A novel, rapid, quantitative method for face discrimination

by Kerri Walter, Peter Bex

Face discrimination ability has been widely studied in psychology, however a self-administered, adaptive method has not yet been developed. In this series of studies, we utilize Foraging Interactive D-prime (FInD) in conjunction with the Basel Face Model to quantify thresholds of face discrimination ability both in-lab and remotely. In Experiment 1, we measured sensitivity to changes for all 199 structural Principal Components of the Basel Face Model and found observers were most sensitive to the first 10 components, so we focused on these for the remaining studies. In Experiment 2, we remotely investigated how thresholds varied when one component changed, compared to when two components changed in combination. Thresholds measured remotely were not significantly different from those measured in-lab (t(14) = 0.23, p = .821), and thresholds were significantly lower for components in combination than alone (t(7) = 2.90, p = .023), consistent with probability summation and Euclidean distance between faces, but not superadditivity. In Experiment 3, we replicated Experiment 2 with slight rotation to the faces to prevent pointwise comparisons. Thresholds were higher with rotation (t(30) = 4.32, p < .001) and for single than combined components, but did not reach significance (t(7) = 2.24, p = .061). Charts were measured in approximately 25.90 ± 8.10 seconds.