Who can recognize unfamiliar faces? Individual differences and observer consistency in person identification.

It can be remarkably difficult to determine whether two photographs of unfamiliar faces depict the same person or two different people. This fallibility is well established in the face perception and eyewitness domain, but most of this research has focused on the "average" observer by measuring mean performance across groups of participants. This study deviated from this convention to provide a detailed description of individual differences and observer consistency in unfamiliar face identification by assessing performance repeatedly, across a 3-day (Experiment 1) and a 5-day period (Experiment 2). Both experiments reveal considerable variation between but also within observers. This variation is such that the same observers frequently made different identification decisions to the same faces on different days (Experiment 1). And when new faces were shown on each day, observers that produced perfect accuracy on one day made many misidentifications on another (Experiment 2). However, a few individuals also performed with consistent high accuracy in these tests. These findings suggest that accuracy and consistency are separable indices of face-matching ability, and both measures are necessary to provide a precise index of a person's face processing skill. We discuss whether these measures could provide the basis for a selection tool for occupations that depend on accurate person identification.

[1]  Markus Bindemann,et al.  Sex differences in unfamiliar face identification: evidence from matching tasks. , 2011, Acta psychologica.

[2]  Markus Bindemann,et al.  Me, Myself, and I: Different Recognition Rates for Three Photo-IDs of the Same Person , 2011, Perception.

[3]  M. Coltheart,et al.  Cognitive heterogeneity in genetically based prosopagnosia: a family study. , 2008, Journal of neuropsychology.

[4]  Rob Jenkins,et al.  Stable face representations , 2011, Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences.

[5]  A D Baddeley,et al.  Individual differences and memory for faces, pictures, and words , 1981, Memory & cognition.

[6]  Daniel G Bobrow,et al.  On data-limited and resource-limited processes , 1975, Cognitive Psychology.

[7]  A. A. Cruz,et al.  Variability of Vernier acuity measurements in untrained subjects of different ages. , 2002, Brazilian journal of medical and biological research = Revista brasileira de pesquisas medicas e biologicas.

[8]  W. A. Shewhart,et al.  The Application of Statistics as an Aid in Maintaining Quality of a Manufactured Product , 1925 .

[9]  J. Eddy.  Justice of the Peace , 1963 .

[10]  Eugene Winograd,et al.  Memory for faces: A social learning analysis , 1979 .

[11]  Jia Liu,et al.  Extraversion predicts individual differences in face recognition , 2010, Communicative & integrative biology.

[12]  L. D. Harmon.  The recognition of faces. , 1973, Scientific American.

[13]  J. Feldman,et al.  Infant visual recognition memory: independent contributions of speed and attention. , 2003, Developmental psychology.

[14]  Ahmed M. Megreya,et al.  Hits and false positives in face matching: A familiarity-based dissociation , 2007, Perception & psychophysics.

[15]  K. Nakayama,et al.  Super-recognizers: People with extraordinary face recognition ability , 2009, Psychonomic bulletin & review.

[16]  A. Johnston,et al.  Recognising Faces: Effects of Lighting Direction, Inversion, and Brightness Reversal , 1992, Perception.

[17]  Andrew Russ,et al.  Individual differences in face identification postdict eyewitness accuracy , 2012 .

[18]  S. Christianson,et al.  Police personnel as eyewitnesses to a violent crime , 1998 .

[19]  Markus Bindemann,et al.  Revisiting the Processing of Internal and External Features of Unfamiliar Faces: The Headscarf Effect , 2009, Perception.

[20]  Markus Bindemann,et al.  Finding needles in haystacks: identity mismatch frequency and facial identity verification. , 2010, Journal of experimental psychology. Applied.

[21]  Vicki Bruce,et al.  Matching the faces of robbers captured on video , 2001 .

[22]  C. Wilkinson,et al.  Are facial image analysis experts any better than the general public at identifying individuals from CCTV images? , 2009, Science & justice : journal of the Forensic Science Society.

[23]  J. Henrich,et al.  Most people are not WEIRD , 2010, Nature.

[24]  G. Davies,et al.  Eyewitness Identification and the English Courts: A Century of Trial and Error , 2008 .

[25]  HighWire Press.  Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London , 1781, The London Medical Journal.

[26]  Ahmed M. Megreya,et al.  Unfamiliar faces are not faces: Evidence from a matching task , 2006, Memory & cognition.

[27]  B. Demiralp.  Occupational Self-Selection in a Labor Market With Moral Hazard , 2007 .

[28]  A. Young,et al.  Handbook of Research on Face Processing , 1989 .

[29]  M. Bindemann,et al.  Exploring the time course of face matching: Temporal constraints impair unfamiliar face identification under temporally unconstrained viewing , 2011, Vision Research.

[30]  Ruth Costigan.  ‘Identification from CCTV: the Risk of Injustice’ , 2007 .

[31]  Steve D. Charman,et al.  Witnesses’ memories for lineup fillers postdicts their identification accuracy , 2012 .

[32]  K. Nakayama,et al.  The Cambridge Face Memory Test: Results for neurologically intact individuals and an investigation of its validity using inverted face stimuli and prosopagnosic participants , 2006, Neuropsychologia.

