Problems of Forensic Sciences 2004 Vol. 60 (LX) 78-103
CO-OCCURRENCE OF NATURAL VARIANTS OF CONSTRUCTIONAL FEATURES IN FEMALE SIGNATURES
Szymon MATUSZEWSKI
Department of Criminalistics, Adam Mickiewicz University, Poznań
Streszczenie
The aim of this study was to formulate, on empirical grounds, general principles of co-occurrence of natural variants of constructional characteristics in signatures. From this point of view, the randomness of co-occurrence of natural variants of 36 constructional characteristics in signatures of women of a similar age, with similar educational background and the same surname ending was analysed. It was found that co-occurrence of natural variants was not random in only 22.2% of analysed pairs of characteristics. In 15.6% of analysed pairs, natural variants co-occurred more frequently than randomly and in 6.6% of analysed pairs, less frequently than randomly. More frequent than random co-occurrence was four times less frequent in cases of pairs of features of different letters than pairs of features of the same letters. It was also less frequent among pairs of basic level characteristics than among pairs of macrostructural level characteristics and among pairs of connection characteristics than among pairs of stroke construction characteristics. Based upon the above results, two general laws of natural variants co-occurrence in handwriting were proposed. The significance of these results for comparative handwriting analysis was discussed.
Słowa kluczowe
Criminalistics; Questioned documents; Writer elimination; Natural variation; Signatures; Constructional characteristics.