The Methodology The survey consisted of 30 pairs of photos. Each pair included a driver's license photo and a recent photo of an individual who looked like the person in the driver's license picture. In half of the pairs, the photos were of the same person. In the other half, they were of impostors. One of the surprises of the survey is that new Notaries performed as well as those who had been Notaries for more than 20 years. How often the respondents verified identities did seem to matter. Notaries who check 15–20 IDs a week were much better at spotting impostors than Notaries who checked 10–15 IDs a week.
The Next Step Performance also varied wildly between photo pairs. In the next research phase, Dr. Papesh will show the photo pairs with the best and worst results to a new group and track their eye movements. This should provide some insight about which features trip up people and which features or other techniques prove most helpful in correctly identifying people.