The effect of educational environment on identity recognition and perceptions of within-person variability

ABSTRACT

Individuals from small communities show impoverished face recognition relative to those from large communities, suggesting that the number of faces to which one is exposed has a measurable effect on face processing abilities. We sought to extend these findings by examining a second factor that influences the population of faces to which one is exposed during childhood: educational setting. In particular, we examined whether formerly home-schooled participants show reduced performance relative to non-homeschoolers on the Cambridge Face Memory Test (CFMT) and on a sorting task in which participants sort photographs of two unfamiliar identities into piles representing the number of identities they believe are present. On the CFMT, there was no effect of educational setting. However, formerly home-schooled participants showed significant deficits on the sorting task. Such results suggest that reduced exposure to faces early in life as a function of home-schooling may have lasting effects on the face processing system.

KEYWORDS:

• Face perception
• experience
• within-person variability
• identity recognition

Acknowledgments

The authors wish to thank Matthew Linzel for assistance with data collection.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by a National Science Foundation grant awarded to Benjamin Balas [grant number NSF BCS-1348627].