Influence of Mode of Stimulus Presentation on Performance in Facial Recognition Tasks

Abstract

Groups of patients from neurological and medical hospital services were tested on two tests of facial recognition. The first, a matching test, required the subject on each trial to match a stimulus photograph with either 1 or 3 photographs in a display of 6 photographs. The second, a paired comparison test, required the subject on each trial to examine two photographs and judge whether they were pictures of the same or different persons. Subjects were divided into 4 experimental groups: Group A was given the paired comparison test twice; Group B was given the matching test twice; Group C 1 was given the paired comparison test, followed by the matching test; Group C 2 was given the matching test, followed by the paired comparison test. It was predicted that the correlation between performance on the two tests (obtained from Groups C 1 and C 2 ) would be significantly lower than the retest reliabilities of each of the separate tests (obtained from Groups A and B). This prediction was confirmed and it was concluded that the two tests measure somewhat different abilities. The impetus for the study came from a consideration of the literature concerning visual search defects in cerebrally damaged patients, particularly patients with lesions of the right hemisphere. It was speculated that the well-documented inferior performance of right hemisphere patients on facial recognition tests might be in part a function of the multiple stimulus characteristics of these tests. The results of some supplementary analyses are discussed in relation to this speculation.