Bate Sarah, Dudfield Gavin
Department of Psychology, Bournemouth University, Poole, UK.
Dorset Police, UK.
PeerJ. 2019 Jan 31;7:e6330. doi: 10.7717/peerj.6330. eCollection 2019.
Metacognition about face recognition has been much discussed in the psychological literature. In particular, the use of self-report to identify people with prosopagnosia ("face blindness") has contentiously been debated. However, no study to date has specifically assessed metacognition at the top end of the spectrum. If people with exceptionally proficient face recognition skills ("super-recognizers," SRs) have greater insight into their abilities, self-report instruments may offer an efficient means of reducing candidate lists in SR screening programs. Here, we developed a "super-recognizer questionnaire" (SRQ), calibrated using a top-end civilian sample (Experiment 1). We examined its effectiveness in identifying SRs in pools of police (Experiment 2) and civilian (Experiment 3) participants, using objective face memory and matching tests. Moderate effect sizes in both samples suggest limited insight into face memory and target-present face matching ability, whereas the only predictor of target-absent matching performance across all samples was the number of years that an officer had been in the police force. Because the SRQ and single-item ratings showed little sensitivity in discriminating SRs from typical perceivers in police officers and civilians, we recommend against the use of self-report instruments in SR screening programs.
关于人脸识别的元认知在心理学文献中已有诸多讨论。特别是，使用自我报告来识别面孔失认症（“脸盲症”）患者一直存在争议。然而，迄今为止尚无研究专门评估该谱系高端的元认知情况。如果具有异常熟练人脸识别技能的人（“超级识别者”，SRs）对自己的能力有更强的洞察力，那么自我报告工具可能会为减少SR筛选项目中的候选名单提供一种有效方法。在此，我们开发了一份“超级识别者问卷”（SRQ），并使用高端平民样本进行校准（实验1）。我们通过客观的面部记忆和匹配测试，检验了该问卷在识别警察（实验2）和平民（实验3）参与者群体中的SRs方面的有效性。两个样本中的中等效应量表明对面部记忆和目标存在时面部匹配能力的洞察力有限，而在所有样本中，目标不存在时匹配表现的唯一预测因素是警察的警龄。由于SRQ和单项评分在区分警察和平民中的SRs与典型感知者时敏感性较低，我们不建议在SR筛选项目中使用自我报告工具。
