title: Why has research in face recognition progressed so slowly? The importance of variability.
abstract: Despite many years of research, there has been surprisingly little progress in our understanding of how faces are identified. Here I argue that there are two contributory factors: (a) Our methods have obscured a critical aspect of the problem, within-person variability; and (b) research has tended to conflate familiar and unfamiliar face processing. Examples of procedures for studying variability are given, and a case is made for studying real faces, of the type people recognize every day. I argue that face recognition (specifically identification) may only be understood by adopting new techniques that acknowledge statistical patterns in the visual environment. As a consequence, some of our current methods will need to be abandoned.
authors.affiliation: School of Psychology, University of Aberdeen, Aberdeen, UK. m.burton@abdn.ac.uk
authors.forename: A
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Mike Burton
mesh_terms: D004193:Discrimination Learning / Q000502:physiology*; D005145:Face; D006801:Humans; D010364:Pattern Recognition, Visual / Q000502:physiology*; D010775:Photic Stimulation; D021641:Recognition, Psychology / Q000502:physiology*; D012106:Research