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This paper presents a new test of object-matching ability: the Novel Object-Matching Test (NOM Test). Object-matching (or visual comparison) is a complex cognitive and perceptual visual comparison task undertaken by forensic scientists – yet no openly available, standardised and psychometrically validated test of object-matching ability exists. This is in contrast to other visual comparison domains like face-matching where many tests are widely available. In this paper, we present the development and psychometric validation of the first openly available object-matching test where people view two complex artificial visual patterns side-by-side and decide if they are from the same source or different sources. We provide normative data and psychometric properties for two long-form and two short-form versions of the test, and two additional versions designed to identify high and low-performers. We also provide evidence of discriminant validity and convergent validity that demonstrates the NOM Test correlates strongly with other object-matching tasks like fingerprint-matching – but not other tasks requiring cognitive-perceptual skill (e.g., visual intelligence). The NOM Test is free for research use with acknowledgment and is available at https://osf.io/pv6ye/.

Hyper-realistic silicone masks provide a viable route to identity fraud. Over the last decade, more than 40 known criminal acts have been committed by perpetrators using this type of disguise. With the increasing availability and bespoke sophistication of these masks, research must now focus on ways to enhance their detection. In this study, we investigate whether super-recognisers (SRs), people who excel at identity recognition, are more likely to detect this type of fraud, in comparison to typical-recogniser controls. Across three tasks, we examined mask detection rates in the absence of a pre-task prompt (covert task), and again after making participants aware of their use in criminal settings (explicit task). Finally, participants were asked to indicate which aspects of the masks could support their detection (regions of interest task). The findings show an SR advantage for the detection of hyper-realistic masks across the covert and explicit mask detection tasks. In addition, the eye, mouth, and nose regions appear to be particularly indicative of the presence of a mask. The lack of natural skin texture, proportional features, expressiveness, and asymmetry are also salient cues. The theoretical and applied implications of these findings are discussed.

Faces are key to everyday social interactions, but our understanding of social attention is based on experiments that present images of faces on computer screens. Advances in wearable eye-tracking devices now enable studies in unconstrained natural settings but this approach has been limited by manual coding of fixations. Here we introduce an automatic ‘dynamic region of interest’ (dROI) approach that registers eye-fixations to bodies and faces seen while a participant moves through the environment. We show that just 14% of fixations are to faces of passersby, contrasting with prior screen-based studies that suggest faces automatically capture visual attention. We also demonstrate the potential for this new tool to help understand differences in individuals’ social attention, and the content of their perceptual exposure to other people. Together, this can form the basis of a new paradigm for studying social attention ‘in the wild’ that opens new avenues for theoretical, applied and clinical research.

Contains fulltext : 243880.pdf (Publisher’s version ) (Open Access) Visual comparison - comparing visual stimuli (e.g., fingerprints) side by side and determining whether they originate from the same or different source (i.e., "match") - is a complex discrimination task involving many cognitive and perceptual processes. Despite the real-world consequences of this task, which is often conducted by forensic scientists, little is understood about the psychological processes underpinning this ability. There are substantial individual differences in visual comparison accuracy amongst both professionals and novices. The source of this variation is unknown, but may reflect a domain-general and naturally varying perceptual ability. Here, we investigate this by comparing individual differences (N = 248 across two studies) in four visual comparison domains: faces, fingerprints, firearms, and artificial prints. Accuracy on all comparison tasks was significantly correlated and accounted for a substantial portion of variance (e.g., 42% in Exp. 1) in performance across all tasks. Importantly, this relationship cannot be attributed to participants’ intrinsic motivation or skill in other visual-perceptual tasks (visual search and visual statistical learning). This paper provides novel evidence of a reliable, domain-general visual comparison ability. 16 p.

Facial recognition errors jeopardize national security, criminal justice, public safety and civil rights. Here, we compare the most accurate humans and facial recognition technology in a detailed lab-based evaluation and international proficiency test for forensic scientists involving 27 forensic departments from 14 countries. We find striking cognitive and perceptual diversity between naturally skilled super-recognizers, trained forensic examiners and deep neural networks, despite them achieving equivalent accuracy. Clear differences emerged in super-recognizers’ and forensic examiners’ perceptual processing, errors, and response patterns: super-recognizers were fast, biased to respond ‘same person’ and misidentified people with extreme confidence, whereas forensic examiners were slow, unbiased and strategically avoided misidentification errors. Further, these human experts and algorithms disagreed on the similarity of faces, pointing to differences in their face representations. Our findings reveal there are multiple types of facial recognition expertise, some of which are better suited to particular real-world facial recognition roles than others.

