Do people have insight into their face recognition abilities?

Diagnosis of developmental or congenital prosopagnosia (CP) involves self-report of
everyday face recognition difficulties, which are corroborated with poor performance on
behavioural tests. This approach requires accurate self-evaluation. We examine the extent to
which typical adults have insight into their face recognition abilities across four studies involving
nearly 300 participants. The studies used five tests of face recognition ability: two that tap into the
ability to learn and recognise previously unfamiliar faces (the Cambridge Face Memory Test,
CFMT, Duchaine & Nakayama, 2006 and a newly devised test based on the CFMT but where the
study phases involve watching short movies rather than viewing static faces – the CFMT-Films) and
three that tap face matching (Benton Facial Recognition Test, BFRT, Benton, Sivan, Hamsher,
Varney, & Spreen, 1983; and two recently devised sequential face matching tests). Self-reported
ability was measured with the 15-item Kennerknecht et al. (2008) questionnaire; two single-item
questions assessing face recognition ability; and a new 77-item meta-cognition questionnaire).
Overall, we find that adults with typical face recognition abilities have only modest insight into
their ability to recognise faces on behavioural tests. In a fifth study, we assess self-reported face
recognition ability in people with CP and find that some people who expect to perform poorly on
behavioural tests of face recognition do indeed perform poorly. However, it is not yet clear
whether individuals within this group of poor performers have greater levels of insight (i.e., into
their degree of impairment) than those with more typical levels of performance.