Jove
Visualize
Contact Us
JoVE
x logofacebook logolinkedin logoyoutube logo
ABOUT JoVE
OverviewLeadershipBlogJoVE Help Center
AUTHORS
Publishing ProcessEditorial BoardScope & PoliciesPeer ReviewFAQSubmit
LIBRARIANS
TestimonialsSubscriptionsAccessResourcesLibrary Advisory BoardFAQ
RESEARCH
JoVE JournalMethods CollectionsJoVE Encyclopedia of ExperimentsArchive
EDUCATION
JoVE CoreJoVE BusinessJoVE Science EducationJoVE Lab ManualFaculty Resource CenterFaculty Site
Terms & Conditions of Use
Privacy Policy
Policies

Related Concept Videos

Cognitive Learning01:21

Cognitive Learning

1.5K
Cognitive learning is based on purposive behavior, incidental learning, and insight learning.
E. C. Tolman's theory of purposive behavior emphasizes that much behavior is goal-directed. He argued that to understand behavior, we must look at the entire sequence of actions leading to a goal. For instance, high school students study hard, not just due to past reinforcement but also to achieve the goal of getting into a good college.
Tolman introduced the idea that behavior is influenced by...
1.5K
Generalization, Discrimination, and Extinction01:24

Generalization, Discrimination, and Extinction

1.6K
Generalization, discrimination, and extinction are key concepts in operant conditioning that influence how behaviors are learned and maintained.
Generalization occurs when a behavior reinforced in one context is performed in similar situations. For instance, a student who studies diligently for calculus and receives excellent grades might apply the same study habits to psychology and history, expecting similar results. Generalization shows how learning in one setting can influence behavior in...
1.6K
Schemas01:42

Schemas

12.5K
A schema is a mental construct consisting of a cluster or collection of related concepts (Bartlett, 1932). There are many different types of schemata, and they all have one thing in common: schemata are a method of organizing information that allows the brain to work more efficiently. When a schema is activated, the brain makes immediate assumptions about the person or object being observed.
12.5K
Perceptual Constancy01:12

Perceptual Constancy

1.6K
Perceptual constancy is the ability to recognize that objects remain consistent and unchanged even when their appearance varies due to changes in sensory input. There are four main types of perceptual constancy: size constancy, shape constancy, color constancy, and brightness constancy.
Size constancy is the recognition that an object remains the same size, even when its image on the retina changes. For instance, a bus is perceived to be large enough to carry people, even if it looks tiny from...
1.6K
The Anchoring-and-Adjustment Heuristic01:25

The Anchoring-and-Adjustment Heuristic

7.8K
In order to make good decisions, we use our knowledge and our reasoning. Often, this knowledge and reasoning is sound and solid. However, sometimes, we are swayed by biases or by others manipulating a situation. For example, let’s say you and three friends wanted to rent a house and had a combined target budget of $1,600. The realtor shows you only very run-down houses for $1,600 and then shows you a very nice house for $2,000. Might you ask each person to pay more in rent to get the...
7.8K
Survival Tree01:19

Survival Tree

451
Survival trees are a non-parametric method used in survival analysis to model the relationship between a set of covariates and the time until an event of interest occurs, often referred to as the "time-to-event" or "survival time." This method is particularly useful when dealing with censored data, where the event has not occurred for some individuals by the end of the study period, or when the exact time of the event is unknown.
 Building a Survival Tree
Constructing a...
451

You might also read

Related Articles

Articles linked to this work by shared authors, journal, and citation graph.

Sort by
Same author

Beyond minutiae: inferring missing details from global structure in fingerprints.

Cognitive research: principles and implications·2025
Same author

Understanding 'error' in the forensic sciences: A primer.

Forensic science international. Synergy·2024
Same author

Modelling the impact of single vs. dual presentation on visual discrimination across resolutions.

Quarterly journal of experimental psychology (2006)·2024
Same author

The effect of fingerprint expertise on visual short-term memory.

Cognitive research: principles and implications·2024
Same author

A guide to measuring expert performance in forensic pattern matching.

Behavior research methods·2024
Same author

Correction: Collective intelligence in fingerprint analysis.

Cognitive research: principles and implications·2023

Related Experiment Video

Updated: Mar 1, 2026

Operant Procedures for Assessing Behavioral Flexibility in Rats
08:30

Operant Procedures for Assessing Behavioral Flexibility in Rats

Published on: February 15, 2015

21.7K

Expertise with unfamiliar objects is flexible to changes in task but not changes in class.

Rachel A Searston1, Jason M Tangen2

  • 1Melbourne Centre for the Study of Higher Education, Melbourne Graduate School of Education, The University of Melbourne, Melbourne, Australia.

Plos One
|June 3, 2017
PubMed
Summary

Perceptual expertise is specific. Fingerprint experts excel with fingerprints but not unfamiliar inverted faces, showing expertise limits. This suggests experience heavily constrains specialized visual skills.

More Related Videos

The Attentional Set Shifting Task: A Measure of Cognitive Flexibility in Mice
09:15

The Attentional Set Shifting Task: A Measure of Cognitive Flexibility in Mice

Published on: February 4, 2015

28.6K
Defining the Role Of Language in Infants' Object Categorization with Eye-tracking Paradigms
07:31

Defining the Role Of Language in Infants' Object Categorization with Eye-tracking Paradigms

Published on: February 8, 2019

7.3K

Related Experiment Videos

Last Updated: Mar 1, 2026

Operant Procedures for Assessing Behavioral Flexibility in Rats
08:30

Operant Procedures for Assessing Behavioral Flexibility in Rats

Published on: February 15, 2015

21.7K
The Attentional Set Shifting Task: A Measure of Cognitive Flexibility in Mice
09:15

The Attentional Set Shifting Task: A Measure of Cognitive Flexibility in Mice

Published on: February 4, 2015

28.6K
Defining the Role Of Language in Infants' Object Categorization with Eye-tracking Paradigms
07:31

Defining the Role Of Language in Infants' Object Categorization with Eye-tracking Paradigms

Published on: February 8, 2019

7.3K

Area of Science:

  • Cognitive Psychology
  • Forensic Science
  • Perception

Background:

  • Perceptual expertise is typically specific and familiarity-bound.
  • Forensic examiners must discriminate unfamiliar items within their expertise.
  • The limits of perceptual expertise with unfamiliar objects are not well understood.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To investigate the limits of perceptual expertise in fingerprint examiners.
  • To compare fingerprint experts' and novices' performance on fingerprint and inverted face discrimination tasks.
  • To determine if fingerprint expertise generalizes to other unfamiliar visual stimuli.

Main Methods:

  • Two experiments were conducted comparing fingerprint experts and novices.
  • Task 1: Identifying categorical outliers in fingerprint and inverted face arrays.
  • Task 2: Discriminating briefly presented matching and mismatching fingerprint and inverted face pairs.

Main Results:

  • Fingerprint experts outperformed novices in identifying fingerprint outliers but not inverted face outliers.
  • Experts showed higher accuracy than novices in discriminating brief fingerprint stimuli, but not inverted faces.
  • Performance on inverted faces did not differ between experts and novices.

Conclusions:

  • Perceptual expertise with fingerprints is flexible to task demands but has abrupt limits.
  • Fingerprint expertise does not generalize to unfamiliar visual categories like inverted faces.
  • Specialized perceptual expertise with unfamiliar objects is significantly constrained by specific experience.