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Running head: SOCIO-EMOTIONAL FUNCTIONING AND FACE RECOGNITION
Socio-Emotional Functioning and Face Recognition Ability in the Normal Population
(^1) Sarah Bate, 2 Benjamin Parris, 1 Catherine Haslam, and 1 Janice Kay
(^1) School of Psychology, University of Exeter; 2 Psychology Research Group, School of Design, Engineering and Computing, University of Bournemouth
Address for correspondence: Sarah Bate Washington Singer Laboratories School of Psychology University of Exeter Perry Road Exeter EX4 4QG United Kingdom
Telephone: +44 (0) 1392 264626 Fax: +44 (0) 1392 264623 Email: S.Bate@ex.ac.uk
Abstract
Recent research indicates face recognition ability varies within the normal population. To date, two factors have been identified that influence this cognitive process: the age and gender of the perceiver. In this paper, we examine the influence of socio-emotional functioning on face recognition ability. We invited participants with high and low levels of empathy (as indicated by the Empathy Quotient) to take part in a face recognition test. Participants were asked to study a set of faces, and at test viewed the studied faces intermixed with novel faces. As predicted, high empaths achieved higher scores in the face recognition test compared to low empaths. This pattern of findings provides further evidence that face recognition ability varies within the normal population, and suggests socio-emotional functioning may be an additional factor that influences face recognition ability.
Key words: face recognition, empathy, emotion.
Socio-Emotional Functioning and Face Recognition Ability in the Normal Population
Much research indicates that healthy participants’ ability to recognise faces is influenced by the properties of the target stimuli. For example, a “same-race superiority effect” has consistently been reported in the literature, where participants are better at recognising faces from their own race compared to those from other races (e.g. Malpass & Kravitz, 1969; Meissnert & Brigham, 2001). Likewise, a similar bias has been reported in the recognition of same-aged compared to other-aged faces (Anastasi & Rhodes, 2005; Lamont, Stewart-Williams, & Podd, 2005); and a same-gender bias has also been reported for women, although there is less evidence to support the same effect in males (Rehnman & Herlitz, 2007). More recently, psychological research has begun to examine factors within the perceiver that may influence face recognition ability. Indeed, there are increasing reports of individuals who suffer from developmental prosopagnosia, who are very poor at recognising familiar people from their face (e.g. Bate et al., 2008; Duchaine, 2000). This impairment occurs in the absence of any neurological trauma or psychiatric illness, and is thought to affect as many as 2% of the population (Kennerknecht et al., 2006). Further, a recent report identified a group of “super- recognizers” who are extremely good at face recognition, out-performing controls by more than two standard deviations in a face recognition task (Russell, Duchaine, & Nakayama, 2009). These findings suggest that, as observed for other cognitive processes, face recognition ability can be measured on a continuum. If this is the case, there may be some observable factors that predict an individual’s face recognition ability. To date, investigations into individual differences in face recognition have focused on the age and gender of participants. Indeed, a number of studies have demonstrated that older adults and children exhibit poorer memory for faces than younger adults (e.g. Chance &
and of a similar age in order to ensure that all other variables were held constant, given age and gender are known to influence empathic processing (Baron-Cohen et al., 2003; Carroll & Yung, 2006). Ethical approval for this study was granted by the School of Psychology Ethics Committee at the University of Exeter.
The Empathy Quotient The EQ was designed in response to a need for a more valid measure of empathy than provided by previous tests. It consists of 60 self-report questions, 40 measuring empathy and 20 filler items. The maximum score that can be achieved on this test is 80. The authors suggest that scores within the range 33-52 indicate ‘average’ levels of empathy. Thus, scores lower than 33 are thought to represent ‘low’ empaths, and those above 52 to represent ‘high’ empaths. The EQ has been well-used in experimental studies investigating empathic processing in both normal and impaired populations (e.g. Lawrence et al., 2006; Penton-Voak et al., 2007), and several studies have investigated its validity. These studies have reported high test-retest reliability, and moderate to high correlations with other self-report and observable indicators of empathy, i.e. tasks requiring analysis of social situations (e.g. Carroll & Yung, 2006; Lawrence et al., 2004; Wakabayashi et al., 2007)
Face Stimuli Images of 30 individuals were obtained from the NimStim database (Tottenham et al., 2009). Of these, 15 were allocated to be studied faces, and 15 to be distractor faces. Two different images were obtained of the studied individuals (one for learning and one for test), and one image was obtained of the distractors. All faces displayed a neutral expression. Images were cropped beyond the hairline so only the inner face was displayed. Thus, external features than may cue recognition (e.g. hairstyle) were removed. Stimuli were adjusted to 714 pixels in height and 450 pixels in width.
