Cognitive mechanisms underlying face recognition memory reports

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Summary Being able to remember the faces of the people we encounter is both biologically and socially important. There appears to be some universality in how humans process, recognize, and identify familiar faces. Recognizing and identifying unfamiliar faces, however, is a more challenging and nuanced task with large individual differences in performance, many of which are not yet fully understood. This program of research is focused on understanding more about these individual differences. Typically, failing to recognize an unfamiliar face has minimal consequences. Sometimes, however, failing to recognize or subsequently report on your memory of a previously-seen but unfamiliar face can have more substantive implications. Take, for instance, a situation when police officer requires a witness or victim to identify a perpetrator of a crime or when a customs/security officer is searching for a person of interest. These situations require these people to reliably evaluate the strength of their memory for a particular face to decide whether they have found a match to their memory. This task is often one that people struggle to do accurately. Over the last 40 years, researchers have developed theories to understand how the human brain processes familiar and unfamiliar faces. Though this work can help understand how we store and recognize faces, this research does not directly explain why the process of retrieving and reporting on face-memory is often a challenging task. We do not fully understand what cognitive mechanisms support or interfere with our ability to accurately report on our memories for faces. Additionally, we have not established the conditions under which these mechanisms hamper or bolster memory reports, nor if these mechanisms are unique to reporting on face memory. Using a combination of experimental designs and computational modeling, this program of research will systematically investigate the cognitive mechanisms that allow us to accurately report on our memory for the (unfamiliar) faces we encounter. In a series of experiments, I will engage in comparative methodology using child and adult samples, allowing me to map out how natural cognitive development aligns with the accuracy of face memory reports. The new knowledge gained through this research program will advance memory theory and, ultimately, may help develop new approaches to bolster memory performance. Importantly, this work will provide much needed insight into why some people (but not others) may struggle more with identifying faces of strangers. This work also has application to the legal, immigration, and security systems. Knowledge gained through this work can be used to develop methods to facilitate people who are required to identify faces in high-stakes situations.