Individual differences in learning and recognizing faces
Final Report Abstract
Humans are believed to be experts in face recognition, but recent research has revealed remarkably large individual differences in face recognition and learning abilities. The underlying causes for these differences are still poorly understood. Recent research suggests a degree of heritability of face perception ability, adding evidence to the view that this specific competence represents a stable individual person characteristic. Overall, although individual differences between “good” and “poor recognizers” could merely reflect quantitative differences, the possibility of qualitative differences in face recognition mechanisms is also currently under debate. In the present project we further investigated the individual differences, taking into account different aspects of face identity processing, in particular face learning, face recognition, and face matching. One focus was to test to which extend variability in these abilities is associated with different use of face information, such as shape, texture and configural information, and with impaired acquisition of mental face averages. In the second funding period, we also investigated whether poor face recognizers benefit from a face training with shape or texture caricatures, in which identity specific information is enhanced. For this project we used novel and tailor-made facial stimuli, including 3D morphs and caricatures, in which shape and texture information could be manipulated separately. Our results confirmed very substantial individual differences of face processing skills in the normal population, and also suggests that face recognition, learning and matching are moderately correlated at best. These abilities appear to be largely independent from the recognition of facial emotional expressions, as well as from several personality traits such as extraversion. In contrast to the traditional view (but informing novel conceptual work), our findings quite clearly show that familiar face recognition is mainly driven by texture, rather than shape information. Intriguingly, reliance on texture information is even more pronounced in good face recognizers, whereas poor recognizers exhibit a tendency to rely on shape information, and potentially on shapedistinctive features. Our results also show that a key problem for people with poor face recognition skills is to generalize from a learned view of a face to an unseen view, e.g. after change of viewpoint or expression, suggesting difficulties to extract a more image-independent representation of face identity. Based on these findings, we designed a training program using caricatured face stimuli to help poor recognizers in acquiring more image-independent representations. Training yielded moderate improvements in face learning and face matching that generalized to veridical faces, and enhancements in a neural marker of face processing (the ERP component N170), suggesting enhanced face expertise after training. These promising first steps will inform future development of interventions to improve poor face recognition.
Publications
- (2018) Familiar Face Priming: The Role of Second-Order Configuration and Individual Face Recognition Abilities. Perception 47 (2) 185–196
Itz, Marlena L.; Schweinberger, Stefan R.; Kaufmann, Jürgen M.
(See online at https://doi.org/10.1177/0301006617742069) - (2013). High and low performers differ in the use of shape information for face recognition. Neuropsychologia, 51, 1310-1319
Kaufmann, J.M., Schulz, C., & Schweinberger, S.R.
(See online at https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2013.03.015) - (2014). Neural correlates of facilitations in face learning by selective caricaturing of facial shape or reflectance. Neuroimage, 102, 736-747
Itz, M.L., Schweinberger, S.R., Schulz, C., & Kaufmann, J. M.
(See online at https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neuroimage.2014.08.042) - (2016). Effects of Caricaturing in Shape or Color on Familiarity Decisions for Familiar and Unfamiliar Faces. PLoS ONE, 11(2)
Itz, M.L., Schweinberger, S.R., & Kaufmann, J.M.
(See online at https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0149796) - (2017). Caricature generalization benefits for faces learned with enhanced idiosyncratic shape or texture. Cognitive Affective & Behavioral Neuroscience, 17(1), 185-197
Itz, M.L., Schweinberger, S.R., & Kaufmann, J.M.
(See online at https://doi.org/10.3758/s13415-016-0471-y) - (2017). Dominance of texture over shape in facial identity processing is modulated by individual abilities. British Journal of Psychology, 108(2), 369-396
Itz, M.L., Golle, J., Luttmann, S., Schweinberger, S.R., & Kaufmann, J.M.
(See online at https://doi.org/10.1111/bjop.12199)
