2,781 research outputs found
Face processing: Systems, Disorders and Cultural Differences
No full textFace processing is now a mainstream, multi-faceted and global research field in psychology, and it is growing exponentially. The volume of emerging research necessitates continuous efforts to update our overall understanding of current theory. This book brings together contributions from face processing researchers around the world to provide up-to-date reviews of topics of great current interest. The book is partitioned to give insight into face processing systems, such as those employed to verify a person’s identity in applied security settings, the state-of-the-art systems utilized for the construction of criminal facial composites in police investigations, and the cognitive systems for the recognition of familiar faces and bodies; disorders, focusing on people with extremely high and extremely poor face processing ability, as well as face processing in autism spectrum disorder; and cultural differences, including the development of perceptual and social race biases, the impact of cultural headdress traditions and reading directions on face perception, cultural similarities and differences in the processing of facial expressions, as well as a broader look at ethnicity, gender and age biases in face processing. The outcome is a book that provides diverse, interesting, useful and thought-provoking chapters, covering a range of topics of current theoretical and applied importance, authored by a combination of internationally renowned and exciting upcoming researchers. (Nova
Consolidation, wider reflection, and policy : response to ‘super-recognisers: from the lab to the world and back again’
No full textHere, David Robertson and Markus Bindemann respond to a recent BJP Target Article on ‘super-recognisers’ (SRs). They outline the need to consider human factors that could influence SR performance after selection, and the need for a co-ordinated effort to ensure best practice in the implementation of SRs in applied contexts
Forensic face matching : A review
No full textForensic face matching refers to the comparison of pairs of faces for identification purposes, and is ubiquitous in applied contexts such as passport control. Despite its widespread use, a remarkable number of errors arise in this task even under optimised conditions. In this review, we outline the problem of face matching within the wider context of passport control. We then proceed to review factors that influence accuracy by constraining data quantity within stimuli, through changes in pose, illumination, and image quality, for example. This is followed by a review of factors that influence resource limits within individuals to perform this task, encompassing individual differences and sources of bias
Supplemental material for Facial Identification at a Virtual Reality Airport
No full textSupplemental Material for Facial Identification at a Virtual Reality Airport by Hannah M. Tummon, John Allen and Markus Bindemann in i-Perception</p
A multi-sensory system for self-face learning
No full textThe face is the primary visual signpost of our identity, but the process of how we know that a particular face is one’s own has only recently started to receive considerable scientific attention. This interest has been enhanced by multisensory phenomena such as the enfacement illusion. In this illusion, watching another face being stroked in synchrony with one’s own face produces a bias in self-recognition, whereby the other face is perceived as the own. Here, we argue that the enfacement illusion demonstrates that the representation of the own face is highly flexible and can be updated rapidly. This flexibility would allow the incorporation of changes in physical appearance as a consequence of, for example, ambient within-person variability, grooming activities or ageing. We further present evidence to demonstrate that the enfacement illusion not only transcends differences in visual appearance with another face, but also moderates affective and social processing of that face
Culture shapes face perception : Comparisons of Egypt and the UK
No full textThe psychological literature reports a variety of cross-cultural differences in cognition, but most of these are based on comparisons of Western and Asian observers. Here, we discuss quantitative and qualitative cross-cultural differences in face processing between Western (British) and Middle-Eastern (Egyptian) observers. First, the perceptual basis of the well-established other-race effect in face processing is reviewed. Second, we discuss a qualitative cross-cultural difference in the relative importance of internal and external features for the matching of unfamiliar faces, which appears to reflect the long-term experience of Middle-Eastern observers in perceiving faces with headscarves. Third, we discuss how cultural differences in reading direction affect the well-established left visual field bias in face processing. We conclude that cultural differences between Western and Middle-Eastern observers, such as those reflecting headdress traditions and reading direction, influence the perception of faces
Criminal thinking in a Middle Eastern prison sample of thieves, drug dealers and murderers.
No full textPurpose: The Psychological Inventory of Criminal Thinking Styles (PICTS) has been applied extensively to the study of criminal behaviour and cognition. This study aimed to explore the psychometric characteristics (factorial structure, reliability and external validity) of an Arabic version of the PICTS, to explore cross-cultural differences between a sample of Middle-Eastern (Egyptian) prisoners and Western prison samples, and to examine the influence of type of crime on criminal thinking styles.
