In the last decade there has been increasing interest in super-recognisers, who have an
extraordinary ability to recognise faces. However, it has not yet been investigated whether
these individuals are subject to the same biases in face recognition as typical perceivers. The
most renowned constraint reported to date is the other-ethnicity effect, whereby people are
better at recognizing faces from their own, compared to other, ethnicities. If super
recognisers also show this bias, it is possible that they are no better at other-ethnicity face
recognition than typical native perceivers – a finding that would have important theoretical
and practical implications. In the current study, eight Caucasian super-recognisers performed
other-ethnicity tests of face memory and face matching. In Experiment 1, super-recognisers
outperformed Caucasian but not Asian controls in their memory for Asian faces. In
Experiment 2, a similar pattern emerged in some super-recognisers on a test of face matching.
Finally, Experiment 3 examined the consistency of superior other-ethnicity face matching in
relation to Caucasian controls, using Arab and Black faces. Only four super-recognisers
consistently outperformed controls, and other-ethnicity matching performance was not related
to Caucasian face-matching or own- or other-ethnicity face memory. These findings suggest
that super-recognisers are subject to the same biases as typical perceivers, and are simply
those at the top end of a common face recognition spectrum as opposed to a qualitatively
different group of individuals.British Academy Mid-Career Fellowshi
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