‘Super-recognizers’ never forget a face. Now, scientists have uncovered how they do it.

March 15, 2023

Making up just 2% of the population, “super-recognizers” may be the closest we ever get to people with real-life superpowers. They never forget a face, and all they need is a moment or two to commit a new person to their memories. Many are known to help police departments and security agencies to identify suspects, while others work as private detectives and unofficial investigators.

Now, fascinating new research out of Australia is finally revealing how super-recognizers accomplish such feats, reports Study Finds.

Until recently, researchers had largely believed that super-recognizers had such good recall of faces because they processed them holistically—taking a facial snapshot and memorizing it.

However, scientists from UNSW Sydney and the University of Wollongong, have now proven that super-recognizers look at faces the same way anyone else does—but they do so more rapidly and in a more accurate manner.

According to UNSW researcher and study lead author Dr. James Dunn, when a super-recognizer catches a glimpse of a new face, he or she divides it into parts and then store each component in his or her brain as composite images.

“They are still able to recognize faces better than others, even when they can only see smaller regions at a time. This suggests that they can piece together an overall impression from smaller chunks, rather than from a holistic impression taken in a single glance,” Dr. Dunn says in a statement.

Meanwhile, co-lead study author Dr. Sebastien Miellet, UOW researcher in the School of Psychology and an expert in active vision, used eye-tracking technology to investigate and analyze how super-recognizers scan and process faces, both as a whole and divided into parts.

“With much precision, we can see not only where people look but also which bits of visual information they use,” Dr. Miellet notes.

While studying the visual processing patterns of super-recognizers, researchers found that, contrary to typical recognizers, super-recognizers focus less on the eye region and distribute their gaze more evenly. This helps them gather more visual information from other facial features, especially when learning a new face.

“So the advantage of super-recognizers is their ability to pick up highly distinctive visual information and put all the pieces of a face together like a puzzle, quickly and accurately,” Dr. Miellet comments.

Moving forward, scientists at both UNSW and UOW will continue to study super-recognizers. Dr. Miellet posits that super-recognizers’ abilities may stem from a certain curiosity and behavioral interest in other people. Alternatively, super-recognizers may be more empathetic than most of us.

“In the next stages of our study, we’ll equip some super-recognizers and typical viewers with a portable eye tracker; and release them onto the streets to observe, not in the lab but in real life, how they interact with the world,” Dr. Miellet concludes.

The study has been published in the journal, Psychological Science.

Research contact: @StudyFindsorg

August 19, 2024

“Redshirting”—or choosing to delay school entry for a year—seems to be an increasingly popular trend among parents who are trying to give their children a competitive advantage, reports Yahoo Lifestyle.

The growing popularity of redshirting may have been started by Malcolm Gladwell’s bestselling book, Outliers, which was published in 2008. In this book, Gladwell claims that a child being relatively older than their peers provides an advantage.

Gladwell points to data showing that nearly all players for the Canadian Hockey League have birthdays in the first four months of the year. Because the cutoff for most sports in Canada is January 1, children born in the first four months of the year are older than the other children on the team—thus, making them more likely to be identified as talented and ultimately more likely to play professional hockey. Gladwell argues that this principle extends to children who are older than their classmates having an academic advantage as well.

Sincethis book was published, it seems that children are waiting longer and longer to start kindergarten every year. At the same time, kindergarten seems to be becoming increasingly academic and rigorous.

For parents of children born near the cutoff date, the pressure to delay kindergarten feels intense. So does research actually find that redshirting will provide an academic and/or social advantage for children? The answer may be more complicated than you think.

The research on redshirting

Research on redshirting suggests that it is associated with a small academic advantage (that is, higher academic test scores) and test scores that seem to increase at a greater rate in the first and second grades (suggesting that redshirted children are showing enhanced learning in these grades).

However, this effect may begin to fade as early as the end of first grade. This research is also correlational—meaning we do not know whether it is redshirting that causes these advantages or if redshirting is simply associated with advantages. The latter would not be surprising since parents that choose to redshirt their children are often very different from the parents who do not—most notably, they are often higher income families.

Some research studies eliminate the problem of parent choice by looking at the impact of children’s age within the same grade (such as comparing students with summer birthdays to students in the same grade with fall birthdays). Research finds that students who are relatively older than other children in their grade score higher on math and science tests and, although these differences decrease over the years, they are still present to some extent in eighth grade.

Other research finds that children who are relatively older show less hyperactivity and inattention and greater educational attainment (translation: getting farther in school). However, the impact on educational attainment is greatly reduced when schools do not engage in early tracking (translation: sending children to different schools based on academic abilities in elementary school).

Research also shows that children who are older relative to their classmates are more likely to be in gifted education and less likely to be in special education. These positive impacts seem to extend to high school and beyond.

Children who are older relative to their classmates are also less likely to drop out of high school, less likely to commit a felony, and less likely to experience a teenage pregnancy. Children who are older than their classmates also are more likely to attend a four-year college than younger students.

Yet, it is very important to note that this line of research only involves associations (meaning, we do not know whether being older relative to your peers actually causes any of these positive or negative outcomes). Further research is needed in order to conclude that redshirting actually causes any of these positive outcomes.

Are there any situations in which parents may want to avoid redshirting?

So, research suggests that being older than your peers is consistently associated with at least a small advantage—but are there any situations in which parents might want to avoid redshirting?

Research suggests that when your child has an identified disability, a suspected disability—or even if you are just concerned that they may need some extra help in school—you may want to avoid redshirting. In this case, delaying school entry may be associated with worse academic performance, because it would also involve delaying free essential services through the public school system (such as speech therapy and learning support).

This short delay may have a big impact as research finds that services before age five are more effective in improving a child’s long-term outcome than services after age five.

Research has compared the impact of redshirting on children with disabilities (such as autism, developmental delays, learning disabilities, or health impairments) versus children without disabilities. Researchers found that children with disabilities who were redshirted scored significantly lower in math in third grade when compared to children with disabilities who were not redshirted, while children without disabilities who were redshirted showed improved math and reading scores in third grade. Research also finds a negative impact of redshirting for children with more severe ADHD and no impact for children with learning disabilities.

Is redshirting more important for boys than girls?

In any discussion of redshirting, it is commonly assumed that boys in particular benefit from redshirting. In line with this assumption, research reveals that boys are indeed more likely to be redshirted than girls. So is there any research to back up this trend?

Research does find that girls are more likely to be ready for kindergarten than boys and that this difference is mostly driven by differences in social-emotional development.

Research also suggests that boys seem to show greater gains from redshirting and that boys may not cope as well as girls with having higher-achieving classmates.

Research contact: @yahoolifestyle0