Recognition of previously seen persons and recall of the circumstances of their encounter were tested in a situation\u27 where subjects were unaware of the subsequent recognition task. Subjects encountered four: persons, one of each sex. in. two separate encounters. Prior to a lineup one week later, only 51 subjects (N = 145) failed to\u27 recall either the number and/or the sex of the persons encountered, while only 28. correctly recalled both the number and sex and that it was two different persons in each encounter. Results from the lineup confirmed, previous suggestions that subjects (N = 155) are better able to recognize persons than recall where they encountered them. The best recognition performance came from male subjects\u27 recognition of female criminals, a finding that contradicts previous research. The best recall performance came from female subjects\u27 recall of where they encountered, male criminals. Prompted by considerable variation in the indictment rates and the recognizability of the individual suspects, the issues of representative sampling of stimuli and generalization are discussed as potential problems in facial recognition studies. Consideration was also given to the manner in which recall of the circumstances of encounter is typically calculated
