Projects per year
Abstract
We report the existence of a previously undescribed group of people, namely individuals who are so poor at recognition of other-race faces that they meet criteria for clinical-level impairment (i.e., they are "face-blind" for other-race faces). Testing 550 participants, and using the well-validated Cambridge Face Memory Test for diagnosing face blindness, results show the rate of other-race face blindness to be nontrivial, specifically 8.1% of Caucasians and Asians raised in majority own-race countries. Results also show risk factors for other-race face blindness to include: a lack of interracial contact; and being at the lower end of the normal range of general face recognition ability (i.e., even for own-race faces); but not applying less individuating effort to other-race than own-race faces. Findings provide a potential resolution of contradictory evidence concerning the importance of the other-race effect (ORE), by explaining how it is possible for the mean ORE to be modest in size (suggesting a genuine but minor problem), and simultaneously for individuals to suffer major functional consequences in the real world (e.g., eyewitness misidentification of other-race offenders leading to wrongful imprisonment). Findings imply that, in legal settings, evaluating an eyewitness's chance of having made an other-race misidentification requires information about the underlying face recognition abilities of the individual witness. Additionally, analogy with prosopagnosia (inability to recognize even own-race faces) suggests everyday social interactions with other-race people, such as those between colleagues in the workplace, will be seriously impacted by the ORE in some people.
Original language | English |
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Pages (from-to) | 102-122 |
Number of pages | 21 |
Journal | Journal of Experimental Psychology: General |
Volume | 146 |
Issue number | 1 |
DOIs | |
Publication status | Published - 1 Jan 2017 |
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Dive into the research topics of 'Face-blind for other-race faces: Individual differences in other-race recognition impairments'. Together they form a unique fingerprint.Projects
- 2 Finished
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Perceptual and Psychosocial Factors Associated with Individual Differences in Face Identity and Face Expression Processing
McKone, E., Palermo, R., O'Kearney, R. & Moore, T.
1/01/12 → 31/12/14
Project: Research
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ARC Centre of Excellence in Cognition and its Disorders
Crain, S., Rhodes, G., Hodges, J., Coltheart, M., Castles, A., Barnier, A., Brock, J., Byrne, B. & Palermo, R.
1/01/11 → 31/12/18
Project: Research