Investigating the stability of individual differences in face recognition behavior.

Myles N Arrington, K Suzanne Scherf

Abstract read

In one paragraph

Article in Scientific reports, 2025. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 1 paper.

0numbers the graph read from it

0cells of the map it votes in

1citing papers in PubMed

–field-weighted citation impact

1 · What the graph read from it

What it found

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2 · The registry

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3 · Its place in the literature

Who cites it

1 citing paper in PubMed.

Demonstrating the Super-Recognizer advantage for law enforcement.iScience · 2026
Article

4 · The record

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5 · Who and what money

Authors and funding

2 authors.

Myles N ArringtonDepartment of Psychology, Pennsylvania State University, 113 Moore Building, University Park, PA, 16802, USA.

K Suzanne ScherfDepartment of Psychology, Pennsylvania State University, 113 Moore Building, University Park, PA, 16802, USA. suzyscherf@psu.edu.

Funding

No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.

6 · The paper itself

Abstract

Individual differences in face recognition abilities are characterized as heritable and resilient to change. However, this work is largely based on inter-individual differences, tends to include participants with extreme behavior (e.g., prosopagnosia, super-recognizers), and does not accommodate patterns of bias in intra-individual recognition behavior. Here, we investigated the continuity and stability of intra-individual differences in face recognition behavior among emerging adults using two tasks of unfamiliar face recognition that differ in the gender of the faces to be recognized. Although the estimate of stability is high (0.71) across the sample, there are instabilities in the behavior of many individual participants. For example, approximately 16.7% of the sample exhibited a discrepancy between tasks that was larger than 1 SD. Also, stability was more characteristic of extreme behavior. This is a bit surprising given the potential for close generalization of performance across these two tasks (identical structure and similar stimuli). Inter-individual differences in participant characteristics (i.e., gender, age, social skills) do not explain this variability. These findings are difficult to accommodate into current models of individual differences in face recognition behavior.

Indexed as

Facial RecognitionIndividualityRecognition, PsychologyAdolescentAdultFaceFemaleHumansMaleYoung AdultAutismFace processingFace recognitionGender differencesIndividual differencesOwn-gender biasSex differencesSocial behavior

Identifiers

PMID40108241

DOI10.1038/s41598-025-90317-4

PMCPMC11923172

What OpenQuestion holds

Textmetadata

LicenceCC BY-NC-ND

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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.