Image or identity? Only Super-Recognizers’ 
(memor)ability is consistently viewpoint-invariant

A face’s memorability refers to the unique combination of its intrinsic visual features facilitating its later recognition. Despite considerable variation in face recognition ability amongst the general population, individuals show substantial concordance regarding the memorability of various faces. And, when the viewpoints across which identities are seen at encoding and recognition differ, such agreement persists, though to a lesser extent. Consequently, face recognition cannot rely solely on image-dependent encoding; individuals must extract some invariant facial information, robust to changes in viewpoint, to do so consistently. However, whether such consistency covaries with overall face processing ability is unclear. Here, therefore, in two experiments we tested recognition of (i) implicitly encoded face images and (ii) explicitly encoded identities in a group of normal control observers against a group of “Super-Recognizers” (SRs) who possess exceptional face processing skills. When implicit encoding was surreptitiously solicited, recognition of studied images was comparable between groups. Yet, when encoding was explicitly solicited, SRs more accurately recognized studied identities across viewpoint changes than normal observers. Critically, image-dependent information could only inform recognition in the first experiment, whereas viewpoint-invariant information could inform recognition consistently in both. Individualized profiles of observers’ performance (as a function of stimulus memorability) reveal that only SRs performed consistently between experiments. We suggest that SRs’ unique capacity for utilizing viewpoint-invariant information for recognition, regardless of encoding conditions, is rooted in fundamentally more accurate and robust representations of identity-based memorability. These results invite a reinterpretation of face memorability that describes viewpoint-invariant information, diagnostic of facial identity representations in memory.