Selecting police super-recognisers

Abstract

People vary in their ability to recognise faces. These individual differences are consistent over time, heritable and associated with brain anatomy. This implies that face identity processing can be improved in applied settings by selecting high performers–‘super-recognisers’ (SRs)–but these selection processes are rarely available for scientific scrutiny. Here we report an ‘end-to-end’ selection process used to establish an SR ‘unit’ in a large police force. Australian police officers (n = 1600) completed 3 standardised face identification tests and we recruited 38 SRs from this cohort to complete 10 follow-up tests. As a group, SRs were 20% better than controls in lab-based tests of face memory and matching, and equalled or surpassed accuracy of forensic specialists that currently perform face identification tasks for police. Individually, SR accuracy was variable but this problem was mitigated by adopting strict selection criteria. SRs’ superior abilities transferred only partially to body identity decisions where the face was not visible, and they were no better than controls at deciding which visual scene that faces had initially been encountered in. Notwithstanding these important qualifications, we conclude that super-recognisers are an effective solution to improving face identity processing in applied settings.

Super recognizers: Increased sensitivity or reduced biases? Insights from serial dependence

“… Russell, Duchaine, and Nakayama (2009) initially coined the term SR when they documented the exceptional abilities of four individuals in various tasks such as matching unfamiliar faces, remembering unfamiliar faces, and identifying celebrities based on their childhood photographs. Despite limited knowledge concerning the abilities of SRs, law enforcement agencies internationally are increasingly interested in their deployment to improve their operations ( Dunn, Towler, Kemp, & White, 2023 ; Hucklenbroich, 2023 ; Mayer & Ramon, 2023 ; Moreton, Pike, & Havard, 2019 ; Ramon, Bobak, & White, 2019a ; Ramon, Bobak, & White, 2019b ; Ramon, 2021 ; rbb Ferneshen Berlin, 2023 ). In the last decade, research into SRs has increased, particularly investigating how they should be identified ( Ramon, 2021 ), and the nature or underlying mechanisms of their unique ability ( Linka, Broda, Alsheimer, de Haas, & Ramon, 2022 ; Nador, Vomland, Thielgen, & Ramon, 2022 ; Nador, Zoia, Pachai, & Ramon, 2021 ).…”

Diverse types of expertise in facial recognition

“…Super-recognizers represent the upper tail of a continuum of natural variation in people's ability to identify faces, which appears to be strongly heritable 18,19 . As a result, psychologists have argued that super-recognizers provide a route to high levels of accuracy in challenging real-world unfamiliar face identification tasks, and some police organizations recruit super-recognizers for face identification tasks 4,[20][21][22] .…”