Noyes Eilidh, Hill Matthew Q, O'Toole Alice J
School of Behavioral and Brain Sciences, GR4.1, The University of Texas at Dallas, 800 W Campbell Road, Richardson, TX 75080-3021 USA.
Cogn Res Princ Implic. 2018 Jun 27;3:23. doi: 10.1186/s41235-018-0117-4. eCollection 2018 Dec.
There are large individual differences in people's face recognition ability. These individual differences provide an opportunity to recruit the best face-recognisers into jobs that require accurate person identification, through the implementation of ability-screening tasks. To date, screening has focused exclusively on face recognition ability; however real-world identifications can involve the use of other person-recognition cues. Here we incorporate body and biological motion recognition as relevant skills for person identification. We test whether performance on a standardised face-matching task (the Glasgow Face Matching Test) predicts performance on three other identity-matching tasks, based on faces, bodies, and biological motion. We examine the results from group versus individual analyses. We found stark differences between the conclusions one would make from group analyses versus analyses that retain information about individual differences. Specifically, tests of correlation and analysis of variance suggested that face recognition ability was related to performance for all person identification tasks. These analyses were strikingly inconsistent with the individual differences data, which suggested that the screening task was related only to performance on the face task. This study highlights the importance of individual data in the interpretation of results of person identification ability.
人们的面部识别能力存在很大的个体差异。这些个体差异为通过实施能力筛选任务，招募最擅长面部识别的人从事需要准确识别人员的工作提供了机会。迄今为止，筛选仅专注于面部识别能力；然而，现实世界中的身份识别可能涉及使用其他人员识别线索。在这里，我们将身体和生物运动识别纳入作为人员识别的相关技能。我们测试标准化面部匹配任务（格拉斯哥面部匹配测试）的表现是否能预测基于面部、身体和生物运动的其他三项身份匹配任务的表现。我们检查了组分析与个体分析的结果。我们发现，从组分析与保留个体差异信息的分析得出的结论之间存在明显差异。具体而言，相关性测试和方差分析表明，面部识别能力与所有人员识别任务的表现相关。这些分析与个体差异数据明显不一致，个体差异数据表明筛选任务仅与面部任务的表现相关。这项研究强调了个体数据在人员识别能力结果解释中的重要性。
