Abstract
SummaryIndividuals employed in forensic or security settings are often required to compare faces of ID holders to document photographs, or to recognise the faces of suspects in closed‐circuit television footage. It has long been established that both tasks produce a high error rate amongst typical perceivers. This study sought to determine the performance of individuals with exceptionally good face memory (‘super‐recognisers’) on applied facial identity matching and memory tasks. In experiment 1, super‐recognisers were significantly better than controls when matching target faces to simultaneously presented line‐ups. In experiment 2, super‐recognisers were also better at recognising faces from video footage. These findings suggest that super‐recognisers are more accurate at face matching and face memory tasks than typical perceivers, and they could be valuable expert employees in national security and forensic settings. © 2015 The Authors Applied Cognitive Psychology Published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd.
Highlights
Facial perception is the most reliable means of accessing a person’s identity without the use of automated technology, such as iris or fingerprint analysis
A significant main effect of array type indicated that performance was more accurate for target present [M = 87.2%, standard error (SE) = 1.8%] than for target absent (M = 78.6%, SE = 4.3) trials, F(1, 25) = 4.54, p = .043, ηp2 = .15, 95% CI [0.00, 0.39]
There was a significant main effect of group with a higher percentage of correct responses being made by the SRs (M = 92.90%, SE = 4.60) than controls (M = 73.00%, SE = 2.70), F(1, 25) = 14.55, p = .001, ηp2 = .368, 95% CI [0.08, 0.57]
Summary
Facial perception is the most reliable means of accessing a person’s identity without the use of automated technology, such as iris or fingerprint analysis. There are large individual differences in the ability to recognise (Bowles et al, 2009; Russell, Duchaine & Nakayama, 2009) and perceive (Megreya & Bindemann, 2013; Megreya & Burton, 2006) faces, and particular difficulties are associated with the processing of unfamiliar facial stimuli (see Hancock, Bruce & Burton, 2000 for a review). Over 80 trials, Bruce et al (1999) asked participants to select a face from an array of 10 that matched the identity of a target face. Stimuli presented within the arrays were photographic images, whereas the target faces were still images acquired from video footage. The photographs and videos used in the study were even taken on the same day, enabling the use of identity cues from external features, such as hairstyle. If the images and videos had been taken on different days, accuracy would have been even lower. Megreya, Sanford and Burton (2013) reported that, when photographs were taken months apart, recognition accuracy decreased by approximately 15%
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