Super-recognizers Research Articles

Super recognizers: Increased sensitivity or reduced biases? Insights from serial dependence.

Super recognizers (SRs) are people that exhibit a naturally occurring superiority for processing facial identity. Despite the increase of SR research, the mechanisms underlying their exceptional abilities remain unclear. Here, we investigated whether the enhanced facial identity processing of SRs could be attributed to the lack of sequential effects, such as serial dependence. In serial dependence, perception of stimulus features is assimilated toward stimuli presented in previous trials. This constant error in visual perception has been proposed as a mechanism that promotes perceptual stability in everyday life. We hypothesized that an absence of this constant source of error in SRs could account for their superior processing-potentially in a domain-general fashion. We tested SRs (n = 17) identified via a recently proposed diagnostic framework (Ramon, 2021) and age-matched controls (n = 20) with two experiments probing serial dependence in the face and shape domains. In each experiment, observers were presented with randomly morphed face identities or shapes and were asked to adjust a face's identity or a shape to match the stimulus they saw. We found serial dependence in controls and SRs alike, with no difference in its magnitude across groups. Interestingly, we found that serial dependence impacted the performance of SRs more than that of controls. Taken together, our results show that enhanced face identity processing skills in SRs cannot be attributed to the lack of serial dependence. Rather, serial dependence, a beneficial nested error in our visual system, may in fact further stabilize the perception of SRs and thus enhance their visual processing proficiency.

The super‐recogniser advantage extends to the detection of hyper‐realistic face masks

AbstractHyper‐realistic silicone masks provide a viable route to identity fraud. Over the last decade, more than 40 known criminal acts have been committed by perpetrators using this type of disguise. With the increasing availability and bespoke sophistication of these masks, research must now focus on ways to enhance their detection. In this study, we investigate whether super‐recognisers (SRs), people who excel at identity recognition, are more likely to detect this type of fraud, in comparison to typical‐recogniser controls. Across three tasks, we examined mask detection rates in the absence of a pre‐task prompt (covert task), and again after making participants aware of their use in criminal settings (explicit task). Finally, participants were asked to indicate which aspects of the masks could support their detection (regions of interest task). The findings show an SR advantage for the detection of hyper‐realistic masks across the covert and explicit mask detection tasks. In addition, the eye, mouth, and nose regions appear to be particularly indicative of the presence of a mask. The lack of natural skin texture, proportional features, expressiveness, and asymmetry are also salient cues. The theoretical and applied implications of these findings are discussed.

Towards a screening test for earwitnesses

The present study explores the feasibility of a screening test for earwitnesses. The underlying assumption is that lay listeners differ in their voice-processing capabilities and might consequently not be equally suited for a standardised voice parade. One hundred British participants took part in an online AX discrimination task with the aim of obtaining a representative sample of the population. For the stimuli, two 10s-long recordings were taken from 48 speakers of the DyViS corpus. Participants differed markedly in recognition accuracy (mean = 75%, range = 50–93.8%). Two potential ‘super recognisers’ were identified as well as four participants at the opposite end of the spectrum. The test serves to establish a baseline for more complex investigations of witness-dependent estimator variables.

Improving forensic perpetrator identification with Super-Recognizers

About a decade ago, Super-Recognizers (SRs) were first described as individuals with exceptional face identity processing abilities. Since then, various tests have been developed or adapted to assess individuals' abilities and identify SRs. The extant literature suggests that SRs may be beneficial in police tasks requiring individual identification. However, in reality, the performance of SRs has never been examined using authentic forensic material. This not only limits the external validity of test procedures used to identify SRs, but also claims concerning their deployment in policing. Here, we report the first-ever investigation of SRs' ability to identify perpetrators using authentic case material. We report the data of 73 SRs and 45 control participants. These include (a) performance on three challenging tests of face identity processing recommended by Ramon (2021) for SR identification; (b) performance for perpetrator identification using four CCTV sequences depicting five perpetrators and police line-ups created for criminal investigation purposes. Our findings demonstrate that the face identity processing tests used here are valid in measuring such abilities and identifying SRs. Moreover, SRs excel at perpetrator identification relative to control participants, with more correct perpetrator identifications, the better their performance across lab tests. These results provide external validity for the recently proposed diagnostic framework and its tests used for SR identification (Ramon, 2021). This study provides the first empirical evidence that SRs identified using these measures can be beneficial for forensic perpetrator identification. We discuss theoretical and practical implications for law enforcement, whose procedures can be improved via a human-centric approach centered around individuals with superior abilities.

Do Super Recognizers Excel at Deepfake Detection?

Do Super Recognizers Excel at Deepfake Detection?

Characteristic fixation biases in Super-Recognizers.

