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There is a broad range of differences in people’s ability to visually recognize objects and faces—and those skills aren’t linked to general intelligence, a new study suggests.
Just because someone is smart and well-motivated doesn’t mean he or she can learn the visual skills needed to excel at tasks like matching fingerprints, interpreting medical X-rays, keeping track of aircraft on radar displays, or forensic face matching, the study implies.
“People may think they can tell how good they are at identifying objects visually,” says Isabel Gauthier, professor of psychology at Vanderbilt University, who headed the study. “But it turns out that they are not very good at evaluating their own skills relative to others.”
The Novel Object Memory Test is based on individual’s ability to recognize greebles, ziggerins, and sheinbugs (top to bottom)—novel objects that Gauthier and her colleagues have invented to study visual intelligence. (Credit: Isabel Gauthier/Vanderbilt)