Perceived ability and actual recognition accuracy for unfamiliar and famous faces

In forensic person recognition tasks, mistakes in the identification of unfamiliar faces occur frequently. This study explored whether these errors might arise because observers are poor at judging their ability to recognize unfamiliar faces, and also whether they might conflate the recognition of familiar and unfamiliar faces. Across two experiments, we found that observers could predict their ability to recognize famous but not unfamiliar faces. Moreover, observers seemed to partially conflate these abilities by adjusting ability judgements for famous faces after a test of unfamiliar face recognition (Experiment 1) and vice versa (Experiment 2). These findings suggest that observers have limited insight into their ability to identify unfamiliar faces. These experiments also show that judgements of recognition abilities are malleable and can generalize across different face categories

Understanding face identification through within-person variability in appearance: Introduction to a virtual special issue

In the effort to determine the cognitive processes underlying the identification of faces, the dissimilarities between images of different people have long been studied. In contrast, the inherent variability between different images of the same face has either been treated as a nuisance variable that should be eliminated from psychological experiments or it has not been considered at all. Over the past decade, research efforts have increased substantially to demonstrate that this within-person variation is meaningful and can give insight into various processes of face identification, such as identity matching, face learning, and familiar face recognition. In this virtual special issue of the Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, we explain the importance of within-person variability for face identification and bring together recent relevant articles published in the journal

Pupillary Response as an Age-specific Measure of Sexual Interest

In the visual processing of sexual content, pupil dilation is an indicator of arousal that has been linked to observers’ sexual orientation. This study investigated whether this measure can be extended to determine age-specific sexual interest. In two experiments, the pupillary responses of heterosexual adults to images of males and females of different ages were related to self-reported sexual interest, sexual appeal to the stimuli, and a child molestation proclivity scale. In both experiments, the pupils of male observers dilated to photographs of women but not men, children or neutral stimuli. These pupillary responses corresponded with observer’s self-reported sexual interests and their sexual appeal ratings of the stimuli. Female observers showed pupil dilation to photographs of men and women but not children. In women, pupillary responses also correlated poorly with sexual appeal ratings of the stimuli. These experiments provide initial evidence that eye-tracking could be used as a measure of sex-specific interest in male observers, and as an age-specific index in male and female observers

Why Are Some People Better at Recognising Faces Than Others?

Imagine you lose sight of your friends (or parents) for a moment while you are out at the park. You glance around and then spot them in the distance. You easily pick them out from all the other people in the park and you correctly identify them. This process is called familiar face recognition. For most of us, this process seems easy and generally people are good at recognising familiar faces. However, a few people really struggle to recognise the people around them. Other people are “super-recognisers” who have an extraordinary ability to recognise faces very accurately. How good are you at recognising faces? In this article, we outline why some people are better (or worse) at recognising faces and explore the possible importance of brain differences, mental processes, and personality in this ability

Why Are Some People Better at Recognising Faces Than Others?

From Frontiers via Jisc Publications RouterHistory: received 2020-08-21, collection 2021, accepted 2021-09-02, epub 2021-10-21Publication status: PublishedImagine you lose sight of your friends (or parents) for a moment while you are out at the park. You glance around and then spot them in the distance. You easily pick them out from all the other people in the park and you correctly identify them. This process is called familiar face recognition. For most of us, this process seems easy and generally people are good at recognising familiar faces. However, a few people really struggle to recognise the people around them. Other people are “super-recognisers” who have an extraordinary ability to recognise faces very accurately. How good are you at recognising faces? In this article, we outline why some people are better (or worse) at recognising faces and explore the possible importance of brain differences, mental processes, and personality in this ability

Multisensory stimulation of other-race faces and the reduction of racial prejudice

This study investigated whether multisensory stimulation with other-race faces can reduce racial prejudice. In three experiments, the faces of Caucasian observers were stroked with a cotton bud while they watched a black face being stroked in synchrony on a computer screen. This was compared with a neutral condition, in which no tactile stimulation was administered (Experiment 1 and 2), and with a condition in which observers' faces were stroked in asynchrony with the onscreen face (Experiment 3). In all experiments, observers experienced an enfacement illusion after synchronous stimulation, whereby they reported to embody the other-race face. However, this effect did not produce concurrent changes in implicit or explicit racial prejudice. This outcome contrasts with other procedures for the reduction of self-other differences that decrease racial prejudice, such as behavioural mimicry and intergroup contact. We speculate that enfacement is less effective for such prejudice reduction because it does not encourage perspective-taking

Understanding face matching

Many security settings rely on the identity matching of unfamiliar people, which has led this task to be studied extensively in Cognitive Psychology. In these experiments, observers typically decide whether pairs of faces depict one person (an identity match) or two different people (an identity mismatch). The visual similarity of the to-be-compared faces must play a primary role in how observers accurately resolve this task, but the nature of this similarity–accuracy relationship is unclear. The current study investigated the association between accuracy and facial similarity at the level of individual items (Experiments 1 and 2) and facial features (Experiments 3 and 4). All experiments demonstrate a strong link between similarity and matching accuracy, indicating that this forms the basis of identification decisions. At a feature level, however, similarity exhibited distinct relationships with match and mismatch accuracy. In matches, similarity information was generally shared across the features of a face pair under comparison, with greater similarity linked to higher accuracy. Conversely, features within mismatching face pairs exhibited greater variation in similarity information. This indicates that identity matches and mismatches are characterised by different similarity profiles, which present distinct challenges to the cognitive system. We propose that these identification decisions can be resolved through the accumulation of convergent featural information in matches and the evaluation of divergent featural information in mismatches

Matching faces against the clock

This study examined the effect of time pressure on face matching accuracy. Across two experiments, observers decided whether pairs of faces depict one person or different people. Time pressure was exerted via two additional displays, which were constantly updated to inform observers on whether they were on track to meet or miss a time target. In this paradigm, faces were matched under increasing or decreasing (Experiment 1) and constant time pressure (Experiment 2), which varied from ten to two seconds. In both experiments, time pressure reduced accuracy, but the point at which this declined varied from eight to two seconds. A separate match response bias was found, which developed over the course of the experiments. These results indicate that both time pressure and the repetitive nature of face matching are detrimental to performance