Generalisability and stability of visual comparison ability

Abstract

Visual comparison – or ‘pattern-matching’ – is a generalisable ability to compare complex visual stimuli (like fingerprints or faces) and decide whether they are from the same source or different sources (e.g., fingerprint-matching). Visual comparison evidence can play a very influential role in court. However, little is understood about the cognitive mechanisms underlying this ability – particularly individual differences in this skill. In this paper, we present two studies where we investigate the domain-general nature of visual comparison by exploring individual differences (N = 124 in Experiment (1) in three visual comparison tasks (toolmarks, footwear, and artificial-prints), and the stability of visual comparison by exploring test-retest reliability (N = 160 in Experiment (2) in six visual comparison tasks (toolmarks, footwear, fingerprints, firearms, faces, and artificial-prints). We find that visual comparison skill generalises to toolmark and footwear comparison and identify stable performance across time – providing the first empirical evidence that visual comparison is a generalisable, reliable, and stable cognitive ability.