finding missing children should be provided by parents with a set of 2 pictures: one showing a clean, happy kid, while the other just the opposite state of the respective child. Although it comes as a shock to most of the people, she hopes that the idea will be quickly adopted, and that it will soon prove its efficiency.