Does Regular Visual Art Training Enhance Visual Memory Capacity and Enable Young Adults to Outperform in Face Recognition?

Abstract

Specialists usually tend to noticeably outperform others who are novices in that field. Numerous studies suggest that portrait artists who are experts in outlining and recognizing human faces develop more advanced visual working memory. Whether systematic artistic training could strengthen a persons visual memory ability particularly in face memory is therefore worth investigating. Thus, in an attempt to find the correlation between regular artistic training and visual working memory in face memory ability, 22 random samples were collected twice to complete a self-evaluation survey and a set of face memory test. The outcome indicates no statistically significant difference of face memory ability between regularly trained arts students and novices. However, due to several practical concerns, its worthwhile to conduct further studies to eliminate these issues and hence give evidence to support the study result.