Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

Individual differences and the multidimensional nature of face perception

  • Review Article
  • Published:

From Nature Reviews Psychology

View current issue Sign up to alerts

Abstract

Face perception is crucial to social interactions, yet people vary in how easily they can recognize their friends, verify an identification document or notice someone’s smile. There are widespread differences in people’s ability to recognize faces, and research has particularly focused on exceptionally good or poor recognition performance. In this Review, we synthesize the literature on individual differences in face processing across various tasks including identification and estimates of emotional state and social attributes. The individual differences approach has considerable untapped potential for theoretical progress in understanding the perceptual and cognitive organization of face processing. This approach also has practical consequences — for example, in determining who is best suited to check passports. We also discuss the underlying structural and anatomical predictors of face perception ability. Furthermore, we highlight problems of measurement that pose challenges for the effective study of individual differences. Finally, we note that research in individual differences rarely addresses perception of familiar faces. Despite people’s everyday experience of being ‘good’ or ‘bad’ with faces, a theory of how people recognize their friends remains elusive.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Log in via an institution

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Institutional subscriptions

Fig. 1: Taxonomy of tasks used to measure face processing abilities.
Fig. 2: Everyday decisions depend on rapid decoding of multidimensional person-related cues.

Similar content being viewed by others

References

  1. Calder, A. J. & Young, A. W. Understanding the recognition of facial identity and facial expression. Nat. Rev. Neurosci. 6, 641–651 (2005).

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  2. Connolly, H. L., Young, A. W. & Lewis, G. J. Recognition of facial expression and identity in part reflects a common ability, independent of general intelligence and visual short-term memory. Cogn. Emot. 33, 1–10 (2018).

    Google Scholar 

  3. Connolly, H. L., Lefevre, C. E., Young, A. W. & Lewis, G. J. Emotion recognition ability: evidence for a supramodal factor and its links to social cognition. Cognition 197, 104166 (2020).

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  4. Vogel, E. K., McCollough, A. W. & Machizawa, M. G. Neural measures reveal individual differences in controlling access to working memory. Nature 438, 500–503 (2005).

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  5. Kanai, R. & Rees, G. The structural basis of inter-individual differences in human behaviour and cognition. Nat. Rev. Neurosci. 12, 231–242 (2011).

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  6. Bruce, V. & Young, A. Understanding face recognition. Br. J. Psychol. 77, 305–327 (1986).

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  7. Haxby, J. V. et al. The distributed human neural system for face perception. Trends Cogn. Sci. 4, 223–233 (2000).

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  8. Jenkins, R., White, D., Montfort, X. V. & Burton, A. M. Variability in photos of the same face. Cognition 121, 313–323 (2011).

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  9. Farah, M. J., Wilson, K. D., Drain, M. & Tanaka, J. N. What is “special” about face perception? Psychol. Rev. 105, 482–498 (1998).

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  10. Wilmer, J. B. Individual differences in face recognition: a decade of discovery. Curr. Dir. Psychol. Sci. 26, 225–230 (2017).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  11. Palermo, R., O’Connor, K. B., Davis, J. M., Irons, J. & McKone, E. New tests to measure individual differences in matching and labelling facial expressions of emotion, and their association with ability to recognise vocal emotions and facial identity. PLoS ONE 8, e68126 (2013).

    Article  PubMed  PubMed Central  Google Scholar 

  12. Sutherland, C. A. M. et al. Individual differences in trust evaluations are shaped mostly by environments, not genes. Proc. Natl Acad. Sci. USA 117, 10218–10224 (2020).

    Article  PubMed  PubMed Central  Google Scholar 

  13. McConachie, H. R. Developmental prosopagnosia. a single case report. Cortex 12, 76–82 (1976).

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  14. Behrmann, M. & Avidan, G. Congenital prosopagnosia: face-blind from birth. Trends Cogn. Sci. 9, 180–187 (2005).

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  15. Dobel, C., Bölte, J., Aicher, M. & Schweinberger, S. R. Prosopagnosia without apparent cause: overview and diagnosis of six cases. Cortex 43, 718–733 (2007).

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  16. Bobak, A. K., Bennetts, R. J., Parris, B. A., Jansari, A. & Bate, S. An in-depth cognitive examination of individuals with superior face recognition skills. Cortex 82, 48–62 (2016).

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  17. Russell, R., Duchaine, B. & Nakayama, K. Super-recognizers: people with extraordinary face recognition ability. Psychon. Bull. Rev. 16, 252–257 (2009).

    Article  PubMed  PubMed Central  Google Scholar 

  18. Ramon, M., Bobak, A. K. & White, D. Super-recognizers: from the lab to the world and back again. Br. J. Psychol. 110, 461–479 (2019).

    Article  PubMed  PubMed Central  Google Scholar 

  19. Chatterjee, G. & Nakayama, K. Normal facial age and gender perception in developmental prosopagnosia. Cogn. Neuropsychol. 29, 482–502 (2012).

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  20. McCaffery, J. M., Robertson, D. J., Young, A. W. & Burton, A. M. Individual differences in face identity processing. Cogn. Res. Princ. Implic. 3, 21 (2018).

    Article  PubMed  PubMed Central  Google Scholar 

  21. Verhallen, R. J. et al. General and specific factors in the processing of faces. Vis. Res. 141, 217–227 (2017).

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  22. Wilmer, J. B. et al. Human face recognition ability is specific and highly heritable. Proc. Natl Acad. Sci. USA 107, 5238–5241 (2010).

    Article  PubMed  PubMed Central  Google Scholar 

  23. Zhu, Q. et al. Heritability of the specific cognitive ability of face perception. Curr. Biol. 20, 137–142 (2010).

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  24. Shakeshaft, N. G. & Plomin, R. Genetic specificity of face recognition. Proc. Natl Acad. Sci. USA 112, 12887–12892 (2015).

    Article  PubMed  PubMed Central  Google Scholar 

  25. Lewis, G. J., Shakeshaft, N. G. & Plomin, R. Face identity recognition and the social difficulties component of the autism-like phenotype: evidence for phenotypic and genetic links. J. Autism Dev. Disord. 48, 2758–2765 (2018).

    Article  PubMed  PubMed Central  Google Scholar 

  26. Garrido, L. et al. Voxel-based morphometry reveals reduced grey matter volume in the temporal cortex of developmental prosopagnosics. Brain 132, 3443–3455 (2009).

    Article  PubMed  PubMed Central  Google Scholar 

  27. McGugin, R. W., Newton, A. T., Tamber-Rosenau, B., Tomarken, A. & Gauthier, I. Thickness of deep layers in the fusiform face area predicts face recognition. J. Cogn. Neurosci. 32, 1316–1329 (2020).

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  28. Jin, Z. et al. Impaired face recognition is associated with abnormal gray matter volume in the posterior cingulate cortex in congenital amusia. Neuropsychologia 156, 107833 (2021).

