Incongruence in Lighting Impairs Face Identification

Lim, Denise Y.; Lee, Alan; Or, Charles C.-F.

doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2022.834806

Cited by 3 publications

(2 citation statements)

References 41 publications

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“…Indeed, illumination can affect the amount and/or type of information gathered from faces, with impact on human visual processing, including colour perception (e.g., Shin et al, 2004;Kelber et al, 2017), visual acuity (e.g., Sheedy et al, 1984;Ferwerda, 1998;Hiraoka et al, 2015) and contrast sensitivity (e.g., Amesbury and Schallhorn, 2003;Alghwiri and Whitney, 2012;Wood, 2020). Consistently, studies on facial memory tests suggested an overall negative impact on face identification when illuminated by dimmer light (DiNardo and Rainey, 1989;Nyman et al, 2019;Lim et al, 2022). Moreover, lighting is accurately controlled in professional photography, different light effects are used to emphasize face properties in portraits (Arena, 2012), and specific methods are applied to manipulate and digitally correct the desired effects (Shu et al, 2017).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 90%

Illumination and gaze effects on face evaluation: The Bi-AGI database

et al. 2022

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Face evaluation and first impression generation can be affected by multiple face elements such as invariant facial features, gaze direction and environmental context; however, the composite modulation of eye gaze and illumination on faces of different gender and ages has not been previously investigated. We aimed at testing how these different facial and contextual features affect ratings of social attributes. Thus, we created and validated the Bi-AGI Database, a freely available new set of male and female face stimuli varying in age across lifespan from 18 to 87 years, gaze direction and illumination conditions. Judgments on attractiveness, femininity-masculinity, dominance and trustworthiness were collected for each stimulus. Results evidence the interaction of the different variables in modulating social trait attribution, in particular illumination differently affects ratings across age, gaze and gender, with less impact on older adults and greater effect on young faces.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 90%

Illumination and gaze effects on face evaluation: The Bi-AGI database

et al. 2022

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“…More recently, another study systematically examined how changes in lighting between study and test affected face memory (Lim et al, 2022). Lighting was incongruent when faces were studied under bright lighting and then tested under dim lighting (Bright/Dim) and vice versa (Dim/Bright).…”

Section: Lightingmentioning

confidence: 99%

Face Recognition Under Adverse Viewing Conditions: Implications for Eyewitness Testimony

Or,

Lim,

Chen

et al. 2023

Policy Insights from the Behavioral and Brain Sciences

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Eyewitness testimony forms an important component in deciding whether a case can be prosecuted. Yet, many criminal perpetrators deliberately conceal their faces with disguises or under dim lighting, undermining eyewitness accuracy. This article reviews recent studies to characterize the factors that impair face recognition performance, specifically, various forms of face disguise (e.g., face masks, sunglasses) and different lighting conditions. Research shows that identification accuracy, alongside eyewitness confidence and decision bias, all affect the reliability of eyewitness accounts. A consistent finding across studies is that face-identification accuracy can be improved by matching the viewing conditions during the police lineup with those during the crime (e.g., showing masked faces during the lineup should the perpetrator be masked). Current face recognition research provides specific recommendations for optimizing the procedures in eyewitness testimony.

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Face masks are less effective than sunglasses in masking face identity

Chia

et al. 2023

Sci Rep

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The effect of covering faces on face identification is recently garnering interest amid the COVID-19 pandemic. Here, we investigated how face identification performance was affected by two types of face disguise: sunglasses and face masks. Observers studied a series of faces; then judged whether a series of test faces, comprising studied and novel faces, had been studied before or not. Face stimuli were presented either without coverings (full faces), wearing sunglasses covering the upper region (eyes, eyebrows), or wearing surgical masks covering the lower region (nose, mouth, chin). We found that sunglasses led to larger reductions in sensitivity (d’) to face identity than face masks did, while both disguises increased the tendency to report faces as studied before, a bias that was absent for full faces. In addition, faces disguised during either study or test only (i.e. study disguised faces, test with full faces; and vice versa) led to further reductions in sensitivity from both studying and testing with disguised faces, suggesting that congruence between study and test is crucial for memory retrieval. These findings implied that the upper region of the face, including the eye-region features, is more diagnostic for holistic face-identity processing than the lower face region.

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Incongruence in Lighting Impairs Face Identification

Cited by 3 publications

References 41 publications

Illumination and gaze effects on face evaluation: The Bi-AGI database

Illumination and gaze effects on face evaluation: The Bi-AGI database

Face Recognition Under Adverse Viewing Conditions: Implications for Eyewitness Testimony

Face masks are less effective than sunglasses in masking face identity

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