Making a Spectacle of Yourself: The Effect of Glasses and Sunglasses on Face Perception

Graham, Daisy L.; Ritchie, Kay L.

doi:10.1177/0301006619844680

Cited by 30 publications

(54 citation statements)

References 28 publications

(32 reference statements)

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“…The simple addition of props to a face (e.g. sunglasses or glasses) has also been found to reduce accuracy on unfamiliar face matching tasks [13,16,17,29,36,37], where props remove information about the identity by occluding features of the face. Previous studies which have attempted to assess the importance of specific facial features for face identification have typically grouped features generically as ‘external features’ (e.g.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Glasses partially occlude, and sunglasses fully occlude the eye region of the face. Two studies have shown that unfamiliar face matching is impaired when one image in the pair is unconcealed and the other wears glasses [36,37]. The performance was further reduced when the eye region in one image in the pair was fully occluded through sunglasses, thus suggesting a role for the eye region in unfamiliar face matching [36].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Two studies have shown that unfamiliar face matching is impaired when one image in the pair is unconcealed and the other wears glasses [36,37]. The performance was further reduced when the eye region in one image in the pair was fully occluded through sunglasses, thus suggesting a role for the eye region in unfamiliar face matching [36]. It has been suggested that the mouth region may also be useful for face identification.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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The effect of face masks and sunglasses on identity and expression recognition with super-recognizers and typical observers

et al. 2021

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Face masks present a new challenge to face identification (here matching) and emotion recognition in Western cultures. Here, we present the results of three experiments that test the effect of masks, and also the effect of sunglasses (an occlusion that individuals tend to have more experienced with) on (i) familiar face matching, (ii) unfamiliar face matching and (iii) emotion categorization. Occlusion reduced accuracy in all three tasks, with most errors in the mask condition; however, there was little difference in performance for faces in masks compared with faces in sunglasses. Super-recognizers, people who are highly skilled at matching unconcealed faces, were impaired by occlusion, but at the group level, performed with higher accuracy than controls on all tasks. Results inform psychology theory with implications for everyday interactions, security and policing in a mask-wearing society.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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The effect of face masks and sunglasses on identity and expression recognition with super-recognizers and typical observers

et al. 2021

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“…Accuracy also falls if the faces are shown from different viewpoints (Estudillo and Bindemann 2014 ), or under different lighting conditions (Hill and Bruce 1996 ). Moreover, the amount of time elapsed between the capture of the two photographs can impair matching accuracy (Megreya et al 2013 ), as can even minor changes to the appearance of the individual, such as whether or not they are wearing reading glasses (Graham and Ritchie 2019 ; Kramer and Ritchie 2016 ).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Surgical face masks impair human face matching performance for familiar and unfamiliar faces

2020

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In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, many governments around the world now recommend, or require, that their citizens cover the lower half of their face in public. Consequently, many people now wear surgical face masks in public. We investigated whether surgical face masks affected the performance of human observers, and a state-of-the-art face recognition system, on tasks of perceptual face matching. Participants judged whether two simultaneously presented face photographs showed the same person or two different people. We superimposed images of surgical masks over the faces, creating three different mask conditions: control (no masks), mixed (one face wearing a mask), and masked (both faces wearing masks). We found that surgical face masks have a large detrimental effect on human face matching performance, and that the degree of impairment is the same regardless of whether one or both faces in each pair are masked. Surprisingly, this impairment is similar in size for both familiar and unfamiliar faces. When matching masked faces, human observers are biased to reject unfamiliar faces as “mismatches” and to accept familiar faces as “matches”. Finally, the face recognition system showed very high classification accuracy for control and masked stimuli, even though it had not been trained to recognise masked faces. However, accuracy fell markedly when one face was masked and the other was not. Our findings demonstrate that surgical face masks impair the ability of humans, and naïve face recognition systems, to perform perceptual face matching tasks. Identification decisions for masked faces should be treated with caution.

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“…Accuracy also falls if the faces are shown from different viewpoints (Estudillo and Bindemann 2014), or under different lighting conditions (Hill and Bruce 1996). Moreover, the amount of time elapsed between the capture of the two photographs can impair matching accuracy (Megreya et al 2013), as can even minor changes to the appearance of the individual, such as whether or not they are wearing reading glasses (Graham and Ritchie 2019;Kramer and Ritchie 2016).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Surgical face masks impair human face matching performance for familiar and unfamiliar faces

Carragher¹,

Hancock²

2020

Preprint

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In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, many governments around the world now recommend, or require, their citizens to cover the lower half of their face in public. Consequently, many people now wear surgical face masks in public. We investigated whether surgical face masks affected the performance of human observers, and a state-of-the-art face recognition system, on tasks of perceptual face matching. Participants judged whether two simultaneously presented face photographs showed the same person or two different people. We superimposed images of surgical masks over the faces, creating three different mask conditions: control (no masks), mixed (one face wearing a mask), and masked (both faces wearing masks). We find that surgical face masks have a large detrimental effect on human face matching performance, and that the degree of impairment is the same regardless of whether one or both faces in each pair are masked. Surprisingly, this impairment is similar in size for both familiar and unfamiliar faces. When matching masked faces, human observers are biased to reject unfamiliar faces as mismatches and to accept familiar faces as matches. Finally, the face recognition system showed very high classification accuracy for control and masked stimuli, even though it had not been trained to recognise masked faces. However, accuracy fell markedly when one face was masked and the other was not. Our findings demonstrate that surgical face masks impair the ability of humans, and naïve face recognition systems, to perform perceptual face matching tasks. Matching decisions for masked faces should be treated with caution.

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Making a Spectacle of Yourself: The Effect of Glasses and Sunglasses on Face Perception

Cited by 30 publications

References 28 publications

The effect of face masks and sunglasses on identity and expression recognition with super-recognizers and typical observers

The effect of face masks and sunglasses on identity and expression recognition with super-recognizers and typical observers

Surgical face masks impair human face matching performance for familiar and unfamiliar faces

Surgical face masks impair human face matching performance for familiar and unfamiliar faces

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