Researcher

Associate Professor David White

My Expertise

I am a lead investigator in the Face Research Lab at UNSW. We study face perception with a focus on individual differences in people's ability to perform face processing tasks. Although we all look at many faces each day, we do not all share the same abilities to process the important social information that they contain.

These individual differences have implications for theoretical understanding of perceptual processing and social cognition, as well as for people's everyday lives. They are also of substantial applied interest in settings where accurate face identification decisions are critical to identity management processes, for example in government, police, private industry and courts. Errors in these decisions can have profound social consequences, such as identity theft, acts of terrorism or wrongful convictions.

Our work in this area encompasses performance testing of humans and technology. Interest in facial recognition technology is both applied and theoretical. From an applied perspective, we are interested in how people use and collaborate with facial recognition technology when making face identity judgments – for example in criminal investigations and forensic science evidence reports. From a theoretical perspective, we are interested in the potential for modern facial recognition technology – Deep Neural Networks – to model aspects of the face processing system in humans. 

Keywords

Fields of Research (FoR)

Vision science, Computer vision, Forensic psychology, Sensory processes, perception and performance, Social and affective neuroscience, Cognition, Cognitive neuroscience, Cognitive and computational psychology

Biography

I am a lead investigator in the Face Research Lab at UNSW. We study face perception with a focus on individual differences in people's ability to perform face processing tasks. Although we all look at many faces each day, we do not all share the same abilities to process the important social information that they contain.

These individual differences have implications for theoretical understanding of perceptual processing and social...view more

I am a lead investigator in the Face Research Lab at UNSW. We study face perception with a focus on individual differences in people's ability to perform face processing tasks. Although we all look at many faces each day, we do not all share the same abilities to process the important social information that they contain.

These individual differences have implications for theoretical understanding of perceptual processing and social cognition, as well as for people's everyday lives. They are also of substantial applied interest in settings where accurate face identification decisions are critical to identity management processes, for example in government, police, private industry and courts. Errors in these decisions can have profound social consequences, such as identity theft, acts of terrorism or wrongful convictions.

Our work in this area encompasses performance testing of humans and technology. Interest in facial recognition technology is both applied and theoretical. From an applied perspective, we are interested in how people use and collaborate with facial recognition technology when making face identity judgments – for example in criminal investigations and forensic science evidence reports. From a theoretical perspective, we are interested in the potential for modern facial recognition technology – Deep Neural Networks – to model aspects of the face processing system in humans. 


My Research Supervision


Supervision keywords


Areas of supervision

I conduct theoretical and applied research in the field of face perception, with a focus on individual differences in this ability. Our lab is highly collaborative and has access to a range of unique resources for research students, including a large research registry of participants who have been rigorously tested on their face perception ability. This includes a subset of 'super-recognisers' with extremely high ability in recognising faces. We also have a range of innovative research tools, including screen-based and wearable eye-tracking technology, deep neural networks and access to fMRI.

Please contact me if you are interested in pursuing research in our lab, and note that I am always open to discussing potential research projects outside my immediate topic area. 

 

 

 

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