Linda Jeffery

Person perception expertise is critical to guiding everyday social interactions and is highly developed in adults. Subtle cues to identity, gender, ethnicity, age, attractiveness, emotional state and focus of attention are effortlessly read from the face in particular. Yet all faces are remarkably similar as visual patterns, so we rely on very subtle differences and variations between them to make all these judgements.

My research focuses on how we process faces and bodies and how individual differences in our person perception skills are related to psychosocial functioning. I am also interested in how we form impressions of character from faces and how these impressions may guide our behaviour. I have a particular focus in determining how the mechanisms of person perception mature in children.

Trying to understand the mechanisms underlying an ability we usually take for granted is fascinating in its own right and may also provide insights into perceptual and social functioning in autistic individuals, for example.  Understanding expertise in person recognition is also important in many contexts where person identification is critical, such a legal settings or border control.