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.

Personal statement in PhD applications: Gatekeepers' evaluative perspectives

This paper explores academic readers’ views of the doctoral Personal Statements (PSs) written by student applicants across institutional contexts. The analysis was based on in-depth semi-structured interviews with 19 faculty members involved in evaluating the PhD applications within Education at one UK-based and one US-based university. Data were coded by NVivo software and then analysed using methods drawn from critical discourse analysis and conversation analysis to unravel participant intended meaning. Results suggest that the situated knowledge of institutional settings where these academics are based will affect the ways in which they act and think in relation to particular forms of discourse. Specifically, the UK and US academics’ interpretations of PSs and its associated evaluation practices are related to their conceptual understanding of the culture of doctoral level study and the structure of the admissions process in their own particular academic community. The paper concludes with some pedagogical implications and a discussion of potential areas for further study to investigate the ‘academic’ and ‘rhetorical’ aspects of the PS and to understand the different and often implicit features of the PS across different disciplines, programmes, and institutional contexts.