Capturing specific abilities as a window into human individuality: The example of face recognition

Proper characterization of each individual's unique pattern of strengths and weaknesses requires good measures of diverse abilities. Here, we advocate combining our growing understanding of neural and cognitive mechanisms with modern psychometric methods in a renewed effort to capture human individuality through a consideration of specific abilities. We articulate five criteria for the isolation and measurement of specific abilities, then apply these criteria to face recognition. We cleanly dissociate face recognition from more general visual and verbal recognition. This dissociation stretches across ability as well as disability, suggesting that specific developmental face recognition deficits are a special case of a broader specificity that spans the entire spectrum of human face recognition performance. Item-by-item results from 1,471 web-tested participants, included as supplementary information, fuel item analyses, validation, norming, and item response theory (IRT) analyses of our three tests: (a) the widely used Cambridge Face Memory Test (CFMT); (b) an Abstract Art Memory Test (AAMT), and (c) a Verbal Paired-Associates Memory Test (VPMT). The availability of this data set provides a solid foundation for interpreting future scores on these tests. We argue that the allied fields of experimental psychology, cognitive neuroscience, and vision science could fuel the discovery of additional specific abilities to add to face recognition, thereby providing new perspectives on human individuality.

[1]  K. Nakayama,et al.  Prosopagnosia as an impairment to face-specific mechanisms: Elimination of the alternative hypotheses in a developmental case , 2006, Cognitive neuropsychology.

[2]  P. Fayers.  Item Response Theory for Psychologists , 2004, Quality of Life Research.

[3]  Wm. R. Wright.  General Intelligence, Objectively Determined and Measured. , 1905 .

[4]  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.

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

[6]  W. Sommer,et al.  On the specificity of face cognition compared with general cognitive functioning across adult age. , 2011, Psychology and aging.

[7]  K. Nakayama,et al.  Where cognitive development and aging meet: Face learning ability peaks after age 30 , 2011, Cognition.

[8]  J. Ricker,et al.  Confirmatory factor analysis of the Wechsler Memory Scale-III. , 1999, Journal of clinical and experimental neuropsychology.

[9]  Stephen M. Kosslyn,et al.  How Team Composition and Collaborative Planning Jointly Shape Analytic Effectiveness , 2008 .

[10]  M. Edelen,et al.  Applying item response theory (IRT) modeling to questionnaire development, evaluation, and refinement , 2007, Quality of Life Research.

[11]  Doris Y. Tsao,et al.  A Cortical Region Consisting Entirely of Face-Selective Cells , 2006, Science.

[12]  D. Delis,et al.  Parsing the Recognition Memory Components of the WMS-III Face Memory Subtest: Normative Data and Clinical Findings in Dementia Groups , 2004, Journal of clinical and experimental neuropsychology.

[13]  A. Paivio,et al.  Concreteness, imagery, and meaningfulness values for 925 nouns. , 1968, Journal of experimental psychology.

[14]  D. Campbell,et al.  Convergent and discriminant validation by the multitrait-multimethod matrix. , 1959, Psychological bulletin.

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

[16]  K. Nakayama,et al.  Non-face visual memory impairments in developmental prosopagnosia , 2010 .

[17]  Doris Y. Tsao,et al.  Comparing face patch systems in macaques and humans , 2008, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

[18]  E. Thorndike.  Intelligence and its uses. , 1920 .

[19]  P. Salovey,et al.  Emotional intelligence meets traditional standards for an intelligence , 1999 .

[20]  Christopher F. Chabris,et al.  Cognitive and Neurobiological Mechanisms of the Law of General Intelligence , 2006 .

[21]  R. Sternberg.  Beyond IQ: A Triarchic Theory of Human Intelligence , 1984 .

[22]  Emrah Düzel,et al.  A new selective developmental deficit: Impaired object recognition with normal face recognition , 2011, Cortex.

[23]  J. Wilmer.  How to use individual differences to isolate functional organization, biology, and utility of visual functions; with illustrative proposals for stereopsis. , 2008, Spatial Vision.

[24]  R. Hambleton,et al.  An NCME Instructional Module on Comparison of Classical Test Theory and Item Response Theory and Their Applications to Test Development. , 2005 .