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  29. Ramot, M., Walsh, C. & Martin, A. Multifaceted integration: memory for faces is subserved by widespread connections between visual, memory, auditory, and social networks. J. Neurosci. 39, 4976–4985 (2019).

    Article  PubMed  PubMed Central  Google Scholar 

  30. Elbich, D. B. & Scherf, S. Beyond the FFA: brain-behavior correspondences in face recognition abilities. NeuroImage 147, 409–422 (2017).

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  31. Weibert, K. & Andrews, T. J. Activity in the right fusiform face area predicts the behavioural advantage for the perception of familiar faces. Neuropsychologia 75, 588–596 (2015).

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  32. Webb, S. J., Neuhaus, E. & Faja, S. Face perception and learning in autism spectrum disorders. Q. J. Exp. Psychol. 70, 1–17 (2016).

    Google Scholar 

  33. Hedley, D., Brewer, N. & Young, R. Face recognition performance of individuals with Asperger syndrome on the Cambridge Face Memory Test. Autism Res. 4, 449–455 (2011).

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  34. Uljarevic, M. & Hamilton, A. Recognition of emotions in autism: a formal meta-analysis. J. Autism Dev. Disord. 43, 1517–1526 (2013).

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  35. Behrmann, M. et al. Configural processing in autism and its relationship to face processing. Neuropsychologia 44, 110–129 (2006).

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  36. Harms, M. B., Martin, A. & Wallace, G. L. Facial emotion recognition in autism spectrum disorders: a review of behavioral and neuroimaging studies. Neuropsychol. Rev. 20, 290–322 (2010).

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  37. Pellicano, E. & Burr, D. When the world becomes ‘too real’: a Bayesian explanation of autistic perception. Trends Cogn. Sci. 16, 504–510 (2012).

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  38. Pylyshyn, Z. Is vision continuous with cognition?: The case for cognitive impenetrability of visual perception. Behav. Brain Sci. 22, 341–365 (1999).

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  39. Gignac, G. E., Shankaralingam, M., Walker, K. & Kilpatrick, P. Short-term memory for faces relates to general intelligence moderately. Intelligence 57, 96–104 (2016).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  40. Dennett, H. W. et al. The Cambridge Car Memory Test: a task matched in format to the Cambridge Face Memory Test, with norms, reliability, sex differences, dissociations from face memory, and expertise effects. Behav. Res. Methods 44, 587–605 (2012).

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  41. Richler, J. J., Wilmer, J. B. & Gauthier, I. General object recognition is specific: evidence from novel and familiar objects. Cognition 166, 42–55 (2017).

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  42. Wilmer, J. B. et al. Capturing specific abilities as a window into human individuality: the example of face recognition. Cogn. Neuropsychol. 29, 360–392 (2012).

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  43. Geskin, J. & Behrmann, M. Congenital prosopagnosia without object agnosia? A literature review. Cogn. Neuropsychol. 35, 1–51 (2017).

    Google Scholar 

  44. McNeil, J. E. & Warrington, E. K. Prosopagnosia: a face-specific disorder. Q. J. Exp. Psychol. Sect. A 46, 1–10 (1993).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  45. Kanwisher, N. & Yovel, G. The fusiform face area: a cortical region specialized for the perception of faces. Philos. Trans. R. Soc. B: Biol. Sci. 361, 2109–2128 (2006).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  46. McKone, E., Kanwisher, N. & Duchaine, B. C. Can generic expertise explain special processing for faces? Trends Cogn. Sci. 11, 8–15 (2007).

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  47. Kanwisher, N. Domain specificity in face perception. Nat. Neurosci. 3, 759–763 (2000).

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  48. Gauthier, I., Curran, T., Curby, K. M. & Collins, D. Perceptual interference supports a non-modular account of face processing. Nat. Neurosci. 6, 428–432 (2003).

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  49. Richler, J. J. et al. Individual differences in object recognition. Psychol. Rev. 126, 226–251 (2019).

    Article  PubMed  PubMed Central  Google Scholar 

  50. Dunn, J. D., Summersby, S., Towler, A., Davis, J. P. & White, D. UNSW Face Test: a screening tool for super-recognizers. PLoS ONE 15, e0241747 (2020).

    Article  PubMed  PubMed Central  Google Scholar 

  51. Balsdon, T., Summersby, S., Kemp, R. I. & White, D. Improving face identification with specialist teams. Cogn. Res. Princ. Implic. 3, 25 (2018).

    Article  PubMed  PubMed Central  Google Scholar 

  52. Fysh, M. C., Stacchi, L. & Ramon, M. Differences between and within individuals, and subprocesses of face cognition: implications for theory, research and personnel selection. R. Soc. Open. Sci. 7, 200233 (2020).

    Article  PubMed  PubMed Central  Google Scholar 

  53. Bobak, A. K., Pampoulov, P. & Bate, S. Detecting superior face recognition skills in a large sample of young British adults. Front. Psychol. 7, 1378 (2016).

    Article  PubMed  PubMed Central  Google Scholar 

  54. Stantic, M. et al. The Oxford Face Matching Test: a non-biased test of the full range of individual differences in face perception. Behav. Res. Methods 54, 158–173 (2022).

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  55. Duchaine, B. & Nakayama, K. The Cambridge Face Memory Test: results for neurologically intact individuals and an investigation of its validity using inverted face stimuli and prosopagnosic participants. Neuropsychologia 44, 576–585 (2006).

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  56. Burton, A. M., White, D. & McNeill, A. The Glasgow Face Matching Test. Behav. Res. Methods 42, 286–291 (2010).

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  57. Phillips, P. J. et al. Face recognition accuracy of forensic examiners, superrecognizers, and face recognition algorithms. Proc. Natl Acad. Sci. USA 115, 201721355 (2018).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  58. White, D., Guilbert, D., Varela, V. P. L., Jenkins, R. & Burton, A. M. GFMT2: a psychometric measure of face matching ability. Behav. Res. Methods 54, 252–260 (2021).

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  59. Richler, J. J., Cheung, O. S. & Gauthier, I. Holistic processing predicts face recognition. Psychol. Sci. 22, 464–471 (2011).

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  60. Verhallen, R. J. et al. An online version of the Mooney Face Test: phenotypic and genetic associations. Neuropsychologia 63, 19–25 (2014).

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  61. Jenkins, R., Dowsett, A. J. & Burton, A. M. How many faces do people know? Proc. R. Soc. B 285, 20181319 (2018).

    Article  PubMed  PubMed Central  Google Scholar 

  62. Johnston, R. A. & Edmonds, A. J. Familiar and unfamiliar face recognition: a review. Memory 17, 577–596 (2009).

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  63. Collins, E., Robinson, A. K. & Behrmann, M. Distinct neural processes for the perception of familiar versus unfamiliar faces along the visual hierarchy revealed by EEG. NeuroImage 181, 120–131 (2018).

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  64. Wiese, H. et al. A robust neural index of high face familiarity. Psychol. Sci. 30, 261–272 (2019).

