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Human face recognition ability is specific and highly heritable
Abstract
Compared with notable successes in the genetics of basic sensory transduction, progress on the genetics of higher level perception and cognition has been limited. We propose that investigating specific cognitive abilities with well-defined neural substrates, such as face recognition, may yield additional insights. In a twin study of face recognition, we found that the correlation of scores between monozygotic twins (0.70) was more than double the dizygotic twin correlation (0.29), evidence for a high genetic contribution to face recognition ability. Low correlations between face recognition scores and visual and verbal recognition scores indicate that both face recognition ability itself and its genetic basis are largely attributable to face-specific mechanisms. The present results therefore identify an unusual phenomenon: a highly specific cognitive ability that is highly heritable. Our results establish a clear genetic basis for face recognition, opening this intensively studied and socially advantageous cognitive trait to genetic investigation.
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Previous studies show that some people perform very well in face matching tasks while others perform very poorly, and that these individual differences are stable across tests.
“This would be consistent with previous studies showing that some people perform very well in face matching tasks while others perform very poorly [15, 33, 34] and that these individual differences are stable across tests [33–35].”
From Error Rates in Users of Automatic Face Recognition Software (2015) · cites this paper as [35]
The Results report substantial variation in Cambridge Face Memory Test scores and test–retest and alternate-forms reliability; Materials and Methods also report correlations with other face tests. These findings support individual differences that persist across testing, but the paper primarily measures face recognition after studying faces, not performance on face-matching tasks specifically. Page numbers are unavailable in our copy. (LLM, conf=0.84)
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Metadata
- Authors
- Wilmer, J. B., Germine, L., Chabris, C. F., Chatterjee, G., Williams, M., Loken, E., Nakayama, K., & Duchaine, B.
- Affiliations
- Department of Psychology, Wellesley College, Wellesley, MA 02481;
- Department of Psychology, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA 02138;
- Department of Psychology, Union College, Schenectady, NY 12308;
- Macquarie Centre for Cognitive Science, Macquarie University, Sydney, New South Wales 2109, Australia;
- Department of Human Development and Family Studies, Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA 16802; and
- Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience, University College London, London WC1N 3AR, United Kingdom
- Venue
- Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
- Publisher
- National Academy of Sciences
- Published
- 2010-02-22
- Volume
- 107
- Issue
- 11
- Pages
- 5238-5241
- ISSN
- 0027-8424
- 1091-6490
- Cited by
- 396
- References
- 0
- Language
- en
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