Enhanced Matching of Children's Faces in "Super-Recognisers" But Not High-Contact Controls.

Sarah Bate,Emma Portch,Rachel Bennetts,Ebony Murray

doi:10.1177/2041669520944420

Abstract

Face matching is notoriously error-prone, and some work suggests additional difficulty when matching the faces of children. It is possible that individuals with natural proficiencies in adult face matching (“super-recognisers” [SRs]) will also excel at the matching of children’s faces, although other work implicates facilitations in typical perceivers who have high levels of contact with young children (e.g., nursery teachers). This study compared the performance of both of these groups on adult and child face matching to a group of low-contact controls. High- and low-contact control groups performed at a remarkably similar level in both tasks, whereas facilitations for adult and child face matching were observed in some (but not all) SRs. As a group, the SRs performed better in the adult compared with the child task, demonstrating an extended own-age bias compared with controls. These findings suggest that additional exposure to children’s faces does not assist the performance in a face matching task, and the mechanisms underpinning superior recognition of adult faces can also facilitate the child face recognition. Real-world security organisations should therefore seek individuals with general facilitations in face matching for both adult and child face matching tasks.

Highlights

Face matching is notoriously error-prone, and some work suggests additional difficulty when matching the faces of children
In typical perceivers, evidence suggests that adult face memory performance is reduced for young children’s faces (Anastasi & Rhodes, 2005; Chance et al, 1986; Rhodes & Anastasi, 2012) but may be facilitated in individuals who frequently have contact with children
The effect size for within-subject main effects is comparable to the effects obtained in a meta-analysis of the own-age bias (g 1⁄4 0.37; Rhodes & Anastasi, 2012) and substantially lower than effects reported for comparable matching tasks (e.g., d 1⁄4 1.17; White et al, 2015 Experiment 1); the effect size for the interaction (i.e., Contact Â Face Age) is substantially lower than effects reported in the previous literature (e.g., d 1⁄4 0.70; Harrison & Hole, 2009)

Summary

Introduction

Face matching is notoriously error-prone, and some work suggests additional difficulty when matching the faces of children. In typical perceivers, evidence suggests that adult face memory performance is reduced for young children’s faces (Anastasi & Rhodes, 2005; Chance et al, 1986; Rhodes & Anastasi, 2012) but may be facilitated in individuals who frequently have contact with children (e.g., nursery teachers: de Heering & Rossion, 2008; Harrison & Hole, 2009; Rhodes & Anastasi, 2012) It is less clear whether facial age influences unfamiliar face matching tasks, as some findings suggest that age-related biases are highly sensitive to task demands (e.g., Proietti et al, 2015, 2019). In a simultaneous matching task, Kramer et al (2018) found poorer performance when pairs comprised two photographs of infants (Experiment 1) or one infant and one child face (Experiments 2 and 3), than when pairs comprised two adult faces

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