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  65. Megreya, A. M. & Burton, A. M. Unfamiliar faces are not faces: evidence from a matching task. Mem. Cogn. 34, 865–876 (2006).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  66. Bate, S. et al. Objective patterns of face recognition deficits in 165 adults with self-reported developmental prosopagnosia. Brain Sci. 9, 133 (2019).

    Article  PubMed Central  Google Scholar 

  67. Matsuyoshi, D. & Watanabe, K. People have modest, not good, insight into their face recognition ability: a comparison between self-report questionnaires. Psychol. Res. 85, 1713–1723 (2021).

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  68. Bobak, A. K., Mileva, V. R. & Hancock, P. J. Facing the facts: naive participants have only moderate insight into their face recognition and face perception abilities. Q. J. Exp. Psychol. 72, 872–881 (2018).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  69. Gray, K. L. H., Bird, G. & Cook, R. Robust associations between the 20-item prosopagnosia index and the Cambridge Face Memory Test in the general population. R. Soc. Open. Sci. 4, 160923 (2017).

    Article  PubMed  PubMed Central  Google Scholar 

  70. Ventura, P., Livingston, L. A. & Shah, P. Adults have moderate-to-good insight into their face recognition ability: further validation of the 20-item Prosopagnosia Index in a Portuguese sample. Q. J. Exp. Psychol. 71, 2677–2679 (2018).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  71. Palermo, R. et al. Do people have insight into their face recognition abilities? Q. J. Exp. Psychol. 70, 1–16 (2017).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  72. Arizpe, J. M. et al. Self-reported face recognition is highly valid, but alone is not highly discriminative of prosopagnosia- level performance on objective assessments. Behav. Res. Methods 51, 1102–1116 (2019).

    Article  PubMed  PubMed Central  Google Scholar 

  73. Zhou, X. & Jenkins, R. Dunning–Kruger effects in face perception. Cognition 203, 104345 (2020).

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  74. Devue, C., Wride, A. & Grimshaw, G. M. New insights on real-world human face recognition. J. Exp. Psychol. Gen. 148, 994–1007 (2018).

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  75. Thielgen, M. M., Schade, S. & Bosé, C. Face processing in police service: the relationship between laboratory-based assessment of face processing abilities and performance in a real-world identity matching task. Cogn. Res. Princ. Implic. 6, 54 (2021).

    Article  PubMed  PubMed Central  Google Scholar 

  76. Ekman, P. & Friesen, W. V. Constants across cultures in the face and emotion. J. Pers. Soc. Psychol. 17, 124–129 (1971).

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  77. Jack, R. E., Garrod, O. G. B., Yu, H., Caldara, R. & Schyns, P. G. Facial expressions of emotion are not culturally universal. Proc. Natl Acad. Sci. USA 109, 7241–7244 (2012).

    Article  PubMed  PubMed Central  Google Scholar 

  78. Mesquita, B., Boiger, M. & Leersnyder, J. D. The cultural construction of emotions. Curr. Opin. Psychol. 8, 31–36 (2016).

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  79. Olderbak, S. & Wilhelm, O. Emotion perception and empathy: an individual differences test of relations. Emotion 17, 1092–1106 (2017).

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  80. Lázaro, E. et al. Instrument for assessing the ability to identify emotional facial expressions in healthy children and in children with ADHD: the FEEL test. J. Atten. Disord. 23, 563–569 (2019).

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  81. Baron-Cohen, S., Wheelwright, S. & Therese, J. Is there a “language of the eyes”? Evidence from normal adults, and adults with autism or Asperger syndrome. Vis. Cogn. 4, 311–331 (1997).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  82. Calder, A. J., Ewbank, M. & Passamonti, L. Personality influences the neural responses to viewing facial expressions of emotion. Philos. Trans. R. Soc. B: Biol. Sci. 366, 1684–1701 (2011).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  83. Willis, J. & Todorov, A. First impressions. Psychol. Sci. 17, 592–598 (2005).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  84. Zebrowitz, L. A. & Montepare, J. M. in First Impressions (eds Ambady, N. & Skowronski, J. J.) 171–204 (Guilford, 2008).

  85. Oosterhof, N. N. & Todorov, A. The functional basis of face evaluation. Proc. Natl Acad. Sci. USA 105, 11087–11092 (2008).

    Article  PubMed  PubMed Central  Google Scholar 

  86. Todorov, A., Olivola, C. Y., Dotsch, R. & Mende-Siedlecki, P. Social attributions from faces: determinants, consequences, accuracy, and functional significance. Annu. Rev. Psychol. 66, 519–545 (2015).

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  87. Hehman, E., Sutherland, C. A. M., Flake, J. K. & Slepian, M. L. The unique contributions of perceiver and target characteristics in person perception. J. Pers. Soc. Psychol. 113, 513–529 (2017).

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  88. Hehman, E., Stolier, R. M., Freeman, J. B., Flake, J. K. & Xie, S. Y. Toward a comprehensive model of face impressions: what we know, what we do not, and paths forward. Soc. Pers. Psychol. Compass 13, e12431 (2019).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  89. Germine, L. et al. Individual aesthetic preferences for faces are shaped mostly by environments, not genes. Curr. Biol. 25, 2684–2689 (2015).

    Article  PubMed  PubMed Central  Google Scholar 

  90. Zebrowitz, L. A. First impressions from faces. Curr. Dir. Psychol. Sci. 26, 237–242 (2017).

    Article  PubMed  PubMed Central  Google Scholar 

  91. Sutherland, C. A. M., Rhodes, G., Burton, N. S. & Young, A. W. Do facial first impressions reflect a shared social reality? Br. J. Psychol. 111, 215–232 (2020).

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  92. Sofer, C., Dotsch, R., Wigboldus, D. H. J. & Todorov, A. What is typical is good. Psychol. Sci. 26, 39–47 (2014).

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  93. Sutherland, C. A. M., Young, A. W. & Rhodes, G. Facial first impressions from another angle: how social judgements are influenced by changeable and invariant facial properties. Br. J. Psychol. 108, 397–415 (2017).

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  94. Sutherland, C. A. et al. Social inferences from faces: ambient images generate a three-dimensional model. Cognition 127, 105–118 (2013).

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  95. Todorov, A. & Porter, J. M. Misleading first impressions. Psychol. Sci. 25, 1404–1417 (2014).

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  96. White, D., Sutherland, C. A. M. & Burton, A. L. Choosing face: the curse of self in profile image selection. Cogn. Res. Princ. Implic. 2, 23 (2017).

    Article  PubMed  PubMed Central  Google Scholar 

  97. Noyes, E., Hill, M. Q. & O’Toole, A. J. Face recognition ability does not predict person identification performance: using individual data in the interpretation of group results. Cogn. Res. Princ. Implic. 3, 23 (2018).

    Article  PubMed  PubMed Central  Google Scholar 

  98. Mühl, C., Sheil, O., Jarutyte˙, L. & Bestelmeyer, P. E. G. The Bangor Voice Matching Test: a standardized test for the assessment of voice perception ability. Behav. Res. Methods 50, 2184–2192 (2018).