Method: A group of 130 Egyptian male prisoners who had been sentenced for theft, drug dealing or murder completed the PICTS. Their scores were compared with the reported data of American, British, and Dutch prisoners.
Results: The Arabic PICTS showed scale reliabilities estimated by coefficient alpha comparable to the English version, and reliabilities estimated as test-retest correlations were high. Confirmatory factor analysis showed that the PICTS subscale scores of Egyptian prisoners best fitted a two-factor model, in which one dimension comprised mollification, entitlement, superoptimism, sentimentality and discontinuity, and the second dimension reflected the thinking styles of power orientation, cut-off and cognitive indolence. Observed levels of thinking styles varied by type of crime, specifically between prisoners sentenced for theft, drug dealing, and murder. Cultural differences in criminal thinking styles were also found, whereby the Egyptian prisoners recorded the highest scores in most thinking styles, while American, Dutch and English prisoners were more comparable to each other.
Conclusions: This study provides one of the first investigations of criminal thinking styles in a non-Western sample and suggests that cross-cultural differences in the structure of these thinking styles exist. In addition, the results indicate that criminal thinking styles need to be understood by the type of crime for which a person has been sentenced
Searching for faces differs from categorization: Evidence from scenes and eye movements
No full textThis study examined whether the detection of frontal, ¾ and profile face views differs from their categorization as faces. Experiment 1 compared three tasks that required observers to determine the presence or absence of a face but varied in the extent to which they had to search for faces in simple displays and small or large scenes to make this decision. Performance was equivalent for all face views in simple displays and small scenes, but was notably slower for profile views when this required the search for faces in extended scene displays. This search effect was confirmed in Experiment 2, which compared observers’ eye movements with their response times to faces in visual scenes. These results demonstrate that the categorization of faces at fixation is dissociable from the detection of faces in space. Consequently, we suggest that face detection should be studied with extended visual displays, such as natural scenes
Diagnosing Eyewitness Accuracy
No full textEyewitnesses frequently mistake innocent people for the perpetrator of an observed crime. Such misidentifications have led to the wrongful convictions of many people. Despite this, no reliable method yet exists to determine eyewitness accuracy. This thesis explored two new experimental methods for this purpose. Chapter 2 investigated whether repetition priming can measure prior exposure to a target and compared this with observers’ explicit eyewitness accuracy. Across three experiments slower responses to target faces were consistently observed irrespective of eyewitness accuracy in a lineup task. This indicates that repetition priming can provide a covert index of eyewitness accuracy. However this method could not reliably assess the accuracy of individual eyewitnesses. Chapter 3 therefore explored an alternative test of eyewitness accuracy which was based on a multiple lineup procedure for faces. The characteristics of this method were assessed over five experiments which showed that only some eyewitnesses can actually identify a perpetrator repeatedly. Chapter 4 then showed that such repeat-identifications can provide a direct index of eyewitness accuracy in a field study. Over two experiments, the success of this method was such that eyewitnesses who consistently acted on the same identity over six lineups were always accurate eyewitnesses. These results demonstrate that multiple lineups of faces could provide a useful method for assessing eyewitness accuracy. The implications of these findings, both for further study and for forensic application, are discussed
Perceived ability and actual recognition accuracy for unfamiliar and famous faces
No full textIn forensic person recognition tasks, mistakes in the identification of unfamiliar faces occur frequently. This study explored whether these errors might arise because observers are poor at judging their ability to recognize unfamiliar faces, and also whether they might conflate the recognition of familiar and unfamiliar faces. Across two experiments, we found that observers could predict their ability to recognize famous but not unfamiliar faces. Moreover, observers seemed to partially conflate these abilities by adjusting ability judgements for famous faces after a test of unfamiliar face recognition (Experiment 1) and vice versa (Experiment 2). These findings suggest that observers have limited insight into their ability to identify unfamiliar faces. These experiments also show that judgements of recognition abilities are malleable and can generalize across different face categories
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