Who Is That? Perceptual Expertise on 2 Other-Race Face Comparisons, Disguised Face 3 Comparisons, and Face Memory

Forensic facial professionals identify faces more accurately than untrained participants on tests using high-quality images of faces. Whether this superiority holds in more challenging conditions is not known.

Here, we measured the performance of forensic facial professional groups (facial examiners and facial reviewers) and a group of untrained control participants (undergraduates). We tested performance in three challenging tasks: other-race face identification, disguised face identification, and memory for faces. We note that the administration of the other race and disguise tests here did not allow forensic professionals access to the time and tools they typically use in casework.