Pixelating Familiar People in the Media: Should Masking Be Taken at Face Value?

The Effect of Image Pixelation on Unfamiliar‐Face Matching

“…A similar finding has been obtained in psychological research. Lander, Bruce, and Hill (2001) found, for example, that approximately 50% of famous face photographs with a horizontal resolution of only 10 pixels per face could still be identified (also Demanet, Dhont, Notebaert, Pattyn, & Vandierendonck, 2007). This suggests that pixelated faces with an extremely low spatial resolution can contain sufficient information for person identification.…”

“…For example, for the stimuli provided in Figure 2, the vertical resolution of the pixelated faces equates to 29, 20, and 11 pixels per face for the 20, 14, and 8 pixel conditions, respectively. We have chosen to manipulate the resolution of the faces in this manner for consistency with other studies in this field (e.g., Demanet et al, 2007;Lander et al, 2001). …”

“…These previous studies have examined the effect of pixelation on person identification with familiarized faces in recognition memory paradigms (Bachmann, 1991;Costen et al, 1994Costen et al, , 1996 or have assessed the recognition of famous faces in naming tasks (Demanet et al, 2007;Lander et al, 2001). By contrast, the effect of image 6 pixelation on the identity matching of unfamiliar faces has so far not been investigated systematically.…”

“…The pixelated faces were therefore presented at a horizontal image resolution of 20, 14 or 8 pixels per face. These levels are derived from a recent investigation into face pixelation (Demanet et al, 2007) and are 7 typical also of other studies in this area (Bachmann, 1991;Costen et al, 1994Costen et al, , 1996Lander et al, 2001). Moreover, these pixelation levels fall within (20 horizontal pixels/face), closely match (14 horizontal pixels/face), or fall outside (8 horizontal pixels/face) the range of spatial frequencies needed for the successful recognition of familiarized faces (see Bachmann, 1991;Costen et al, 1994Costen et al, , 1996.…”

Facial Wipes don't Wash: Facial Image Comparison by Video Superimposition Reduces the Accuracy of Face Matching Decisions

“…The use of disguised target images in Experiment 2 replicated the first of the scenarios in which a Facial Comparison practitioner is likely to be employed to present evidence in a criminal case, and the current experiment explores the effectiveness of the technique in the second scenario, by using degraded quality target images. The aim here was to simulate poor quality CCTV images and images were pixelated to achieve this effect (Bindemann, Attard, Leach, & Johnston, 2013;Demanet, Dhont, Notebaert, Pattyn, & Vandierendonck, 2007).…”