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  99. Aglieri, V. et al. The Glasgow Voice Memory Test: assessing the ability to memorize and recognize unfamiliar voices. Behav. Res. Methods 49, 97–110 (2017).

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  100. Lavan, N., Burston, L. F. K. & Garrido, L. How many voices did you hear? Natural variability disrupts identity perception from unfamiliar voices. Br. J. Psychol. 110, 576–593 (2019).

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  101. Bestelmeyer, P. E. & Mühl, C. Individual differences in voice adaptability are specifically linked to voice perception skill. Cognition 210, 104582 (2021).

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  102. Johnson, J., McGettigan, C. & Lavan, N. Comparing unfamiliar voice and face identity perception using identity sorting tasks. Q. J. Exp. Psychol. 73, 1537–1545 (2020).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  103. Jenkins, R. E. et al. Are super-face-recognisers also super-voice-recognisers? Evidence from cross-modal identification tasks. Appl. Cogn. Psychol. 35, 590–605 (2021).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  104. Tsantani, M. & Cook, R. Normal recognition of famous voices in developmental prosopagnosia. Sci. Rep. 10, 19757 (2020).

    Article  PubMed  PubMed Central  Google Scholar 

  105. Fraccaro, P. J. et al. Correlated male preferences for femininity in female faces and voices. Evol. Psychol. 8, 147470491000800311 (2010).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  106. Yovel, G. & Belin, P. A unified coding strategy for processing faces and voices. Trends Cogn. Sci. 17, 263–271 (2013).

    Article  PubMed  PubMed Central  Google Scholar 

  107. Spence, C. The scent of attraction and the smell of success: crossmodal influences on person perception. Cogn. Res. Princ. Implic. 6, 46 (2021).

    Article  PubMed  PubMed Central  Google Scholar 

  108. Secundo, L. et al. Individual olfactory perception reveals meaningful nonolfactory genetic information. Proc. Natl Acad. Sci. USA 112, 8750–8755 (2015).

    Article  PubMed  PubMed Central  Google Scholar 

  109. Schirmer, A. & Adolphs, R. Emotion perception from face, voice, and touch: comparisons and convergence. Trends Cogn. Sci. 21, 216–228 (2017).

    Article  PubMed  PubMed Central  Google Scholar 

  110. Dawel, A., O’Kearney, R., McKone, E. & Palermo, R. Not just fear and sadness: meta-analytic evidence of pervasive emotion recognition deficits for facial and vocal expressions in psychopathy. Neurosci. Biobehav. Rev. 36, 2288–2304 (2012).

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  111. Dadds, M. R., Kimonis, E. R., Schollar-Root, O., Moul, C. & Hawes, D. J. Are impairments in emotion recognition a core feature of callous–unemotional traits? Testing the primary versus secondary variants model in children. Dev. Psychopathol. 30, 67–77 (2018).

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  112. Bird, G. & Viding, E. The self to other model of empathy: providing a new framework for understanding empathy impairments in psychopathy, autism, and alexithymia. Neurosci. Biobehav. Rev. 47, 520–532 (2014).

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  113. Rhodes, G. et al. How distinct is the coding of face identity and expression? Evidence for some common dimensions in face space. Cognition 142, 123–137 (2015).

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  114. Hildebrandt, A., Schacht, A., Sommer, W. & Wilhelm, O. Measuring the speed of recognising facially expressed emotions. Cogn. Emot. 26, 650–666 (2012).

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  115. Herzmann, G., Kunina, O., Sommer, W. & Wilhelm, O. Individual differences in face cognition: brain–behavior relationships. J. Cogn. Neurosci. 22, 571–589 (2010).

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  116. Esins, J., Schultz, J., Stemper, C., Kennerknecht, I. & Bülthoff, I. Face perception and test reliabilities in congenital prosopagnosia in seven tests. i-Perception 7, 2041669515625797 (2016).

    Article  PubMed  PubMed Central  Google Scholar 

  117. Thomas, A. L., Lawler, K., Olson, I. R. & Aguirre, G. K. The Philadelphia face perception battery. Arch. Clin. Neuropsychol. 23, 175–187 (2008).

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  118. Tanaka, J. W. & Farah, M. J. Parts and wholes in face recognition. Q. J. Exp. Psychol. Sect. A 46, 225–245 (1993).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  119. Young, A. W., Hellawell, D. & Hay, D. C. Configurational information in face perception. Perception 16, 747–759 (1987).

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  120. Yovel, G., Wilmer, J. B. & Duchaine, B. What can individual differences reveal about face processing? Front. Hum. Neurosci. 8, 562 (2014).

    Article  PubMed  PubMed Central  Google Scholar 

  121. DeGutis, J., Mercado, R. J., Wilmer, J. & Rosenblatt, A. Individual differences in holistic processing predict the own-race advantage in recognition memory. PLoS ONE 8, e58253 (2013).

    Article  PubMed  PubMed Central  Google Scholar 

  122. Wang, R., Li, J., Fang, H., Tian, M. & Liu, J. Individual differences in holistic processing predict face recognition ability. Psychol. Sci. 23, 169–177 (2011).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  123. Konar, Y., Bennett, P. J. & Sekuler, A. B. Holistic processing is not correlated with face-identification accuracy. Psychol. Sci. 21, 38–43 (2009).

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  124. Rezlescu, C., Susilo, T., Wilmer, J. B. & Caramazza, A. The inversion, part-whole, and composite effects reflect distinct perceptual mechanisms with varied relationships to face recognition. J. Exp. Psychol. Hum. Percept. Perform. 43, 1961–1973 (2017).

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  125. Palermo, R. et al. Impaired holistic coding of facial expression and facial identity in congenital prosopagnosia. Neuropsychologia 49, 1226–1235 (2011).

    Article  PubMed  PubMed Central  Google Scholar 

  126. Avidan, G., Tanzer, M. & Behrmann, M. Impaired holistic processing in congenital prosopagnosia. Neuropsychologia 49, 2541–2552 (2011).

    Article  PubMed  PubMed Central  Google Scholar 

  127. Liu, T. T. & Behrmann, M. Impaired holistic processing of left-right composite faces in congenital prosopagnosia. Front. Hum. Neurosci. 8, 750 (2014).

    Article  PubMed  PubMed Central  Google Scholar 

  128. Biotti, F. & Cook, R. Impaired perception of facial emotion in developmental prosopagnosia. Cortex 81, 126–136 (2016).

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  129. Susilo, T. et al. Face recognition impairments despite normal holistic processing and face space coding: evidence from a case of developmental prosopagnosia. Cogn. Neuropsychol. 27, 636–664 (2010).

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  130. Ulrich, P. I. N. et al. Perceptual and memorial contributions to developmental prosopagnosia. Q. J. Exp. Psychol. 70, 298–315 (2017).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  131. Sunday, M. A., Richler, J. J. & Gauthier, I. Limited evidence of individual differences in holistic processing in different versions of the part-whole paradigm. Atten. Percept. Psychophys. 79, 1453–1465 (2017).

