Materials and Procedure Famous Face Recognition Test (Lander et al., 2001): This test consisted of two counterbalanced sets of 15 male and 15 female celebrity faces, and 5 male and 5 female unknown faces taken approximately 12-years previously. The more recent media profile of the celebrities varied substantially, although no data of this were collected. Images were degraded by thresholding. Each face was shown for 5-sec, half moving (20); half static (20). If moving in Set A, a face was static in Set B and vice versa (80 trials). Participants provided a name or semantic information or stated they did not recognise the face. Famous face responses were categorised as hits: participants provided correct names or individuating information (e.g., for Angela Lansbury, - “a writer in the TV drama – Murder She Wrote” was accredited with a hit); misidentifications: incorrect names/information; or misses: failures to recognise the face, or non-individuating responses (e.g. “actress”). With unknown faces, responses were correct rejections: correctly identified as unfamiliar; or false alarms: incorrect names/identities. Participants were subsequently presented with a list of the celebrity names and asked whether they should have recognised them. Conditionalised Naming Rates (CNR) were calculated by excluding response data to a celebrity from analyses if the participant claimed they would not have recognised that face. Unfamiliar Face Memory Array Test: The test stimuli were originally designed for a face matching study (Bruce et al., 1999). In this memory design, across four counterbalanced versions, participants completed 40 trials in which a single colour white-Caucasian male image was displayed for 5-sec from a frontal perspective (20 faces) or a 30 degree angle (20 faces). Each was almost immediately followed by an array of 10 randomly arranged colour frontal same-day different-camera faces each marked with a number (1-10). Participants,
Individual level analyses: Modified t-tests comparing d/ scores revealed that two super-recognisers [20.0%; d/ = 3.21; t(143) = 1.75, p < .05, one-tailed, z = 1.76] and one police identifier [2.8%; d/ = 3.24; t(143) = 1.79, p < .05, one-tailed, z = 1.80] scored significantly above the control mean (n = 143, M = 1.88, SD = 0.75) (see Figure 10 for the proportion of population (95% CI) expected to perform below each group member). Overall mean performance on the four face processing tests The mean scores for each participant on each outcome (hits, correct rejections, sensitivity (d/), response bias (C)) across the four face processing tests were calculated ((Famous Face Recognition Test + Unfamiliar Face Memory Array Test + Old/New Unfamiliar Face Memory Test + Glasgow Face Matching Test)/4), and a final series of one-way ANOVAs compared the between-group mean scores (see Figure 11).8 As previously, super-recognisers and police identifiers did not differ on any measure (p > .05), but their hit rates, FCNR (2, 186) = 21.33, p < .001, η2 = .187; FUN (2, 186) = 23.68, p < .001, η2 = .203, correct rejection rates, F(2, 186) = 14.91, p < .001, η2 = .138 and sensitivity, FCNR (2, 186) = 32.91, p < .001, η2 = .261; FUN (2, 186) = 33.58, p < .001, η2 = .265 were higher than controls (p < .05). No response bias effects were significant (p > .2). Figure 11 about here Figure 12 about here Individual level analyses: Modified t-tests comparing d/ CNR scores revealed that nine super-recognisers (90.0%) and 32 police identifiers (88.9%) scored above the control