Towler Alice, White David, Kemp Richard I
School of Psychology, University of New South Wales.
J Exp Psychol Appl. 2017 Mar;23(1):47-58. doi: 10.1037/xap0000108. Epub 2017 Jan 2.
Face recognition is thought to rely on representations that encode holistic properties. Paradoxically, professional forensic examiners who identify unfamiliar faces by comparing facial images are trained to adopt a feature-by-feature comparison strategy. Here we tested the effectiveness of this strategy by asking participants to rate facial feature similarity prior to making same/different identity decisions to pairs of face images. Experiment 1 provided preliminary evidence that rating feature similarity improves unfamiliar face matching accuracy in novice participants. In Experiment 2, we found benefits of this procedure over and above rating similarity of personality traits and image quality parameters, suggesting that benefits are not solely attributable to general increases in attention. In Experiment 3, we then compared performance of trained forensic facial image examiners to novice participants, and found that examiners displayed: i) superior face matching accuracy; ii) smaller face inversion and feature inversion effects; and iii) feature ratings that were more diagnostic of identity. Further, aggregating feature ratings of multiple examiners produced perfect identity discrimination. Based on these quantitative and qualitative differences between experts and novices, we conclude that comparison based on local features confers specific benefits to trained forensic examiners. (PsycINFO Database Record
人脸识别被认为依赖于对整体属性进行编码的表征。矛盾的是，通过比较面部图像来识别陌生面孔的专业法医鉴定人员被训练采用逐个特征的比较策略。在这里，我们通过要求参与者在对成对的面部图像做出相同/不同身份决定之前对面部特征相似度进行评分，来测试这种策略的有效性。实验1提供了初步证据，表明对特征相似度进行评分可以提高新手参与者对陌生面孔的匹配准确性。在实验2中，我们发现该程序的好处超过了对人格特质和图像质量参数的相似度评分，这表明这些好处不仅仅归因于注意力的普遍提高。在实验3中，我们随后将训练有素的法医面部图像鉴定人员与新手参与者的表现进行了比较，发现鉴定人员表现出：i）更高的面部匹配准确性；ii）更小的面部倒置和特征倒置效应；以及iii）更能诊断身份的特征评分。此外，汇总多名鉴定人员的特征评分可实现完美的身份辨别。基于专家和新手之间的这些定量和定性差异，我们得出结论，基于局部特征的比较为训练有素的法医鉴定人员带来了特定的好处。（PsycINFO数据库记录）