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  132. Royer, J., Blais, C., Gosselin, F., Duncan, J. & Fiset, D. When less is more: impact of face processing ability on recognition of visually degraded faces. J. Exp. Psychol. Hum. Percept. Perform. 41, 1179–1183 (2015).

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  133. Dunn, J. D. et al. Face information sampling in super-recognizers. Preprint at PsyArXiv https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/z2k4a (2021).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  134. Itz, M. L., Schweinberger, S. R. & Kaufmann, J. M. Familiar face priming: the role of second-order configuration and individual face recognition abilities. Perception 47, 185–196 (2018).

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  135. Kaufmann, J. M., Schulz, C. & Schweinberger, S. R. High and low performers differ in the use of shape information for face recognition. Neuropsychologia 51, 1310–1319 (2013).

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  136. Itz, M. L., Golle, J., Luttmann, S., Schweinberger, S. R. & Kaufmann, J. M. Dominance of texture over shape in facial identity processing is modulated by individual abilities. Br. J. Psychol. 108, 369–396 (2017).

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  137. Avidan, G. & Behrmann, M. Spatial integration in normal face processing and its breakdown in congenital prosopag- nosia. Annu. Rev. Vis. Sci. 7, 1–21 (2021).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  138. Rossion, B. The composite face illusion: a whole window into our understanding of holistic face perception. Vis. Cogn. 21, 139–253 (2013).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  139. Richler, J. J. & Gauthier, I. When intuition fails to align with data: a reply to Rossion (2013). Vis. Cogn. 21, 254–276 (2013).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  140. Richler, J. J., Floyd, R. J. & Gauthier, I. About-face on face recognition ability and holistic processing. J. Vis. 15, 15–15 (2015).

    Article  PubMed  PubMed Central  Google Scholar 

  141. Ross, D. A., Richler, J. J. & Gauthier, I. Reliability of composite-task measurements of holistic face processing. Behav. Res. Methods 47, 736–743 (2015).

    Article  PubMed  PubMed Central  Google Scholar 

  142. Burton, A. M., Schweinberger, S. R., Jenkins, R. & Kaufmann, J. M. Arguments against a configural processing account of familiar face recognition. Perspect. Psychol. Sci. 10, 482–496 (2015).

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  143. Clutterbuck, R. & Johnston, R. A. Exploring levels of face familiarity by using an indirect face-matching measure. Perception 31, 985–994 (2002).

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  144. Burton, A. M., Wilson, S., Cowan, M. & Bruce, V. Face recognition in poor-quality video: evidence from security surveillance. Psychol. Sci. 10, 243–248 (1998).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  145. Bruce, V., Henderson, Z., Newman, C. & Burton, A. M. Matching identities of familiar and unfamiliar faces caught on CCTV images. J. Exp. Psychol. Appl. 7, 207–218 (2001).

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  146. Ambrus, G. G., Eick, C. M., Kaiser, D. & Kovács, G. Getting to know you: emerging neural representations during face familiarization. J. Neurosci. 41, 5687–5698 (2021).

    Article  PubMed  PubMed Central  Google Scholar 

  147. Dalski, A., Kovács, G. & Ambrus, G. G. Evidence for a general neural signature of face familiarity. Preprint at bioRxiv https://doi.org/10.1101/2021.04.18.440317 (2021).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  148. Ramon, M. & Gobbini, M. I. Familiarity matters: a review on prioritized processing of personally familiar faces. Vis. Cogn. 26, 1–17 (2018).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  149. Wiese, H. et al. Later but not early stages of familiar face recognition depend strongly on attentional resources: evidence from event-related brain potentials. Cortex 120, 147–158 (2019).

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  150. Kovács, G. Getting to know someone: familiarity, person recognition, and identification in the human brain. J. Cogn. Neurosci. 32, 2205–2225 (2020).

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  151. Hildebrandt, A., Olderbak, S. & Wilhelm, O. in International Encyclopedia of the Social and Behavioral Sciences (ed. Wright, J. D.) 667–675 (Elsevier, 2015).

  152. Redfern, A. S. & Benton, C. P. Representation of facial identity includes expression variability. Vis. Res. 157, 123–131 (2019).

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  153. Burton, A. M., Kramer, R. S. S., Ritchie, K. L. & Jenkins, R. Identity from variation: representations of faces derived from multiple instances. Cogn. Sci. 40, 202–223 (2016).

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  154. Kramer, R. S., Young, A. W. & Burton, A. M. Understanding face familiarity. Cognition 172, 46–58 (2018).

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  155. Ritchie, K. L. & Burton, A. M. Learning faces from variability. Q. J. Exp. Psychol. 70, 1–9 (2017).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  156. Murphy, J., Ipser, A., Gaigg, S. B. & Cook, R. Exemplar variance supports robust learning of facial identity. J. Exp. Psychol. Hum. Percept. Perform. 41, 577–581 (2015).

    Article  PubMed  PubMed Central  Google Scholar 

  157. White, D., Burton, A. L. & Kemp, R. I. Not looking yourself: the cost of self-selecting photographs for identity verification. Br. J. Psychol. 107, 359–373 (2016).

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  158. Ritchie, K. L., Kramer, R. S. & Burton, A. M. What makes a face photo a ‘good likeness’? Cognition 170, 1–8 (2018).

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  159. Yardley, L., McDermott, L., Pisarski, S., Duchaine, B. & Nakayama, K. Psychosocial consequences of developmental prosopagnosia: a problem of recognition. J. Psychosom. Res. 65, 445–451 (2008).

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  160. Dalrymple, K. A. et al. “A room full of strangers every day”: the psychosocial impact of developmental prosopagnosia on children and their families. J. Psychosom. Res. 77, 144–150 (2014).

    Article  PubMed  PubMed Central  Google Scholar 

  161. Murray, E., Hills, P. J., Bennetts, R. J. & Bate, S. Identifying hallmark symptoms of developmental prosopagnosia for non-experts. Sci. Rep. 8, 1690 (2018).

    Article  PubMed  PubMed Central  Google Scholar 

  162. Adams, A., Hills, P. J., Bennetts, R. J. & Bate, S. Coping strategies for developmental prosopagnosia. Neuropsychol. Rehabil. 30, 1996–2015 (2019).

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  163. Bindemann, M. (ed.) Forensic Face Matching (Oxford Univ. Press, 2021).

  164. White, D., Towler, A. & Kemp, I., R. In Forensic Face Matching (ed. Brindemann, M.) 62–88 (Oxford University Press, 2020).

  165. Wirth, B. E. & Carbon, C.-C. An easy game for frauds? Effects of professional experience and time pressure on passport-matching performance. J. Exp. Psychol. Appl. 23, 138–157 (2017).

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  166. Heyer, R., Semmler, C. & Hendrickson, A. T. Humans and algorithms for facial recognition: the effects of candidate list length and experience on performance. J. Appl. Res. Mem. Cogn. 7, 597–609 (2018).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  167. White, D., Kemp, R. I., Jenkins, R., Matheson, M. & Burton, A. M. Passport officers’ errors in face matching. PLoS ONE 9, e103510 (2014).