[25]  G. Winocur,et al.  What Is Special about Face Recognition? Nineteen Experiments on a Person with Visual Object Agnosia and Dyslexia but Normal Face Recognition , 1997, Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience.

[26]  Marc W Howard,et al.  When Does Semantic Similarity Help Episodic Retrieval , 2002 .

[27]  Jessica L. Tracy,et al.  The practice of psychological science: searching for Cronbach's two streams in social-personality psychology. , 2009, Journal of personality and social psychology.

[28]  N. Kanwisher,et al.  Can generic expertise explain special processing for faces? , 2007, Trends in Cognitive Sciences.

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

[30]  N. Kanwisher,et al.  The Fusiform Face Area: A Module in Human Extrastriate Cortex Specialized for Face Perception , 1997, The Journal of Neuroscience.

[31]  J. Mayer,et al.  Convergent, Discriminant, and Incremental Validity of Competing Measures of Emotional Intelligence , 2003, Personality & social psychology bulletin.

[32]  K. Nakayama,et al.  Is the Web as good as the lab? Comparable performance from Web and lab in cognitive/perceptual experiments , 2012, Psychonomic Bulletin & Review.

[33]  A. Paivio.  Abstractness, imagery, and meaningfulness in paired-associate learning , 1965 .

[34]  J. M. Cortina,et al.  What Is Coefficient Alpha? An Examination of Theory and Applications , 1993 .

[35]  T. E. Dinero.  Scale development. , 1996, Journal of health & social policy.

[36]  W. Sommer,et al.  Structural invariance and age-related performance differences in face cognition. , 2010, Psychology and aging.

[37]  L. Cronbach.  The two disciplines of scientific psychology. , 1957 .

[38]  H. Gardner,et al.  Frames of Mind: The Theory of Multiple Intelligences , 1983 .

[39]  Wendy M. Yen,et al.  A comparison of the efficiency and accuracy of BILOG and LOGIST , 1987 .

[40]  J. Devlin,et al.  Triple Dissociation of Faces, Bodies, and Objects in Extrastriate Cortex , 2009, Current Biology.

[41]  I. Deary,et al.  A conversation between Charles Spearman, Godfrey Thomson, and Edward L. Thorndike: The International Examinations Inquiry Meetings 1931-1938. , 2008 .

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

[43]  B. Duchaine,et al.  The Cambridge Car Memory Test: A task matched in format to the Cambridge Face Memory Test, with norms, reliability, sex differences, dissociations from face memory, and expertise effects , 2012, Behavior research methods.

[44]  Seonghoon Kim.  A Comparative Study of IRT Fixed Parameter Calibration Methods. , 2006 .

[45]  M. R. Novick,et al.  Statistical Theories of Mental Test Scores. , 1971 .

[46]  Maxwell J. Roberts,et al.  Integrating the mind : domain general versus domain specific processes in higher cognition , 2008 .

[47]  David Wechsler,et al.  Wechsler Memory scale. , 2005 .

[48]  J. Guilford,et al.  The nature of human intelligence. , 1968 .

[49]  A. Jensen,et al.  What is a good g , 1994 .

[50]  R. Sternberg,et al.  Intelligence: Knowns and unknowns. , 1996 .

[51]  Rankin W. McGugin,et al.  The Vanderbilt Expertise Test reveals domain-general and domain-specific sex effects in object recognition , 2012, Vision Research.

[52]  Max Coltheart,et al.  Cognitive Neuropsychology , 2014, Scholarpedia.

[53]  G. Yovel,et al.  Face ethnicity and measurement reliability affect face recognition performance in developmental prosopagnosia: Evidence from the Cambridge Face Memory Test–Australian , 2011, Cognitive neuropsychology.

[54]  Galit Yovel,et al.  A Robust Method of Measuring Other-Race and Other-Ethnicity Effects: The Cambridge Face Memory Test Format , 2012, PloS one.

[55]  G. Yovel,et al.  Diagnosing prosopagnosia: Effects of ageing, sex, and participant–stimulus ethnic match on the Cambridge Face Memory Test and Cambridge Face Perception Test , 2009, Cognitive neuropsychology.

[56]  F. Schmidt,et al.  Measurement Error in Psychological Research: Lessons From 26 Research Scenarios , 1996 .