Forensic science practitioners compare visual evidence samples (e.g. fingerprints) and decide if they originate from the same person or different people (i.e. fingerprint ‘matching’). These tasks are perceptually and cognitively complex—even practising professionals can make errors—and what limited research exists suggests that existing professional training is ineffective. This paper presents three experiments that demonstrate the benefit of perceptual training derived from mathematical theories that suggest statistically rare features have diagnostic utility in visual comparison tasks. Across three studies (N = 551), we demonstrate that a brief module training participants to focus on statistically rare fingerprint features improves fingerprint-matching performance in both novices and experienced fingerprint examiners. These results have applied importance for improving the professional performance of practising fingerprint examiners, and even other domains where this technique may also be helpful (e.g. radiology or banknote security).

To slow the spread of COVID-19, many people now wear face masks in public. Face masks impair our ability to identify faces, which can cause problems for professional staff who identify offenders or members of the public. Here, we investigate whether performance on a masked face matching task can be improved by training participants to compare diagnostic facial features (the ears and facial marks)—a validated training method that improves matching performance for unmasked faces. We show this brief diagnostic feature training, which takes less than two minutes to complete, improves matching performance for masked faces by approximately 5%. A control training course, which was unrelated to face identification, had no effect on matching performance. Our findings demonstrate that comparing the ears and facial marks is an effective means of improving face matching performance for masked faces. These findings have implications for professions that regularly perform face identification.

Identifying unfamiliar faces is surprisingly error-prone, even for experienced professionals who perform this task regularly. Previous attempts to train this ability have been largely unsuccessful, leading many to conclude that face identity processing is hard-wired and not amenable to further perceptual learning. Here, we take a novel expert knowledge elicitation approach to training, based on the feature-based comparison strategy used by high-performing professional facial examiners. We show that instructing novices to focus on the facial features that are most diagnostic of identity for these experts-the ears and facial marks (e.g., scars, freckles and blemishes)-improves accuracy on unfamiliar face matching tasks by 6%. This training takes just 6 min to complete and yet accounts for approximately half of experts' superiority on the task. Benefits of training are strongest when diagnostic features are clearly visible and absent when participants are trained to rely on nondiagnostic features. Our data-driven approach contrasts with theory-driven training that is designed to improve holistic face processing mechanisms associated with familiar face recognition. This suggests that protocols which bypass the core face recognition system-and instead reorient attention to features that are undervalued by novices-offer a more promising route to training for unfamiliar face matching. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).

Is it possible to train face identification ability? To answer this question, we review the literature on professional training for facial image comparison practitioners, and the broader psychology literature on training for prosopagnosia patients and the general population. Our review of these literatures finds very little evidence that training can improve face recognition or face-matching accuracy. However, one group of specialist practitioners—facial examiners—throw this conclusion into question. Facial examiners consistently outperform novices and show qualitative differences in how they perform matching tasks, suggesting they have acquired their expertise via professional training. To account for these findings, we propose that there are two routes to expertise in face identification: The core face recognition system, which cannot be trained, and an alternative feature-based route, which can be trained. We encourage academics and practitioners to work together to identify effective and efficient training methods to teach facial image comparison practitioners to extract maximal identity information from facial features.

Deciding whether or not two images are of the same unfamiliar face is an important task in many professions. These decisions are a critical part of modern identity verification processes with direct—and often profound—consequences for individual rights and the security of society. As a result, the public expect the people entrusted with these decisions to perform accurately. But do they? Here we review 29 published tests comparing face matching accuracy in professional and novice groups. Twelve of these tests show no significant differences between professional and novice groups, suggesting that merely performing the task in daily work is not sufficient to improve accuracy. However, specialist groups of facial examiners and police super-recognizers consistently outperform novices. Staff selection, mentorship, deliberate practice, motivation, feedback and training may all contribute to enhancing the performance of individuals working in these groups, and future research is necessary to delineate their relative contributions.

Is it possible to train face identification ability? To answer this question, we review the literature on professional training for facial image comparison practitioners, and the broader psychology literature on training for prosopagnosia patients and the general population. Our review of these literatures finds very little evidence that training can improve face recognition or face matching accuracy. However, one group of specialist practitioners – facial examiners – throw this conclusion into question. Facial examiners consistently outperform novices and show qualitative differences in how they perform matching tasks, suggesting that they have acquired their expertise via professional training. To account for these findings, we propose that there are two routes to expertise in face identification: the core face recognition system which cannot be trained, and an alternative feature-based route which can be trained. We encourage academics and practitioners to work together to identify effective and efficient training methods to teach facial image comparison practitioners to extract maximal identity information from facial features.