    Article  PubMed  PubMed Central  Google Scholar 

  168. White, D., Dunn, J. D., Schmid, A. C. & Kemp, R. I. Error rates in users of automatic face recognition software. PLoS ONE 10, e0139827 (2015).

    Article  PubMed  PubMed Central  Google Scholar 

  169. Towler, A. et al. Do professional facial image comparison training courses work? PLoS ONE 14, e0211037 (2019).

    Article  PubMed  PubMed Central  Google Scholar 

  170. Weatherford, D. R., Roberson, D. & Erickson, W. B. When experience does not promote expertise: security professionals fail to detect low prevalence fake IDs. Cogn. Res. Princ. Implic. 6, 25 (2021).

    Article  PubMed  PubMed Central  Google Scholar 

  171. Papesh, M. H. Photo ID verification remains challenging despite years of practice. Cogn. Res. Princ. Implic. 3, 19 (2018).

    Article  PubMed  PubMed Central  Google Scholar 

  172. Robertson, D. J., Noyes, E., Dowsett, A. J., Jenkins, R. & Burton, A. M. Face recognition by Metropolitan Police super-recognisers. PLoS ONE 11, e0150036 (2016).

    Article  PubMed  PubMed Central  Google Scholar 

  173. Davis, J. P., Lander, K., Evans, R. & Jansari, A. Investigating predictors of superior face recognition ability in police super-recognisers. Appl. Cogn. Psychol. 30, 827–840 (2016).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  174. White, D., Phillips, P. J., Hahn, C. A., Hill, M. & O’Toole, A. J. Perceptual expertise in forensic facial image comparison. Proc. R. Soc. B Biol. Sci. 282, 20151292 (2015).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  175. Towler, A., White, D. & Kemp, R. I. Evaluating the feature comparison strategy for forensic face identification. J. Exp. Psychol. Appl. 23, 47–58 (2017).

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  176. Moreton, R., Havard, C., Strathie, A. & Pike, G. An international survey of applied face-matching training courses. Forensic Sci. Int. 327, 110947 (2021).

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  177. Steblay, N., Dysart, J., Fulero, S. & Lindsay, R. C. L. Eyewitness accuracy rates in sequential and simultaneous lineup presentations: a meta-analytic comparison. Law Hum. Behav. 25, 459–473 (2001).

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  178. Geiselman, R. E. et al. Benton facial recognition test scores: index of eyewitness accuracy. Am. J. Forensic Psychol. 19, 77–88 (2001).

    Google Scholar 

  179. Bindemann, M., Brown, C., Koyas, T. & Russ, A. Individual differences in face identification postdict eyewitness accuracy. J. Appl. Res. Mem. Cogn. 1, 96–103 (2012).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  180. Grabman, J. H., Dobolyi, D. G., Berelovich, N. L. & Dodson, C. S. Predicting high confidence errors in eyewitness memory: the role of face recognition ability, decision-time, and justifications. J. Appl. Res. Mem. Cogn. 8, 233–243 (2019).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  181. Grabman, J. H. & Dodson, C. S. Stark individual differences: face recognition ability influences the relationship between confidence and accuracy in a recognition test of Game of Thrones actors. J. Appl. Res. Mem. Cogn. 9, 254–269 (2020).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  182. Hodgetts, H. M., Vachon, F., Chamberland, C. & Tremblay, S. See no evil: cognitive challenges of security surveillance and monitoring. J. Appl. Res. Mem. Cogn. 6, 230–243 (2017).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  183. Davis, J. P., Forrest, C., Treml, F. & Jansari, A. Identification from CCTV: assessing police super-recogniser ability to spot faces in a crowd and susceptibility to change blindness. Appl. Cogn. Psychol. 32, 337–353 (2018).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  184. Garvie, C., Bedoya, A. & Frankle, J. The Perpetual Line-up. Unregulated Police Face Recognition in America (Georgetown Law Center on Privacy & Technology, 2019).

  185. Blauch, N. M., Behrmann, M. & Plaut, D. C. Computational insights into human perceptual expertise for familiar and unfamiliar face recognition. Cognition 208, 104341 (2021).

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  186. Grossman, S. et al. Convergent evolution of face spaces across human face-selective neuronal groups and deep convolutional networks. Nat. Commun. 10, 4934 (2019).

    Article  PubMed  PubMed Central  Google Scholar 

  187. Natu, V. & O’Toole, A. J. The neural processing of familiar and unfamiliar faces: a review and synopsis. Br. J. Psychol. 102, 726–747 (2011).

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  188. Benton, A. & Allen, M. V. Impairment in facial recognition in patients with cerebral disease. Cortex 4, 344–358 (1968).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  189. Rossion, B. & Michel, C. Normative accuracy and response time data for the computerized Benton Facial Recognition Test (BFRT-c). Behav. Res. Methods 50, 2442–2460 (2018).

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  190. Fysh, M. C. & Bindemann, M. The Kent Face Matching Test. Br. J. Psychol. 109, 219–231 (2018).

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  191. Dowsett, A. J. & Burton, A. M. Unfamiliar face matching: pairs out-perform individuals and provide a route to training. Br. J. Psychol. 106, 433–445 (2015).

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  192. Stacchi, L., Huguenin-Elie, E., Caldara, R. & Ramon, M. Normative data for two challenging tests of face matching under ecological conditions. Cogn. Res. Princ. Implic. 5, 8 (2020).

    Article  PubMed  PubMed Central  Google Scholar 

  193. Duchaine, B., Germine, L. & Nakayama, K. Family resemblance: ten family members with prosopagnosia and within-class object agnosia. Cogn. Neuropsychol. 24, 419–430 (2007).

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  194. Belanova, E., Davis, J. P. & Thompson, T. Cognitive and neural markers of super-recognisers’ face processing superiority and enhanced cross-age effect. Cortex 108, 92–111 (2018).

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  195. Herzmann, G., Danthiir, V., Schacht, A., Sommer, W. & Wilhelm, O. Toward a comprehensive test battery for face cognition: assessment of the tasks. Behav. Res. Methods 40, 840–857 (2008).

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  196. Kennerknecht, I. et al. First report of prevalence of non-syndromic hereditary prosopagnosia (HPA). Am. J. Med. Genet. Part. A 140A, 1617–1622 (2006).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  197. Shah, P., Gaule, A., Sowden, S., Bird, G. & Cook, R. The 20-item prosopagnosia index (PI20): a self-report instrument for identifying developmental prosopagnosia. R. Soc. Open. Sci. 2, 140343 (2015).

    Article  PubMed  PubMed Central  Google Scholar 

  198. Young, A., Perrett, D., Calder, A., Sprengelmeyer, R. & Ekman, P. Facial Expressions of Emotion: Stimuli and Tests (FEEST), version for PC (Thames Valley Test Company, 2002).

