Enhanced Matching of Children’s Faces in “Super-Recognisers” But Not High-Contact Controls

Abstract

Face matching is notoriously error-prone, and some work suggests additional difficulty when matching the faces of children. It is possible that individuals with natural proficiencies in adult face matching (“super-recognisers” [SRs]) will also excel at the matching of children’s faces, although other work implicates facilitations in typical perceivers who have high levels of contact with young children (e.g., nursery teachers). This study compared the performance of both of these groups on adult and child face matching to a group of low-contact controls. High- and low-contact control groups performed at a remarkably similar level in both tasks, whereas facilitations for adult and child face matching were observed in some (but not all) SRs. As a group, the SRs performed better in the adult compared with the child task, demonstrating an extended own-age bias compared with controls. These findings suggest that additional exposure to children’s faces does not assist the performance in a face matching task, and the mechanisms underpinning superior recognition of adult faces can also facilitate the child face recognition. Real-world security organisations should therefore seek individuals with general facilitations in face matching for both adult and child face matching tasks.