Neurotypical observers show large and reliable individual differences in gaze behavior along several semantic object dimensions. Individual gaze behavior toward faces has been linked to face identity processing, including that of neurotypical observers. Here, we investigated potential gaze biases in Super-Recognizers (SRs), individuals with exceptional face identity processing skills. Ten SRs, identified with a novel conservative diagnostic framework, and 43 controls freely viewed 700 complex scenes depicting more than 5000 objects. First, we tested whether SRs and controls differ in fixation biases along four semantic dimensions: faces, text, objects being touched, and bodies. Second, we tested potential group differences in fixation biases toward eyes and mouths. Finally, we tested whether SRs fixate closer to the theoretical optimal fixation point for face identification. SRs showed a stronger gaze bias toward faces and away from text and touched objects, starting from the first fixation onward. Further, SRs spent a significantly smaller proportion of first fixations and dwell time toward faces on mouths but did not differ in dwell time or first fixations devoted to eyes. Face fixation of SRs also fell significantly closer to the theoretical optimal fixation point for identification, just below the eyes. Our findings suggest that reliable superiority for face identity processing is accompanied by early fixation biases toward faces and preferred saccadic landing positions close to the theoretical optimum for face identification. We discuss future directions to investigate the functional basis of individual fixation behavior and face identity processing ability.

Picture this: Photographers no better than controls for recognizing unfamiliar faces.

With the exception of super recognizers and forensic examiners, people make a surprising number of errors when deciding whether photographs of unfamiliar faces belong to the same person or different people. Training protocols designed to improve professionals' (e.g., passport officers) performance often include photography. We evaluated the influence of life-time photography experience on the ability to distinguish matched versus mismatched face pairs. Expert photographers were not more sensitive to identity than hobbyists or novices-despite specializing in human subjects; Hobbyists were more liberal (more same responses) than Experts. We conclude that photography experience is not a route to expertise.

Face masks versus sunglasses: limited effects of time and individual differences in the ability to judge facial identity and social traits

Some research indicates that face masks impair identification and other judgements such as trustworthiness. However, it is unclear whether those effects have abated over time as individuals adjust to widespread use of masks, or whether performance is related to individual differences in face recognition ability. This study examined the effect of masks and sunglasses on face matching and social judgements (trustworthiness, competence, attractiveness). In Experiment 1, 135 participants across three different time points (June 2020–July 2021) viewed unedited faces and faces with masks, sunglasses, or both. Both masks and sunglasses similarly decreased matching performance. The effect of masks on social judgements varied depending on the judgement and whether the face was depicted with sunglasses. There was no effect of timepoint on any measure, suggesting that the effects of masks have not diminished. In Experiment 2, 12 individuals with developmental prosopagnosia (DP) and 10 super-recognisers (SRs) completed the same tasks. The effect of masks on identity matching was reduced in SRs, whereas the effects of masks and sunglasses for the DP group did not differ from controls. These findings indicate that face masks significantly affect face perception, depending on the availability of other facial information, and are not modified by exposure.

Image or Identity? Only Super-recognizers’ (Memor)Ability is Consistently Viewpoint-Invariant

A face’s memorability refers to the unique combination of visual features facilitating its recognition. Despite considerable variation in face recognition ability amongst the general population, individuals show substantial concordance regarding faces’ memorability. This agreement persists, though reduced, when the viewpoints across which identities are seen at encoding and recognition differ. Consequently, individuals must extract some invariant facial information during recognition, robust to changes in viewpoint, to do so consistently (i.e. as a function of stimulus memorability). However, the extent of such consistency remains unclear. Therefore, in two experiments we tested recognition of (i) implicitly encoded face images and (ii) explicitly encoded identities in a group of control observers against a group of “Super-Recognizers” (SRs) possessing exceptional face processing skills (Ramon, 2021). Novel “With or Without You” (WoWY) resampling analyses assessed the consistency of SRs relative to control observers, simultaneously providing measures of intraindividual consistency. When implicit encoding was surreptitiously solicited (Experiment 1), recognition of studied images was comparable between groups. Yet, when encoding was explicitly solicited (Experiment 2), SRs more accurately recognized identities across viewpoint changes than controls. Critically, image-dependent information could only inform recognition in the first experiment, whereas viewpoint-invariant information could inform recognition equally in both. Individual observers’ performance profiles reveal that only SRs memorability-related performance was consistent between experiments. Overall, SRs’ unique capacity for recognizing faces based on viewpoint-invariant information is rooted in fundamentally more robust representations of identity. These results invite a reinterpretation of face memorability describing viewpoint-invariant information, diagnostic of facial identity representations in memory. <strong>Highlights</strong> <ul><li>Super-Recognizers (SRs) do not uniformly recognize face images better than controls; both SRs and control observers tend to recognize high- and low-memorability stimuli equally well.</li><li>Novel “With or Without You” analyses, combining split-half resampling and permutation techniques, revealed inter- and intra-individual consistency in recognition memory.</li><li>SRs excelled at explicit (but not implicit) learning of facial identities relative to controls when viewpoint-invariant information was task-relevant.</li><li>SRs consistently represent faces with identity-based (viewpoint-invariant) memorability, while controls use either image- or identity-based representations.<br />The finding that consistency of identity-based memorability is relatively unique to SRs suggests that it constitutes a potential marker of overall face recognition ability.</li></ul>

Developmental prosopagnosics and super recognizers rely on the same facial features used by individuals with normal face recognition abilities for face identification

