More than a sum of parts: robust face recognition by integrating variation.

Nadia Menon,David White,Richard I Kemp

doi:10.1098/rsos.172381

Abstract

Familiarity incrementally improves our ability to identify faces. It has been hypothesized that this improvement reflects the refinement of memory representations which incorporate variation in appearance across encounters. Although it is established that exposure to variation improves face identification accuracy, it is not clear how variation is assimilated into internal face representations. To address this, we used a novel approach to isolate the effect of integrating separate exposures into a single-identity representation. Participants (n = 113) were exposed to either a single video clip or a pair of video clips of target identities. Pairs of video clips were presented as either a single identity (associated with a single name, e.g. Betty-Sue) or dual identities (associated with two names, e.g. Betty and Sue). Results show that participants exposed to pairs of video clips showed better matching performance compared with participants trained with a single clip. More importantly, identification accuracy was higher for faces presented as single identities compared to faces presented as dual identities. This provides the first direct evidence that the integration of information across separate exposures benefits face matching, thereby establishing a mechanism that may explain people's impressive ability to recognize familiar faces.

Highlights

We are adept at recognizing the faces of people we know, but this expertise does not extend to the faces of people we are not familiar with
The gap between familiar and unfamiliar face recognition performance was demonstrated in a study by Bruce [1], who asked participants to study a series of face photographs, and to recognize these faces in a subsequent test phase
It is possible that a single video clip would provide sufficient information about the possible variation in appearance of the target face, in which case the provision of a second clip would afford no further benefit to performance

Summary

Introduction

We are adept at recognizing the faces of people we know, but this expertise does not extend to the faces of people we are not familiar with. The gap between familiar and unfamiliar face recognition performance was demonstrated in a study by Bruce [1], who asked participants to study a series of face photographs, and to recognize these faces in a subsequent test phase. In one condition, viewing angle and facial expression were changed between the study and test images. For familiar faces, these changes did not affect recognition accuracy, while for unfamiliar faces they resulted in a large drop in accuracy.

Methods

Results

Conclusion