Law Enforcement Agencies Recruit Rare People Who are 'Super-Recognizers' of Faces (theguardian.com) 23
An anonymous reader shared this report on "Super-Recognizers" from a series of articles in the Guardian called "Meet the Superhumans."
As a child, Yenny Seo often surprised her mother by pointing out a stranger in the grocery store, remarking it was the same person they passed on the street a few weeks earlier. Likewise, when they watched a movie together, Seo would often recognise "extras" who'd appeared fleetingly in other films... A cohort of just 1-2% of the population are "super-recognisers" — people who can memorise and recall unfamiliar faces, even after the briefest glimpse.
The underlying cause is still not entirely clear — it's a new field, with only around 20 scientific papers studying super-recognisers. However, it is suspected genetics plays a role because identical twins show similar performance, and it has been shown that cortical thickness — the amount of neurons — in the part of the brain that supports face recognition is a predictor of superior ability. Because it's such a rare phenomenon, in 2017 Dr. David White, now a lead investigator at the Face Research Lab at the University of New South Wales (UNSW) and his colleagues designed a publicly available online screening tool to try to unearth the world's best super-recognisers. Seo, then in her mid-twenties, gave it a go — and her score was so high, White invited her to come to Sydney for more testing.
With more than 100,000 people now tested, Seo still ranks in the top 50....
Over the past decade, security and law enforcement agencies around the world have started recruiting people with superior facial recognition capabilities. London's metropolitan police has a special team who examine CCTV footage from crime scenes — they were used in the investigation into the poisoning of a former Russian spy with the nerve agent Novichok in Salisbury — and several years ago Queensland police started identifying super-recognisers in its ranks. A proliferation of private agencies has also sprung up, offering the services of super-recognisers.
Seo has no interest....
The underlying cause is still not entirely clear — it's a new field, with only around 20 scientific papers studying super-recognisers. However, it is suspected genetics plays a role because identical twins show similar performance, and it has been shown that cortical thickness — the amount of neurons — in the part of the brain that supports face recognition is a predictor of superior ability. Because it's such a rare phenomenon, in 2017 Dr. David White, now a lead investigator at the Face Research Lab at the University of New South Wales (UNSW) and his colleagues designed a publicly available online screening tool to try to unearth the world's best super-recognisers. Seo, then in her mid-twenties, gave it a go — and her score was so high, White invited her to come to Sydney for more testing.
With more than 100,000 people now tested, Seo still ranks in the top 50....
Over the past decade, security and law enforcement agencies around the world have started recruiting people with superior facial recognition capabilities. London's metropolitan police has a special team who examine CCTV footage from crime scenes — they were used in the investigation into the poisoning of a former Russian spy with the nerve agent Novichok in Salisbury — and several years ago Queensland police started identifying super-recognisers in its ranks. A proliferation of private agencies has also sprung up, offering the services of super-recognisers.
Seo has no interest....
Better than AI (Score:3)
Re: Better than AI (Score:3)
Re:Better than AI (Score:5, Interesting)
Officially, the output of the 20K cameras in between Gatwick a hotel in London and then between the hotel and Salisbury on the next day are not collated and not analysed using image recognition and tracking software.
By claiming that you have used a super-duper genius to review a total of 40K days of footage you get plausible deniability that you are not collating the information of the aforementioned cameras and not analysing them using AI.
Re:Better than AI (Score:5, Funny)
research is already underway to see if this can be adapted to slashdot editors, so as to recognized stories they've seen before . . .
Re: (Score:2)
Seriously though, if Slashdot was more searchable it would probably help drive more traffic here. At the moment it's very hard to find specific stories, and Google seems to have a hard time indexing the site. It's almost as if it was designed to be anti-SEO.
I'm the other way (Score:2)
I'm even worst than you (Score:2)
I must be a mediocre recognizer. Sometimes when I wake up and go to the bathroom, I look in the mirror and wonder "who the fuck is that?!"
Re: (Score:2)
Me too: 4 or 5 meetings to recognize a face, probably 6 or 8 to picture their face in my head when they're not present.
We know (Score:3)
They have been doing that for decades, even if YOU read it only yesterday.
I may be one of those people (Score:2)
I recognize many faces all the time. I know I've seen them somewhere - sometimes a long time ago, somewhere else. I just know it.
In the case of movies, when the fleeting face is interesting enough to me, I'll look up the cast of the movie, find out who it was (not always possible if it's a very small role or a cameo) then look up other movies that actor was in, to figure out where I might have seen them before.
But... Here's the clincher: I know I've seen a lot of people somewhere, but if it's not in a movie
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"I recognize many faces all the time. I know I've seen them somewhere - sometimes a long time ago, somewhere else. I just know it."
Yes, your parents always complain that you never say hello.
We need more joe friday cops and not ones we have (Score:2)
We need more joe friday cops and not ones we have now days.
And the other side of this is... (Score:4, Interesting)
The opposite of a "super-recognizer" is often someone with aphantasia [wikipedia.org]. This is the lack of the ability to create mental imagery. It tends to have a significant impact on the ability to recall faces until that face is extremely well known. Among other things.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
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No, actually what I am thinking of is aphantasia, just as I described. I know because I have aphantasia. It comes right along with not being able to recognize faces - because there is no memory or visualization of those faces whatsoever. When people without this condition think of a face, they can see it; I can't. Nothing. No visual recall whatsoever.
I didn't say or imply it was the same thing as prosopagnosia. I said it was often someone wi
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The opposite of a "super-recognizer" is often someone with aphantasia [wikipedia.org]. This is the lack of the ability to create mental imagery. It tends to have a significant impact on the ability to recall faces until that face is extremely well known. Among other things.
Sort of. Aphantasia does not directly affect recognition, as you don't need recall for that. It does not affect recognition of familiar faces.
But yes it does affect how I memorise a face. Without visual recall, how do you transfer an image from short-term to long term memory?
I may have to meet a person a few times before I'll recognise them after not seeing for a while. Or I take photos and look at them.
After witnessing a crime, I was completely unable to describe the suspect. (No visualisation.) But
Rare people recruot law enforcement (Score:2)
Rare people who are "super-recognizers" recruit law enforcement agencies facepalms.
I'm almost the complete opposite. (Score:2)
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Overuse... of... ellipsis... (Score:1)
Summary was apparently written by James T. Kirk.
Inexplicable... (Score:2)