ArticlePloS one2019
Do professional facial image comparison training courses work?
Article in PloS one, 2019. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 29 papers.
What it found
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
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Who cites it
29 citing papers in PubMed.
- Testing the effects of presentation modality and presence of similarity percentages in the automatic image recognition system in Italy.Frontiers in psychology · 2026Article
- Super-recognizers sample visual information of superior computational value for facial recognition.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2025Article
- Upright and inverted unfamiliar face-matching tasks - everything correlates everywhere all at once.Memory & cognition · 2025Article
- Cognitive Bias Affects Perception and Decision-Making in Simulated Facial Recognition Searches.Behavioral sciences (Basel, Switzerland) · 2025Article
- Face and voice identity matching accuracy is not improved by multimodal identity information.British journal of psychology (London, England : 1953) · 2025Article
- Information sampling differences supporting superior face identity processing ability.Psychonomic bulletin & review · 2025Article
- Face matching as a majority: Getting the best from a crowd.Perception · 2025Article
- Challenges of accreditation in forensic fields concerned with human identification: a survey of European facial examiners.Forensic sciences research · 2024Article
- Trust in automation and the accuracy of human-algorithm teams performing one-to-one face matching tasks.Cognitive research: principles and implications · 2024Article
- Face identification proficiency test designed using item response theory.Behavior research methods · 2024Article
- Diverse types of expertise in facial recognition.Scientific reports · 2023Article
- Understanding face matching.Quarterly journal of experimental psychology (2006) · 2023Article
- Let's talk about faces: Identifying faces from verbal descriptions.British journal of psychology (London, England : 1953) · 2023Article
- Selecting police super-recognisers.PloS one · 2023Article
- Face matching and metacognition: investigating individual differences and a training intervention.PeerJ · 2023Article
- Statistical feature training improves fingerprint-matching accuracy in novices and professional fingerprint examiners.Cognitive research: principles and implications · 2022Article
- The pairs training effect in unfamiliar face matching.Perception · 2022Article
- Masked face identification is improved by diagnostic feature training.Cognitive research: principles and implications · 2022Article
- Forensic facial examiners versus super-recognizers: Evaluating behavior beyond accuracy.Applied cognitive psychology · 2022Article
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Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
7 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
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.
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Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.