Deciding whether or not two images are of the same unfamiliar face is an important task in many professions. These decisions are a critical part of modern identity verification processes with direct – and often profound – consequences for individual rights and the security of society. As a result, the public expect the people entrusted with these decisions to perform accurately. But do they? Here we review 29 published tests comparing face matching accuracy in professional and novice groups. Twelve of these tests show no significant differences between professional and novice groups, suggesting that merely performing the task in daily work is not sufficient to improve accuracy. However, specialist groups of Facial Examiners and Police Super- recognisers consistently outperform novices. Staff selection, mentorship, deliberate practice, motivation, feedback and training may all contribute to enhancing the performance of individuals working in these groups and future research is necessary to delineate their relative contributions.

We present a new test–the UNSW Face Test (www.unswfacetest.com)–that has been specifically designed to screen for super-recognizers in large online cohorts and is available free for scientific use. Super-recognizers are people that demonstrate sustained performance in the very top percentiles in tests of face identification ability. Because they represent a small proportion of the population, screening large online cohorts is an important step in their initial recruitment, before confirmatory testing via standardized measures and more detailed cognitive testing. We provide normative data on the UNSW Face Test from 3 cohorts tested via the internet (combined n = 23,902) and 2 cohorts tested in our lab (combined n = 182). The UNSW Face Test: (i) captures both identification memory and perceptual matching, as confirmed by correlations with existing tests of these abilities; (ii) captures face-specific perceptual and memorial abilities, as confirmed by non-significant correlations with non-face object processing tasks; (iii) enables researchers to apply stricter selection criteria than other available tests, which boosts the average accuracy of the individuals selected in subsequent testing. Together, these properties make the test uniquely suited to screening for super-recognizers in large online cohorts.

Hyper-realistic face masks have been used as disguises in at least one border crossing and in numerous criminal cases. Experimental tests using these masks have shown that viewers accept them as real faces under a range of conditions. Here, we tested mask detection in a live identity verification task. Fifty-four visitors at the London Science Museum viewed a mask wearer at close range (2 m) as part of a mock passport check. They then answered a series of questions designed to assess mask detection, while the masked traveller was still in view. In the identity matching task, 8% of viewers accepted the mask as matching a real photo of someone else, and 82% accepted the match between masked person and masked photo. When asked if there was any reason to detain the traveller, only 13% of viewers mentioned a mask. A further 11% picked disguise from a list of suggested reasons. Even after reading about mask-related fraud, 10% of viewers judged that the traveller was not wearing a mask. Overall, mask detection was poor and was not predicted by unfamiliar face matching performance. We conclude that hyper-realistic face masks could go undetected during live identity checks.

Despite playing a critical role in our criminal justice system, very little is known about the expertise of forensic scientists. Here, we review three disciplines where research has begun to investigate such expertise: handwriting analysis, fingerprint examination, and facial image comparison. We assess expertise against the scientific standard, but conclude that meeting this standard does not provide a sufficiently high benchmark for the forensic sciences. Forensic scientists must demonstrate a minimum standard of performance, the ability to defer judgement in cases at high risk of error, and the ability to effectively communicate the strength of their evidence to factfinders. We discuss the limitations of current forensic science expertise research to adequately capture factors affecting operational accuracy and outline crucial differences between studies assessing perceptual skill and operational accuracy. Finally, we identify key areas for future research and encourage cognitive scientists to engage in forensic science research.

Human factors and their implications for forensic science have attracted increasing levels of interest across criminal justice communities in recent years. Initial interest centred on cognitive biases, but has since expanded such that knowledge from psychology and cognitive science is slowly infiltrating forensic practices more broadly. This article highlights a series of important findings and insights of relevance to forensic practitioners. These include research on human perception, memory, context information, expertise, decision-making, communication, experience, verification, confidence, and feedback. The aim of this article is to sensitise forensic practitioners (and lawyers and judges) to a range of potentially significant issues, and encourage them to engage with research in these domains so that they may adapt procedures to improve performance, mitigate risks and reduce errors. Doing so will reduce the divide between forensic practitioners and research scientists as well as improve the value and utility of forensic science evidence.

