When two fields collide: Identifying "super-recognisers" for neuropsychological and forensic face recognition research.

Sarah Bate,Natalie Mestry,Emma Portch

doi:10.1177/17470218211027695

Sarah Bate, Natalie Mestry + Show 1 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.1177/17470218211027695

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Abstract

In the last decade, a novel individual differences approach has emerged across the face recognition literature. While the field has long been concerned with prosopagnosia (the inability to recognise facial identity), it has more recently become clear that there are vast differences in face recognition ability within the typical population. “Super-recognisers” are those individuals purported to reside at the very top of this spectrum. On one hand, these people are of interest to cognitive neuropsychologists who are motivated to explore the commonality of the face recognition continuum, whereas on the other hand, researchers from the forensic face matching field evaluate the implementation of super-recognisers into real-world police and security settings. These two rather different approaches have led to discrepancies in the definition of super-recognisers, and perhaps more fundamentally, the approach to identifying them, resulting in a lack of consistency that prohibits theoretical progress. Here, we review the protocols used in published work to identify super-recognisers, and propose a common definition and screening recommendations that can be adhered to across fields.

Highlights

The term “super-recognisers” was coined in a landmark paper by Russell and colleagues (2009), describing four individuals who believed they were “exceptionally good at recognising faces” (p. 252)
The initial theoretical drive for the study of super-recognisers originated in the cognitive neuropsychological literature, where an individual differences approach to the opposing end of the face recognition spectrum has been active for well over a century (e.g., Jackson, 1876; Wigan, 1844)
Given anecdotal and objective variation in the severity of face recognition difficulties in developmental prosopagnosia (Adams et al, 2020; Bate, Bennetts, Gregory, et al, 2019; Murray et al, 2018), coupled with apparently broad individual differences in face recognition abilities within the typical population (Wilmer, 2017), it remains unknown whether developmental difficulties truly represent a distinct pathology akin to the acquired form of prosopagnosia (Barton & Corrow, 2016; Bate & Tree, 2017)

Summary

Introduction

The term “super-recognisers” was coined in a landmark paper by Russell and colleagues (2009), describing four individuals who believed they were “exceptionally good at recognising faces” (p. 252). There are clear differences in the paradigms employed in face perception tasks depending on their motivation: those that originate from the cognitive neuropsychological literature are developed in line with more traditional measures that have been used to assess face perception skills in prosopagnosia (e.g., the CFPT), whereas tests from the forensic face matching literature aim to replicate more real-world tasks that require the comparison of two facial images (e.g., the GFMT and PMT).

Results

Conclusion