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ABSTRACT
Recognising identity and emotion conveyed by the face is important for successful social interactions and has thus been the focus of considerable research. Debate has surrounded the extent to which the mechanisms underpinning face emotion and face identity recognition are distinct or share common processes. Here we use an individual differences approach to address this issue. In a well-powered (N = 605) and age-diverse sample we used structural equation modelling to assess the association between face emotion recognition and face identity recognition ability. We also sought to assess whether this association (if present) reflected visual short-term memory and/or general intelligence (g). We observed a strong positive correlation (r = .52) between face emotion recognition ability and face identity recognition ability. This association was reduced in magnitude but still moderate in size (r = .28) and highly significant when controlling for measures of g and visual short-term memory. These results indicate that face emotion and face identity recognition abilities in part share a common processing mechanism. We suggest that face processing ability involves multiple functional components and that modelling the sources of individual differences can offer an important perspective on the relationship between these components.
Acknowledgements
We are grateful to the Cambridge Centre for Ageing and Neuroscience (Cam-CAN) research group for allowing us access to their data, as well as the respondents and their primary care teams in Cambridge for their participation in the Cam-CAN study. The Cam-CAN research was supported by the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (grant number BB/H008217/1).
Disclosure Statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.