Procedure Due to the remote location of some of our participants and the rarity of those with high and low scores on the Empathy Quotient, this study was carried out via the Internet. Data collected through this medium is thought to be as reliable as that collected in lab-based experiments (McGraw, Tew, & Williams, 2000), and has been used to assess face processing in remote participants in previous research (e.g. Todorov & Duchaine, 2008). However, it may be claimed that any findings could simply be attributed to some participants paying more attention to the task than others. To address this issue, we asked participants to make judgments about each face in the study phase (see below). The face recognition study was conducted on the University of Exeter’s online testing system. Once participants had logged in, they were provided with a detailed set of instructions. The test began with a study phase, where participants viewed the set of 15 faces twice, in a random order. In the first presentation, they were asked to judge the gender of each face, and enter their response into the computer. In the second presentation, participants were asked to judge the age of each face. Participants then completed a brief filler task, where they viewed five scenes and were asked to indicate whether or not they liked each image. They then progressed to the recognition test. Different images of the 15 studied faces were intermixed with 15 novel faces. Participants were asked to make a recognition judgment (familiar or novel) for each face, using the ‘f’ and ‘n’ keys on the keyboard.
Results
Responses on the age and gender judgments provided in the study phase were initially analysed to check each participant was devoting their attention to the task. Three participants (two from the ‘low’ group and one from the ‘high’ group) provided inaccurate responses in the gender and age tasks, indicating they were not devoting full attention to the test, or had more severe face processing problems. For this reason, data from these participants were not included in our analysis of the face recognition scores. Accuracy of the age (high empaths: M = 13.92, SE = .20; low empaths: M = 13.79, SE = .24) and gender (high empaths: M = 14.33, SE = .14; low empaths = 14.47, SE = .09) judgments were high in both empathy groups, and mean scores did not vary in either task, t (155) = .857, p = .393 and t (155) = .420, p = .675 respectively. Sensitivity in discriminating studied from novel faces in the face recognition task was calculated using d prime, and an independent samples t- test compared the performance of the high and low empaths. As predicted, participants who achieved a high score on the Empathy Quotient were better at face recognition (d prime: M = 2.14, SE = .06; hits: M = 12.09, SE = .20; false alarms: M = 1.92, SE = 1.13) than those who achieved a low score (d prime: M = 1.86, SE = .07; hits: M = 11.26, SE = .26; false alarms: M = 2.23, SE = .14), t (155) = 2.930, p= .002, d = 0. (see Figure 1).
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Discussion
This study aimed to examine if socio-emotional functioning influences face recognition ability in healthy perceivers. As predicted, our results indicated that people with higher levels of empathy are better at face recognition than those with low levels of empathy. This finding (a) provides further evidence that face recognition ability varies in the normal population, and (b) provides the first evidence that socio-emotional functioning may be another factor that influences face recognition ability. Such a relationship between face recognition ability and socio-emotional functioning is perhaps unsurprising given both socio-emotional processes and expertise in recognising faces are essential for successful social functioning. Indeed, an appropriate social response to a person is intrinsically linked to both their identity (and the biographical knowledge linked to that identity) and their current emotional state. It is therefore likely that someone who is extremely accurate in face identification would also be competent at elucidating a person’s current emotions and attitudes. Indeed, the relationship between face processing and empathic processes is acknowledged in a recent neurological model of face recognition (Gobbini & Haxby, 2007), although this model makes no specific predictions regarding the relationship between the two processes. Thus, the data reported here informs models of face recognition, by providing additional evidence linking these cognitive and emotional processes. Importantly, we have shown that a person’s level of socio-emotional functioning influences the recognition of newly learned faces for whom there is no personal attachment. This finding suggests the representation of the intentions, beliefs and feelings of others may provide an additional level of encoding when encountering a face for the first time. Alternatively, we can
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