Abstract
Face cognition is a crucial skill for social interaction and shows large individual differences in healthy adults, suggesting a possibility for improvement in some. We developed and tested specific training procedures for the accuracy of face memory and the speed of face cognition. Two groups each of 20 healthy middle-aged trainees practiced for 29 daily sessions of 15 minutes duration with different computerized home-based training procedures. In addition, 20 matched and 59 non-matched controls were included. Face cognition speed training enhanced performance during the training and transferred to the latent factor level as measured in a pre-post comparison. Persistence of the training effect was evidenced at the manifest level after three months. However, the training procedure influenced the speed of processing object stimuli to the same extent as face stimuli and therefore seems to have affected a more general ability of processing complex visual stimuli and not only faces. No effects of training on the accuracy of face memory were found. This study demonstrates that face-specific abilities may be hard to improve but also shows the plasticity of the speed of processing complex visual stimuli – for the first time in middle-aged, normal adults.
Highlights
Face cognition is essential for successful social interactions and many professions require face cognition skills
It is the scope of this study to develop and test two training procedures aiming at the improvement of specific face cognition abilities
One shortcoming of the results reported above is that training effects were measured directly after the interventions at the time point when the largest improvements were to be expected
Summary
Face cognition is essential for successful social interactions and many professions require face cognition skills. Research on individual differences has indicated that though all adults are highly experienced in face cognition there are large interindividual variations in this skill [1,2,3,4,5,6]. A training of face cognition might be of advantage for unimpaired individuals who wish to improve their face cognition for personal or professional reasons. Experimental training studies on face cognition can contribute to the understanding of the psychological processes underlying this skill. It is the scope of this study to develop and test two training procedures aiming at the improvement of specific face cognition abilities
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