Everyday Research Methods

Are you good at recognizing faces?

Would you have accurately paired the two images of this unfamiliar woman? Photo: Credit: Eugenio Marongiu/Shutterstock

According to this study, you probably think you're good at recognizing people's faces. But are you really?
This report from NPR suggests that you might not be as skilled as you think. The report begins with stories of two individuals at each end of the spectrum: One person who is remarkably good at recognizing faces, and another person who is not.

Then we hear about a study of people's general ability:

"I think nobody really knew until the last few years just how bad we all are with unfamiliar faces," says Mike Burton, a professor of psychology at the University of York UK. Burton has run a number of facial recognition studies and has concluded that most people are remarkably bad at recognizing the faces of those they know only slightly. And to make matters worse, most people think they are good at this skill when they are not.

To understand more, Burton ran an experiment in which participants were given pairs of photos and asked whether the faces in those photos were of the same person – in essence, a matching game. Some of the faces were familiar to the participants and some were not. Sure enough, people tended to perform better at this task when the faces were familiar. They had a much harder time identifying pairs of unfamiliar faces. 

a) In the simple experiment above, what is the independent variable? (What did Burton vary?) Was this IV manipulated as independent groups or within groups? 

b) In the experiment above, what is the dependent variable? 

c) Given your answers to a) and b), what kind of experiment is this: Posttest only? Pretest/posttest? Repeated measures? Concurrent measures? 

d) Sketch a graph of the result that "people tended to perform better at this task when the faces were familiar"

The NPR report explains how the researchers dug deeper, to see if experience with faces (for example, as a passport officer) would make a difference in people's accuracy. He ran the same experiment, adding a participant variable to create a factorial design. As you read this description, look for the IV and PV.

"We did some work with passport officers last year where we showed that even passport officers find this a very difficult task and are often inaccurate."

Burton says experience does not seem to improve ability. He studied passport officers who had been on the job for 20 years. They were not necessarily any better than fresh recruits.

e) What was the IV in this design? What was the PV?

f) What is the DV?

g) Remembering that this is a factorial design, sketch a graph of the result that "passport officers who had been on the job for 20 years... were not necessarily any better than fresh recruits."

 

Suggested answers

a) The IV was whether people were familiar or unfamiliar; it was manipulated as within groups. 

b) The dependent variable is the number of correct matches.

c) This was a repeated-measures design

d) The y-axis should read, 'Accuracy' and the x-axis should have "familiar and unfamiliar" categories. The bar graph should have the "unfamiliar" accuracy level to be very low.

e) The IV was (probably) whether people were familiar or unfamiliar, and the PV was level of experience (Fresh recruits vs. 20 years of experience)

f) The dependent variable was (probably) the number of correct matches.

g) Here's a suggested sketch. However these data are fabricated--you'd have to check the actual paper for the actual design and results. 

 

 

 

Taking photos can improve visual memory

Will these museum visitors remember what they saw? Photo: Owen Franken/Getty Images"

Because summer is vacation time, many of us will capture photos of the beaches, mountains, or sites we'll visit. Does taking photos of these scenes improve our memories for our vacation experiences? It might depend on the type of memory we're talking about. 

Here's a description of a study published in Psychological Science in which the researchers tested whether taking photos improves memory. 

In one experiment, the researchers had 294 participants tour a real-life museum exhibit of Etruscan artifacts. The participants stashed their belongings before starting the tour but some were allowed to keep a camera on them. Those with a camera could photograph anything they wanted in the exhibit and were told to take at least 10 photos. As the participants toured the exhibit, they listened to an accompanying audio guide.

At the end of the tour, they answered multiple-choice questions asking them to identify objects they had seen or complete factual statements from the audio guide.

The results showed that those who took photos visually recognized more of the objects compared with those who didn’t have a camera. But they also remembered less auditory information than their camera-less peers.

a) Based only on this description, the study seems to have been a 2x2 factorial design. One of the independent variables is "type of memory" What are its 2 levels?  What is the other independent variable and its levels?  

b) For each IV, indicate whether it is independent groups or within groups.

c) Sketch a little graph of the study's findings. 

 

The researchers conducted another study with the same variables, using a different method:

To test their hypotheses in a more controlled environment, the researchers designed a virtual art-gallery tour. Participants navigated through the gallery on screen as they would in real life and some were able to take pictures of what they saw on screen by clicking an on-screen button.

Again, participants who were able to take pictures were better at recognizing what they saw and worse at remembering what they heard, compared to those who couldn’t take pictures.

d) Identify this study's independent and dependent variables. Sketch a graph of the results. 

e) If you've studied Chapter 14, consider this: Is this study a direct replication, conceptual replication, or replication-plus-extension? 

 

It's important to note that a few years ago, another study in the same journal reached the conclusion that taking photos actually impairs memory. How can we reconcile these two findings? The more recent study's authors suspect it has something to do with choosing to take the photos: 

Previous research has suggested that being able to take photographs or consult the Internet may allow us to outsource our memory, freeing up cognitive resources but potentially impairing our ability to remember. Barasch, Diehl, Silverman, and Zauberman hypothesized that this offloading effect may hold for factual information, but might not apply when it comes to the experiences we deliberately choose to photograph.

“People take photos specifically to remember these experiences, whether it’s a fun dinner with friends, a sightseeing tour, or something else,” they argue.