Cognitive mechanisms underlying face recognition memory reports

能够记住我们所遇到的人的面孔在生物学和社会上都很重要。人类处理、识别和识别熟悉面孔的方式似乎具有某种普遍性。然而，识别和识别不熟悉的面孔是一项更具挑战性和微妙的任务，在表现上存在很大的个体差异，其中许多还没有完全理解。这个研究项目的重点是更多地了解这些个体差异。一般来说，认不出一张陌生的脸不会有什么后果。然而，有时候，不能识别或随后报告你对以前见过但不熟悉的面孔的记忆可能会产生更实质性的影响。例如，警务人员要求证人或受害者指认罪犯，或海关/保安人员搜查有关人士。这些情况要求这些人可靠地评估他们对特定面孔的记忆强度，以决定他们是否找到了与他们的记忆相匹配的面孔。人们往往很难准确地完成这项任务。在过去的40年里，研究人员发展了一些理论来理解人类大脑是如何处理熟悉和不熟悉的面孔的。虽然这项工作可以帮助理解我们如何存储和识别面孔，但这项研究并没有直接解释为什么检索和报告面孔记忆的过程通常是一项具有挑战性的任务。我们还没有完全理解是什么样的认知机制支持或干扰了我们准确记忆面孔的能力。此外，我们还没有确定这些机制阻碍或加强记忆报告的条件，也没有确定这些机制是否独特于报告面部记忆。利用实验设计和计算模型的结合，这个研究项目将系统地调查认知机制，使我们能够准确地报告我们对所遇到的（不熟悉的）面孔的记忆。在一系列的实验中，我将采用儿童和成人样本的比较方法，使我能够绘制出自然认知发展如何与面部记忆报告的准确性相一致。通过这项研究项目获得的新知识将推进记忆理论，最终可能有助于开发新的方法来增强记忆性能。重要的是，这项工作将提供非常需要的见解，为什么有些人（而不是其他人）在识别陌生人的面孔时可能会遇到更多困难。这项工作也适用于法律、移民和安全系统。通过这项工作获得的知识可以用来开发方法，以帮助那些需要在高风险情况下识别面孔的人。

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.