Sommer, W. 1 , Herzmann, G. 2 , Hildebrandt, A. 1 & Wilhelm, O. 3
1 Department of Psychology, Humboldt-University at Berlin, Germany
2 Department of Psychology and Neuroscience, University of Colorado at Boulder, USA
3 Department of Psychology and Educational Science, Ulm University, Ulm, Germany
Individual differences in face cognition, an element of social intelligence, were investigated in three psychometric studies with more than 800 participants. Structural equation modeling of an extensive test battery shows that face cognition can be subdivided into distinct abilities, the accuracy of face perception, the accuracy of face memory and the speed of face cognition. The structure of face cognition remained invariant and its relation with established ability constructs was robust across the adult age range from 18 to 82 years, demonstrating its robust specificity from an individual differences perspective. Expectedly, there were substantial age related performance decrements of up to .5 SD per decade for the speed of face cognition. In a subsample of 85 young adults, we studied neuronal correlates of individual differences in face cognition with event-related brain potentials. For the N170 component, held to be an index of the structural analysis of faces, only moderate evidence was obtained for a relationship of its latency with face cognition accuracy. Stronger relationships, however, were found for the amplitudes of the memory-related Early Repetition Effect/N250r and Late Repetition Effect/N400 components with both face cognition speed and accuracy.