It’s easy to spot someone wearing a mask, right? Well, new research suggests that it can be much harder than you think. Masks are a great way to help actors get into character and scare young children at Halloween. Unfortunately, they can also help criminals to commit identity fraud. Hyper-realistic silicone masks of the kind that get torn off in Tom Cruise’s Mission: Impossible movies are being are being used to commit identity crimes.These masks are incredibly detailed, complete with hair, freckles and wrinkles. They cover the head and chest of the wearer, and include holes for the eyes and mouth which blend seamlessly with the wearer’s skin to create a lifelike appearance. There have been a number of prominent cases of people successfully using these masks to fool others. In 2010, CNN reported that an Asian man in his twenties passed through Hong Kong Passport Control undetected, despite wearing a mask that disguised him as an elderly white man which resembled the individual in his stolen passport. He was only detected when a fellow traveller noticed that he had removed the mask during his flight to Canada. The mask wearer was apprehended by the police on landing.

This article provides an explanation of the duties and responsibilities owed by forensic practitioners (and other expert witnesses) when preparing for and presenting evidence in criminal proceedings. It is written in the shadow of reports by the National Academy of Sciences (US), the National Institute of Standards and Technology (US), the Scottish Fingerprint Inquiry and a recent publication entitled ‘How to cross-examine forensic scientists: A guide for Lawyers’. The article examines potential responses to questions focused on the need for scientific research, validation, uncertainties, limitations and error, contextual bias and the way expert opinions are expressed in reports and oral testimony. Responses and the discussion is developed around thematics such as disclosure, transparency, epistemic modesty and impartiality derived from modern admissibility and procedure rules, codes of conduct, ethical and professional responsibilities and employment contracts. The article explains why forensic practitioners must respond to the rules and expectations of adversarial legal institutions. Simultaneously, in line with accusatorial principles, it suggests that forensic practitioners employed by the state ought to conduct themselves as model forensic scientists.

Facial image comparison practitioners compare images of unfamiliar faces and decide whether or not they show the same person. Given the importance of these decisions for national security and criminal investigations, practitioners attend training courses to improve their face identification ability. However, these courses have not been empirically validated so it is unknown if they improve accuracy. Here, we review the content of eleven professional training courses offered to staff at national security, police, intelligence, passport issuance, immigration and border control agencies around the world. All reviewed courses include basic training in facial anatomy and prescribe facial feature (or 'morphological') comparison. Next, we evaluate the effectiveness of four representative courses by comparing face identification accuracy before and after training in novices (n = 152) and practitioners (n = 236). We find very strong evidence that short (1-hour and half-day) professional training courses do not improve identification accuracy, despite 93% of trainees believing their performance had improved. We find some evidence of improvement in a 3-day training course designed to introduce trainees to the unique feature-by-feature comparison strategy used by facial examiners in forensic settings. However, observed improvements are small, inconsistent across tests, and training did not produce the qualitative changes associated with examiners' expertise. Future research should test the benefits of longer examination-focussed training courses and incorporate longitudinal approaches to track improvements caused by mentoring and deliberate practice. In the absence of evidence that training is effective, we advise agencies to explore alternative evidence-based strategies for improving the accuracy of face identification decisions.

As faces become familiar, we come to rely more on their internal features for recognition and matching tasks. Here, we assess whether this same pattern is also observed for a card sorting task. Participants sorted photos showing either the full face, only the internal features, or only the external features into multiple piles, one pile per identity. In Experiments 1 and 2, we showed the standard advantage for familiar faces—sorting was more accurate and showed very few errors in comparison with unfamiliar faces. However, for both familiar and unfamiliar faces, sorting was less accurate for external features and equivalent for internal and full faces. In Experiment 3, we asked whether external features can ever be used to make an accurate sort. Using familiar faces and instructions on the number of identities present, we nevertheless found worse performance for the external in comparison with the internal features, suggesting that less identity information was available in the former. Taken together, we show that full faces and internal features are similarly informative with regard to identity. In comparison, external features contain less identity information and produce worse card sorting performance. This research extends current thinking on the shift in focus, both in attention and importance, toward the internal features and away from the external features as familiarity with a face increases.

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

Human performance on unfamiliar face matching is known to be highly error prone. However, in organisations where staff are required to perform this task as part of their daily work, attempts are often made to mitigate risk by providing training. Importantly, the methods used in these training courses have not been subjected to empirical validation. In this study we evaluate a common component of many training programmes which encourages viewers to classify face shape. Our results show very low agreement in face shape classification, both within and between participants, and across repeated presentations of a single image to a single participant. Furthermore, face shape classification training did not improve face matching accuracy, suggesting that the face shape strategy does not facilitate identification.