  199. Young, A. W. et al. Facial expression megamix: tests of dimensional and category accounts of emotion recognition. Cognition 63, 271–313 (1997).

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  200. Cecilione, J. L. et al. Test–retest reliability of the facial expression labeling task. Psychol. Assess. 29, 1537–1542 (2017).

    Article  PubMed  PubMed Central  Google Scholar 

  201. Calvo, M. G. & Lundqvist, D. Facial expressions of emotion (KDEF): identification under different display-duration conditions. Behav. Res. Methods 40, 109–115 (2008).

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  202. Baron-Cohen, S., Wheelwright, S., Hill, J., Raste, Y. & Plumb, I. The “Reading the Mind in the Eyes” Test revised version: a study with normal adults, and adults with Asperger syndrome or high-functioning autism. J. Child. Psychol. Psychiatry 42, 241–251 (2001).

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  203. Fernández-Abascal, E. G., Cabello, R., Fernández-Berrocal, P. & Baron-Cohen, S. Test-retest reliability of the ‘Reading the Mind in the Eyes’ test: a one-year follow-up study. Mol. Autism 4, 33 (2013).

    Article  PubMed  PubMed Central  Google Scholar 

  204. Barton, J. J. & Corrow, S. L. The problem of being bad at faces. Neuropsychologia 89, 119–124 (2016).

    Article  PubMed  PubMed Central  Google Scholar 

  205. Noyes, E., Phillips, P. & O’Toole, A. in Face Processing: Systems, Disorders and Cultural Differences 173–201 (Nova Science Publishers, 2017).

  206. Grand, R. L. et al. What aspects of face processing are impaired in developmental prosopagnosia? Brain Cogn. 61, 139–158 (2006).

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  207. Schmalzl, L., Palermo, R. & Coltheart, M. Cognitive heterogeneity in genetically based prosopagnosia: a family study. J. Neuropsychol. 2, 99–117 (2008).

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  208. Plomin, R., Haworth, C. M. A. & Davis, O. S. P. Common disorders are quantitative traits. Nat. Rev. Genet. 10, 872–878 (2009).

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  209. Germine, L. T., Duchaine, B. & Nakayama, K. Where cognitive development and aging meet: face learning ability peaks after age 30. Cognition 118, 201–210 (2011).

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  210. Lane, J. et al. Impacts of impaired face perception on social interactions and quality of life in age-related macular degeneration: a qualitative study and new community resources. PLoS ONE 13, e0209218 (2018).

    Article  PubMed  PubMed Central  Google Scholar 

  211. Werheid, K. & Clare, L. Are faces special in Alzheimer’s disease? Cognitive conceptualisation, neural correlates, and diagnostic relevance of impaired memory for faces and names. Cortex 43, 898–906 (2007).

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  212. Kumfor, F. et al. Do I know you? Examining face and object memory in frontotemporal dementia. Neuropsychologia 71, 101–111 (2015).

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  213. Hutchings, R., Palermo, R., Piguet, O. & Kumfor, F. Disrupted face processing in frontotemporal dementia: a review of the clinical and neuroanatomical evidence. Neuropsychol. Rev. 27, 18–30 (2017).

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  214. Stantic´, M., Ichijo, E., Catmur, C. & Bird, G. Face memory and face perception in autism. Autism 26, 276–280 (2022).

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  215. Bortolon, C., Capdevielle, D. & Raffard, S. Face recognition in schizophrenia disorder: a comprehensive review of behavioral, neuroimaging and neurophysiological studies. Neurosci. Biobehav. Rev. 53, 79–107 (2015).

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  216. Gray, H. M. & Tickle-Degnen, L. A meta-analysis of performance on emotion recognition tasks in Parkinson’s disease. Neuropsychology 24, 176–191 (2010).

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  217. Edens, J. F., Marcus, D. K., Lilienfeld, S. O. & Poythress, N. G. Psychopathic, not psychopath: taxometric evidence for the dimensional structure of psychopathy. J. Abnorm. Psychol. 115, 131–144 (2006).

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  218. Skeem, J. L., Polaschek, D. L. L., Patrick, C. J. & Lilienfeld, S. O. Psychopathic personality. Psychol. Sci. Public. Interest. 12, 95–162 (2011).

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  219. Fox, E. & Zougkou, K. in Oxford Handbook of Face Perception (eds Rhodes, G., Calder, A., Johnson, M. & Haxby, J. V.) https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199559053.013.0026 (Oxford Univ. Press, 2011).

  220. Megías-Robles, A. et al. The ‘Reading the Mind in the Eyes’ test and emotional intelligence. R. Soc. Open Sci. 7, 201305 (2020).

    Article  PubMed  PubMed Central  Google Scholar 

  221. Meinhardt-Injac, B., Daum, M. M., Meinhardt, G. & Persike, M. The two-systems account of theory of mind: testing the links to social- perceptual and cognitive abilities. Front. Hum. Neurosci. 12, 25 (2018).

    Article  PubMed  PubMed Central  Google Scholar 

  222. Saxe, R., Brett, M. & Kanwisher, N. Divide and conquer: a defense of functional localizers. NeuroImage 30, 1088–1096 (2006).

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  223. Kanwisher, N. The quest for the FFA and where it led. J. Neurosci. 37, 1056–1061 (2017).

    Article  PubMed  PubMed Central  Google Scholar 

  224. Zhen, Z. et al. Quantifying interindividual variability and asymmetry of face-selective regions: a probabilistic functional atlas. NeuroImage 113, 13–25 (2015).

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  225. Berman, M. G. et al. Evaluating functional localizers: the case of the FFA. NeuroImage 50, 56–71 (2010).

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  226. Engell, A. D. & McCarthy, G. Probabilistic atlases for face and biological motion perception: an analysis of their reliability and overlap. NeuroImage 74, 140–151 (2013).

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  227. Golarai, G. et al. Differential development of high-level visual cortex correlates with category-specific recognition memory. Nat. Neurosci. 10, 512–522 (2007).

    Article  PubMed  PubMed Central  Google Scholar 

  228. Jiang, X. et al. A quantitative link between face discrimination deficits and neuronal selectivity for faces in autism. NeuroImage Clin. 2, 320–331 (2013).

    Article  PubMed  PubMed Central  Google Scholar 

  229. Furl, N., Garrido, L., Dolan, R. J., Driver, J. & Duchaine, B. Fusiform gyrus face selectivity relates to individual differences in facial recognition ability. J. Cogn. Neurosci. 23, 1723–1740 (2011).

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  230. McGugin, R. W. & Gauthier, I. The reliability of individual differences in face-selective responses in the fusiform gyrus and their relation to face recognition ability. Brain Imaging Behav. 10, 707–718 (2016).

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  231. Duchaine, B. C. & Nakayama, K. Developmental prosopagnosia: a window to content-specific face processing. Curr. Opin. Neurobiol. 16, 166–173 (2006).

