Forgetting faces over a week: investigating self-reported face recognition ability and personality.

Background: Although face recognition is now well studied, few researchers have considered the nature of forgetting over longer time periods. Here, I investigated how newly learned faces were recognised over the course of one week. In addition, I considered whether self-reported face recognition ability, as well as Big Five personality dimensions, were able to predict actual performance in a recognition task.
Methods: In this experiment ( N  = 570), faces were learned through short video interviews, and these identities were later presented in a recognition test (using previously unseen images) after no delay, six hours, twelve hours, one day, or seven days.
Results: The majority of forgetting took place within the first 24 hours, with no significant decrease after that timepoint. Further, self-reported face recognition abilities were moderately predictive of performance, while extraversion showed a small, negative association with performance. In both cases, these associations remained consistent across delay conditions.
Discussion: The current work begins to address important questions regarding face recognition using longitudinal, real-world time intervals, focussing on participant insight into their own abilities, and the process of forgetting more generally.
Competing Interests: The authors declare there are no competing interests.
(©2021 Kramer.)