Not so fast! Response times in the computerized Benton Face Recognition Test may not reflect face recognition ability

ABSTRACT

Response times (RTs) are commonly used to assess cognitive abilities, though it is unclear whether face processing RTs predict recognition ability beyond accuracy. In the current study, we examined accuracy and RT on a widely used face matching assessment modified to collect meaningful RT data, the computerized Benton Facial Recognition Test (BFRT-c), and measured whether RTs predicted face recognition ability and developmental prosopagnosia (DP) vs. control group membership. 62 controls and 36 DPs performed the BFRT-c as well as validated measures of face recognition ability: the Cambridge Face Memory Test (CFMT) and a Famous Faces Memory Test (FFMT). In controls, BFRT-c accuracy robustly predicted CFMT (r = .49, p < .001), FFMT (r = .43, p < .001), and a CFMT-FFMT composite (r = .54, p < .001), whereas BFRT-c RT was not significantly associated with these measures (all r's  .21). We also found that BFRT-c accuracy significantly differed between DPs and controls, but RT failed to differentiate the groups.

KEYWORDS:

• Developmental prosopagnosia
• face recognition
• face perception
• face matching
• response time
• individual differences

Acknowledgments

We want to thank the developmental prosopagnosics and control participants for completing our challenging battery of tasks. This work was funded by R01EY026057 and R21EY031000 grants from the National Eye Institute awarded to JD.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Ethics approval

The study was performed in line with the principles of the Declaration of Helsinki. The study was approved by two Institutional Review Boards.

Data availability statement

The data is publicly available through dryad, https://datadryad.org/stash/share/mEi7Rjs6LgZKP4cO6lTgRw3_9WTuw3IQUA5Ypzpf524. Please contact the corresponding author to obtain any of the other study materials.

Open practices statement

This study was not preregistered.

Notes

1 Rossion and Michel (2018) use the term “response time” to refer to the total completion time of the BFRT-c and we use the same terminology for consistency. Note that this total completion time is perfectly correlated with the more traditionally reported trial-averaged response time.