Presented at TARMAC 2020. Access recording via link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4zSmL5hMzXk&list=PLfjltJSHA9mqEI3gjUYXylY-t6hBm6fE2&index=8

1. A novel interactive face matching
procedure: Performance of normal and
super face recognizers
Harriet M. J. Smith, Sally Andrews, David White, Josh P. Davis,
Melissa F. Colloff, Thom S. Baguley, & Heather D. Flowe
harriet.smith02@ntu.ac.uk

2. Face matching
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Are we really that good at recognising/perceiving
faces?
Unfamiliar face matching is error prone (Bruce et
al., 1999)
Passport officers – 10%
errors (White et al., 2014)
How can we improve
performance?

3. Why is face matching difficult?
Between-person and within-person variability
Unfamiliar face matching accuracy improves when information about
variability is available (Menon et al., 2015)
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4. Orientation information
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Faces look different from different viewpoints
Recognition memory – differences in viewpoint affect accuracy
(Bruce, 1982)
Less of an effect for face matching? (Estudillo & Bindemann, 2014 but see
Bruce et al., 1999; Hill & Bruce, 1996)
No benefit when both frontal and profile views were provided (Kramer
& Reynolds, 2018) 3D view-independent representation?
Images from UNSW
Unfamiliar Face and Voice
Database (White, Burton &
Kemp, 2016)

5. Interactivity
What if the participant could interact with the face, and manoeuvre it
into any viewpoint?
Facilitate building of 3D view independent representation?
Encourage engagement  deep encoding?
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?

6. Normal vs super recognisers
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Individual differences (see Noyes et al., 2017; Lander et al., 2018)
Super-recognisers – natural face recognition/face perception skills
What might super-recognisers be doing differently?
- Holistic information? (Bobak, Bennetts et al., 2016 but see Belanova et
al., 2018)
- Structural encoding  view-independent representation?
(Bobak, Hancock et al., 2016)

7. 24 June 2020 7
Experiment 1: ‘Normal’ face recognisers
Experiment 2: ‘Superior’ face recognisers
Experiment 3: ‘Normal’ vs. ‘superior’ recognisers
Experiment 4: ‘Normal’ vs. ‘superior’ recognisers:
pixelated images

8. Experiment 1
‘Normal’ face recognisers

9. Participants
N = 306
176 female, 130 male
Age range 18-67
(M = 33.47, SD = 10.71)
CFMT+ ≤ 92
(M = 76.34, SD = 9.32)
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10. Stimuli
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UNSW Unfamiliar Face and Voice Database
(White, Burton & Kemp, 2016)

11. 24 June 2020 11
Frontal

12. Orientations
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13. Moving
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14. Interactive
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15. Results: Accuracy
Main effect of image type
(p = .019)
Interaction: image
type*identity
(p < .001)
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16. Experiment 2
‘Superior’ face recognisers

17. Participants
N = 57
28 female, 29 male
Age range 18 - 70
(M = 34.91, SD = 10.56)
CFMT+ ≥ 93
(M = 95.19, SD = 1.76)
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(‘superior’ not SR)

18. Results: Accuracy
Main effect of identity
(p = .011)
No main effect of image
type
(p = .222)
Interaction: identity*image
type
(p < .001)
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19. Conclusions so far
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20. Experiment 3
‘Normal’ vs. ‘superior’ face
recognisers

21. Participants
N = 160
104 female, 53 male, 3
prefer not to say
Age range 18 - 73
(M = 43.9, SD = 19.6)
89 ‘normal’ (CFMT+ score:
M = 71.6, SD = 12.6)
71 ‘superior’ (CFMT+
score: M = 96.9, SD =
2.25)
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22. Results: Accuracy
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75
80
85
90
95
100
FRONTAL INTERACTIVE
SUPERIORS
SAME DIFFERENT
75
80
85
90
95
100
FRONTAL INTERACTIVE
NORMALS
SAME DIFFERENT
Main effect of recognizer (p <.001)
Main effect of image type (p = .002)
identity*recognizer (p < .001); identity*image type*recognizer (p <
.001)

23. Experiment 4
‘Normal’ vs. ‘superior’ face
recognisers: pixelated images

24. Participants
N = 197
128 female, 68 male, 1
prefer not to say
Age range 21 - 86
(M = 43.3, SD = 16.1)
93 ‘normal’ (CFMT+ score:
M = 75.8, SD = 12.1)
104 ‘superior’ (CFMT+
score: M = 96.5, SD = 2.6)
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25. 24 June 2020 25

26. Results: Accuracy
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75
80
85
90
95
100
FRONTAL INTERACTIVE
NORMALS
SAME DIFFERENT
75
80
85
90
95
100
FRONTAL INTERACTIVE
SUPERIOR
SAME DIFFERENT
Main effect of image type (p = .018)
Main effect of recognizer (p <.001)
identity*recognizer (p < .001); identity*image type (p = .010)

27. Questions/Conclusions
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75
80
85
90
95
100
FRONTAL INTERACTIVE
75
80
85
90
95
100
FRONTAL INTERACTIVE
75
80
85
90
95
100
FRONTAL INTERACTIVE
SAME DIFFERENT
75
80
85
90
95
100
FRONTAL INTERACTIVE
To what extent does the interactive procedure support accurate face matching?
Are there differences in the way normal and super recognisers process faces?
What are the implications of these findings? (forensic/security)
Normal Superior
Exp3Exp4

28. Thanks for listening!
@harrietsmith15
Harriet M. J. Smith
harriet.smith02@ntu.ac.uk