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  232. Jiahui, G., Yang, H. & Duchaine, B. Developmental prosopagnosics have widespread selectivity reductions across category-selective visual cortex. Proc. Natl Acad. Sci. USA 115, 201802246 (2018).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  233. Avidan, G., Hasson, U., Malach, R. & Behrmann, M. Detailed exploration of face-related processing in congenital prosopagnosia: 2. Functional neuroimaging findings. J. Cogn. Neurosci. 17, 1150–1167 (2005).

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  234. Dubois, J. & Adolphs, R. Building a science of individual differences from fMRI. Trends Cogn. Sci. 20, 425–443 (2016).

    Article  PubMed  PubMed Central  Google Scholar 

  235. Kaltwasser, L., Hildebrandt, A., Recio, G., Wilhelm, O. & Sommer, W. Neurocognitive mechanisms of individual differences in face cognition: a replication and extension. Cogn. Affect. Behav. Neurosci. 14, 861–878 (2014).

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  236. Xu, B., Liu-Shuang, J., Rossion, B. & Tanaka, J. Individual differences in face identity processing with fast periodic visual stimulation. J. Cogn. Neurosci. 29, 1368–1377 (2017).

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  237. Stacchi, L., Liu-Shuang, J., Ramon, M. & Caldara, R. Reliability of individual differences in neural face identity discrimination. NeuroImage 189, 468–475 (2019).

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  238. Towler, J., Fisher, K. & Eimer, M. The cognitive and neural basis of developmental prosopagnosia. Q. J. Exp. Psychol. 70, 316–344 (2016).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  239. Avidan, G. et al. Selective dissociation between core and extended regions of the face processing network in congenital prosopagnosia. Cereb. Cortex 24, 1565–1578 (2014).

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  240. Lohse, M. et al. Effective connectivity from early visual cortex to posterior occipitotemporal face areas supports face selectivity and predicts developmental prosopagnosia. J. Neurosci. 36, 3821–3828 (2016).

    Article  PubMed  PubMed Central  Google Scholar 

  241. Rosenthal, G. et al. Altered topology of neural circuits in congenital prosopagnosia. eLife 6, e25069 (2017).

    Article  PubMed  PubMed Central  Google Scholar 

  242. Thomas, C. et al. Reduced structural connectivity in ventral visual cortex in congenital prosopagnosia. Nat. Neurosci. 12, 29–31 (2009).

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  243. Gomez, J. et al. Functionally defined white matter reveals segregated pathways in human ventral temporal cortex associated with category-specific processing. Neuron 85, 216–227 (2015).

    Article  PubMed  PubMed Central  Google Scholar 

  244. Song, S. et al. Local but not long-range microstructural differences of the ventral temporal cortex in developmental prosopagnosia. Neuropsychologia 78, 195–206 (2015).

    Article  PubMed  PubMed Central  Google Scholar 

  245. Wan, L. et al. Face-blind for other-race faces: individual differences in other-race recognition impairments. J. Exp. Psychol. Gen. 146, 102–122 (2017).

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  246. McKone, E. et al. A critical period for faces: other-race face recognition is improved by childhood but not adult social contact. Sci. Rep. 9, 12820 (2019).

    Article  PubMed  PubMed Central  Google Scholar 

  247. DeGutis, J., Cohan, S. & Nakayama, K. Holistic face training enhances face processing in developmental prosopagnosia. Brain 137, 1781–1798 (2014).

    Article  PubMed  PubMed Central  Google Scholar 

  248. Ellis, H. D. & Young, A. W. Training in face-processing skills for a child with acquired prosopagnosia. Dev. Neuropsychol. 4, 283–294 (1988).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  249. DeGutis, J., Cohan, S., Kahn, D. A., Aguirre, G. K. & Nakayama, K. Facial expression training improves emotion recognition and changes neural tuning in a patient with acquired emotion recognition deficits and prosopagnosia. J. Vis. 13, 993–993 (2013).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  250. Brunsdon, R., Coltheart, M., Nickels, L. & Joy, P. Developmental prosopagnosia: a case analysis and treatment study. Cogn. Neuropsychol. 23, 822–840 (2006).

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  251. Bate, S., Adams, A. & Bennetts, R. J. Guess who? Facial identity discrimination training improves face memory in typically developing children. J. Exp. Psychol. Gen. 149, 901–913 (2020).

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  252. Dolzycka, D., Herzmann, G., Sommer, W. & Wilhelm, O. Can training enhance face cognition abilities in middle-aged adults? PLoS ONE 9, e90249 (2014).

    Article  PubMed  PubMed Central  Google Scholar 

  253. Jeckeln, G., Hahn, C. A., Noyes, E., Cavazos, J. G. & O’Toole, A. J. Wisdom of the social versus non-social crowd in face identification. Br. J. Psychol. 109, 724–735 (2018).

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  254. White, D., Kemp, R. I., Jenkins, R. & Burton, A. M. Feedback training for facial image comparison. Psychon. Bull. Rev. 21, 100–106 (2014).

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  255. Towler, A., Keshwa, M., Ton, B., Kemp, R. I. & White, D. Diagnostic feature training improves face matching accuracy. J. Exp. Psychol. Learn. Mem. Cogn. 47, 1288–1298 (2021).

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  256. Young, A. W. & Burton, A. M. Are we face experts? Trends Cogn. Sci. 22, 100–110 (2018).

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  257. Andrews, S., Jenkins, R., Cursiter, H. & Burton, A. M. Telling faces together: learning new faces through exposure to multiple instances. Q. J. Exp. Psychol. 68, 2041–2050 (2015).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  258. Matthews, C. M. & Mondloch, C. J. Improving identity matching of newly encountered faces: effects of multi-image training. J. Appl. Res. Mem. Cogn. 7, 280–290 (2018).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  259. Dunn, J. D., Kemp, R. I. & White, D. Search templates that incorporate within-face variation improve visual search for faces. Cogn. Res. Princ. Implic. 3, 37 (2018).

    Article  PubMed Central  Google Scholar 

Download references

Acknowledgements

D.W. was supported by funding from the Australian Research Council (Future Fellowship FT200100353, Discovery Project DP190100957)

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Psychology, University of New South Wales, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia

    David White

  2. Department of Psychology, University of York, York, UK

    A. Mike Burton

  3. Faculty of Society and Design, Bond University, Robina, Queensland, Australia

    A. Mike Burton

Authors
  1. David White
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  2. A. Mike Burton
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Contributions

The authors contributed equally to all aspects of the article.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to A. Mike Burton.

Ethics declarations

Competing interests

The authors declare no competing interests.

Peer review

Peer review information

Nature Reviews Psychology thanks S. Bate, W. Erickson, and the other, anonymous, reviewer(s) for their contribution to the peer review of this work.

Additional information

Publisher’s note

Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this article

White, D., Burton, A.M. Individual differences and the multidimensional nature of face perception. Nat Rev Psychol 1, 287–300 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1038/s44159-022-00041-3

Download citation

  • Accepted:

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s44159-022-00041-3

  • Springer Nature America, Inc.

Search

Navigation