Face recognition depends on the ability of the face processing system to extract facial features that define the identity of a face. In a recent study we discovered that altering a subset of facial features changed the identity of the face, indicating that they are critical for face identification. Changing another set of features did not change the identity of a face, indicating that they are not critical for face identification. In the current study, we assessed whether developmental prosopagnosics (DPs) and super recognizers (SRs) also rely more heavily on these critical features than non-critical features for face identification. To that end, we presented to DPs and SRs faces in which either the critical or the non-critical features were manipulated. In Study 1, we presented SRs with a famous face recognition task. We found that overall SRs recognized famous faces that differ in either critical or non-critical features better than controls. Similar to controls, changes in critical features had a larger effect on SRs’ face recognition than changes in non-critical features. In Study 2, we presented an identity matching task to DPs and SRs. Similar to controls, DPs and SRs perceived faces that differed in critical features as more different than faces that differed in non-critical features. Taken together, our results indicate that SRs and DPs use the same critical features for face identification as normal individuals. These findings emphasize the fundamental role of this subset of features for face identification.

Eye-movement strategies in developmental prosopagnosia and "super" face recognition.

Developmental prosopagnosia (DP) is a cognitive condition characterized by a severe deficit in face recognition. Few investigations have examined whether impairments at the early stages of processing may underpin the condition, and it is also unknown whether DP is simply the "bottom end" of the typical face-processing spectrum. To address these issues, we monitored the eye-movements of DPs, typical perceivers, and "super recognizers" (SRs) while they viewed a set of static images displaying people engaged in naturalistic social scenarios. Three key findings emerged: (a) Individuals with more severe prosopagnosia spent less time examining the internal facial region, (b) as observed in acquired prosopagnosia, some DPs spent less time examining the eyes and more time examining the mouth than controls, and (c) SRs spent more time examining the nose-a measure that also correlated with face recognition ability in controls. These findings support previous suggestions that DP is a heterogeneous condition, but suggest that at least the most severe cases represent a group of individuals that qualitatively differ from the typical population. While SRs seem to merely be those at the "top end" of normal, this work identifies the nose as a critical region for successful face recognition.

Broadly Superior: Many, but not all, visual and non-visual abilities are strong in face super-recognizers

Broadly Superior: Many, but not all, visual and non-visual abilities are strong in face super-recognizers

Humans vs machines: the future of facial recognition

The dream of people discovering they have crime-fighting super-powers is the stuff of Hollywood movies like ‘Superman’ and the ‘X-Men’. But the startling fact about the individuals known as super recognisers is that their powers are real – they are literally living the dream. These people are supremely adept at facial recognition and their abilities have been harnessed by police to track the criminals behind the 2011 London riots and 2015 Cologne sex attacks. Yet in an era when humans are used to being bested by machines – witness the IBM super-computer that beat chess grandmaster Gary Kasparov and the Google program that recently humbled the world champion of the intuitive game ‘Go’ – the abilities of super recognisers have outshone current biometric facial recognition systems, raising questions about the technology. So what can developers of face recognition systems learn from them?

Solving the Border Control Problem: Evidence of Enhanced Face Matching in Individuals with Extraordinary Face Recognition Skills.

Photographic identity documents (IDs) are commonly used despite clear evidence that unfamiliar face matching is a difficult and error-prone task. The current study set out to examine the performance of seven individuals with extraordinary face recognition memory, so called “super recognisers” (SRs), on two face matching tasks resembling border control identity checks. In Experiment 1, the SRs as a group outperformed control participants on the “Glasgow Face Matching Test”, and some case-by-case comparisons also reached significance. In Experiment 2, a perceptually difficult face matching task was used: the “Models Face Matching Test”. Once again, SRs outperformed controls both on group and mostly in case-by-case analyses. These findings suggest that SRs are considerably better at face matching than typical perceivers, and would make proficient personnel for border control agencies.

The Glasgow Voice Memory Test: Assessing the ability to memorize and recognize unfamiliar voices.

One thousand one hundred and twenty subjects as well as a developmental phonagnosic subject (KH) along with age-matched controls performed the Glasgow Voice Memory Test, which assesses the ability to encode and immediately recognize, through an old/new judgment, both unfamiliar voices (delivered as vowels, making language requirements minimal) and bell sounds. The inclusion of non-vocal stimuli allows the detection of significant dissociations between the two categories (vocal vs. non-vocal stimuli). The distributions of accuracy and sensitivity scores (d') reflected a wide range of individual differences in voice recognition performance in the population. As expected, KH showed a dissociation between the recognition of voices and bell sounds, her performance being significantly poorer than matched controls for voices but not for bells. By providing normative data of a large sample and by testing a developmental phonagnosic subject, we demonstrated that the Glasgow Voice Memory Test, available online and accessible from all over the world, can be a valid screening tool (~5 min) for a preliminary detection of potential cases of phonagnosia and of "super recognizers" for voices.

Familiar faces: “Super recognizers” never forget a visage, an unusual ability that can be put to good use

Familiar faces: “Super recognizers” never forget a visage, an unusual ability that can be put to good use