[33]  M. Bindemann,et al.  Viewpoint and center of gravity affect eye movements to human faces. , 2009, Journal of vision.

[34]  P. M. Wall.  Eye-witness identification in criminal cases , 1966 .

[35]  Heather D. Flowe,et al.  Eye tracking and eyewitness memory. , 2010 .

[36]  Peter J. Rogers,et al.  Proceedings of the British Psychological Society , 1994 .

[37]  Paul Miller,et al.  Verification of face identities from images captured on video. , 1999 .

[38]  P. Hancock,et al.  Robust representations for face recognition: The power of averages , 2005, Cognitive Psychology.

[39]  Werner Sommer,et al.  Individual Differences in Face Cognition: Brain–Behavior Relationships , 2010, Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience.

[40]  K. Nakayama,et al.  Human face recognition ability is specific and highly heritable , 2010, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

[41]  A. Burton,et al.  Mental representations of familiar faces. , 2011, British journal of psychology.

[42]  Carrick C. Williams,et al.  Eye movements are functional during face learning , 2005, Memory & cognition.

[43]  G. Pike,et al.  When Seeing should not be Believing: Photographs, Credit Cards and Fraud , 1997 .

[44]  L. Humphreys.  The fleeting nature of the prediction of college academic success. , 1968, Journal of educational psychology.

[45]  C. Liu,et al.  Face recognition is robust with incongruent image resolution: relationship to security video images. , 2003, Journal of experimental psychology. Applied.

[46]  T. Libkuman,et al.  Eyewitness performance of personality types as a function of induced arousal , 1992 .

[47]  Douglas Martin,et al.  Some witnesses are better than others , 2009 .

[48]  S. Christianson,et al.  Police officers and civilians as witnesses: intergroup biases and memory performance , 1997 .

[49]  A. Baddeley,et al.  Face recognition, pose and ecological validity. , 1987 .

[50]  Allison B. Sekuler,et al.  Perceptual learning modifies inversion effects for faces and textures , 2009, Vision Research.

[51]  Andrew W Young,et al.  Learning faces from photographs. , 2008, Journal of experimental psychology. Human perception and performance.

[52]  H. P. Bahrick,et al.  Fifty years of memory for names and faces: A cross-sectional approach. , 1975 .

[53]  W. Sommer,et al.  Toward a comprehensive test battery for face cognition: Assessment of the tasks , 2008, Behavior research methods.

[54]  A. G. Goldstein,et al.  Depth of processing and anxiety in facial recognition. , 1979, British journal of psychology.

[55]  Tim Valentine,et al.  CCTV on trial: Matching video images with the defendant in the dock , 2009 .

[56]  W. Sommer,et al.  PERSONALITY PROCESSES AND INDIVIDUAL DIFFERENCES Individual Differences in Perceiving and Recognizing Faces — One Element of Social Cognition , 2010 .

[57]  Victoria J. Bourne,et al.  Face Processing: Psychological, Neuropsychological, and Applied Perspectives , 2010 .

[58]  C. Hulin,et al.  Stability of skilled performance across time: Some generalizations and limitations on utilities. , 1987 .

[59]  V. Bruce,et al.  Recognition of unfamiliar faces , 2000, Trends in Cognitive Sciences.

[60]  M. Bindemann,et al.  Brain potential correlates of face recognition: geometric distortions and the N250r brain response to stimulus repetitions. , 2008, Psychophysiology.

[61]  J. Smyth,et al.  Intraindividual coupling of daily stress and cognition. , 2006, Psychology and aging.

[62]  Nancy Kanwisher,et al.  Heritability of the Specific Cognitive Ability of Face Perception , 2010, Current Biology.

[63]  Andrew J. Edmonds,et al.  Familiar and unfamiliar face recognition: A review , 2009, Memory.

[64]  Ahmed M Megreya,et al.  Matching faces to photographs: poor performance in eyewitness memory (without the memory). , 2008, Journal of experimental psychology. Applied.

[65]  D. Borsboom,et al.  The Theoretical Status of Latent Variables , 2003 .

[66]  J. Sergent.  STRUCTURAL PROCESSING OF FACES , 1989 .

[67]  V. Bruce.  Changing faces: visual and non-visual coding processes in face recognition. , 1982, British journal of psychology.

[68]  V. Bruce,et al.  Face Recognition in Poor-Quality Video: Evidence From Security Surveillance , 1999 .

[69]  Jason C. Allaire,et al.  Exploring the Within-Person Coupling of Reading Vision and Cognition in the Elderly , 2009, Neuropsychology, development, and cognition. Section B, Aging, neuropsychology and cognition.

[70]  David R. Lenorovitz,et al.  Time delay and similarity effects in facial recognition. , 1974 .

[71]  V. Bruce,et al.  Matching identities of familiar and unfamiliar faces caught on CCTV images. , 2001, Journal of experimental psychology. Applied.

[72]  A. Burton,et al.  The Glasgow Face Matching Test , 2010, Behavior research methods.

[73]  Elizabeth Loftus,et al.  Accuracy of eyewitness identification is significantly associated with performance on a standardized test of face recognition. , 2007, International journal of law and psychiatry.