The Importance of Internal and External Features in Matching Own and Other Race Faces

Perception ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 030100662110434
Author(s):  
Catriona Havard

Research has shown that we are better at discriminating between faces that are our own race, and much less accurate with faces of another race. When the external features of faces were removed, this reduced the accuracy for recognizing other-races faces, more than own-race faces, suggesting that the external features (hair, face shape) are especially important for the recognition of other-race faces. The aim of the current study was to determine whether external features were more useful in matching other-race faces, and whether this was the case for Western and Eastern viewers. The current study employed a face matching task with Caucasian (U.K.) and Asian (Chinese) participants and found that responses were more accurate for own-race faces, and for whole faces when compared with faces where the internal or external features had been removed. Removing the external features of other-race faces increased the own-race bias for Chinese and U.K. participants, demonstrating the importance of viewing whole faces, including the external features when matching other-race faces.

2019 ◽  
Vol 283 ◽  
pp. 34-44
Author(s):  
Virginie C. Perizzolo ◽  
Cristina Berchio ◽  
Dominik A. Moser ◽  
Cristina Puro Gomez ◽  
Marylène Vital ◽  
...  

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anna K Bobak ◽  
Viktoria Roumenova Mileva ◽  
Peter Hancock

The role of image colour in face identification has received little attention in research despite the importance of identifying people from photographs in identity documents (IDs). Here, in two experiments, we investigated whether colour congruency of two photographs shown side by side affects face matching accuracy. Participants were presented with two images from the Models Face Matching Test (Experiment 1) and a newly devised matching task incorporating female faces (Experiment 2) and asked to decide whether they show the same person, or two different people. The photographs were either both in colour, both in grayscale, or mixed (one in grayscale and one in colour). Participants were more likely to accept a pair of images as a “match”, i.e. same person, in the mixed condition, regardless of whether the identity of the pair was the same or not. This demonstrates a clear shift in bias between “congruent” colour conditions and the mixed trials. In addition, there was a small decline in accuracy in the mixed condition, relative to when the images were presented in colour. Our study provides the first evidence that the hue of document photographs matters for face matching performance. This finding has important implications for the design and regulation of photographic ID worldwide.


Author(s):  
Pouria Salehi ◽  
Erin K. Chiou ◽  
Michelle Mancenido ◽  
Ahmadreza Mosallanezhad ◽  
Myke C. Cohen ◽  
...  

This study investigates how human performance and trust are affected by the decision deferral rates of an AI-enabled decision support system in a high criticality domain such as security screening, where ethical and legal considerations prevent full automation. In such domains, deferring cases to a human agent becomes an essential process component. However, the systemic consequences of the rate of deferrals on human performance are unknown. In this study, a face-matching task with an automated face verification system was designed to investigate the effects of varying deferral rates. Results show that higher deferral rates are associated with higher sensitivity and higher workload, but lower throughput and lower trust in the AI. We conclude that deferral rates can affect performance and trust perceptions. The tradeoffs between deferral rate, sensitivity, throughput, and trust need to be considered in designing effective human-AI work systems.


Perception ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 48 (2) ◽  
pp. 175-184 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robin S. S. Kramer ◽  
Sophie Mohamed ◽  
Sarah C. Hardy

Matching two different images of an unfamiliar face is difficult, although we rely on this process every day when proving our identity. Although previous work with laboratory photosets has shown that performance is error-prone, few studies have focussed on how accurately people carry out this matching task using photographs taken from official forms of identification. In Experiment 1, participants matched high-resolution, colour face photos with current UK driving licence photos of the same group of people in a sorting task. Averaging 19 mistaken pairings out of 30, our results showed that this task was both difficult and error-prone. In Experiment 2, high-resolution photographs were paired with either driving licence or passport photographs in a typical pairwise matching paradigm. We found no difference in performance levels for the two types of ID image, with both producing unacceptable levels of accuracy (around 75%–79% correct). The current work benefits from increased ecological validity and provides a clear demonstration that these forms of official identification are ineffective and alternatives should be considered.


i-Perception ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 11 (4) ◽  
pp. 204166952094442
Author(s):  
Sarah Bate ◽  
Rachel Bennetts ◽  
Ebony Murray ◽  
Emma Portch

Face matching is notoriously error-prone, and some work suggests additional difficulty when matching the faces of children. It is possible that individuals with natural proficiencies in adult face matching (“super-recognisers” [SRs]) will also excel at the matching of children’s faces, although other work implicates facilitations in typical perceivers who have high levels of contact with young children (e.g., nursery teachers). This study compared the performance of both of these groups on adult and child face matching to a group of low-contact controls. High- and low-contact control groups performed at a remarkably similar level in both tasks, whereas facilitations for adult and child face matching were observed in some (but not all) SRs. As a group, the SRs performed better in the adult compared with the child task, demonstrating an extended own-age bias compared with controls. These findings suggest that additional exposure to children’s faces does not assist the performance in a face matching task, and the mechanisms underpinning superior recognition of adult faces can also facilitate the child face recognition. Real-world security organisations should therefore seek individuals with general facilitations in face matching for both adult and child face matching tasks.


Perception ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 48 (6) ◽  
pp. 461-470 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daisy L. Graham ◽  
Kay L. Ritchie

We investigated the effect of wearing glasses and sunglasses on the perception of social traits from faces and on face matching. Participants rated images of people wearing no glasses, glasses and sunglasses on three social traits (trustworthiness, competence and attractiveness). Wearing sunglasses reduced ratings of trustworthiness. Participants also performed a matching task (telling whether two images show the same person or not) with pairs of images both wearing no glasses, glasses or sunglasses, and all combinations of eyewear. Incongruent eyewear conditions (e.g., one image wearing glasses and the other wearing sunglasses, etc.) reduced performance. Further analysis comparing performance on congruent and incongruent eyewear trials showed that our effects were driven by match trial performance, where differences in eyewear decreased accuracy. For same-eyewear-condition pairs, performance was poorer for pairs of images both wearing sunglasses than no glasses. Our results extend and update previous research on the effect of eyewear on face perception.


Author(s):  
Dawn McQuiston-Surrett ◽  
Lisa D. Topp

Abstract. Two studies investigated whether the recall accuracy of facial details would differ depending on recall method, and also explored the own-race/ethnic bias in face recall. In Experiment 1, Hispanic participants (N = 120) viewed either a Hispanic or a White face and then were asked to recall the face by either giving a physical description or constructing a facial composite. Independent judges then determined the accuracy of the recalled information in both a rating task and a matching task. Results revealed reliably higher accuracy scores for the descriptions over the facial composites but showed no evidence for an own-race bias. A second experiment (N = 120) was conducted to attempt to replicate the description-advantage effect and to further explore the own-race bias in a stronger test using Black faces as the cross-ethnic group. This experiment again showed a description advantage and provided some evidence for an own-race bias in recall similar to that found in the facial recognition literature. Directions for future research based on the current findings are discussed.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alejandro Estudillo ◽  
Peter James Hills ◽  
Wong Hoo Keat

In the forensic face matching task, observers are presented with two unfamiliar faces and must determine whether they depict the same identity. Due to the Covid-19 pandemic, some governmental authorities require the use of face masks in public spaces. However, face masks impair face identification by disrupting holistic processing of faces. The present study explores the effect of face masks on forensic face matching. Compared to a full-view condition, performance decreased when a face mask was superimposed on one face (Experiment 1) and both faces (Experiment 2) of a pair. Although a positive correlation between the full-view and the mask conditions was found, high proficiency in the full-view condition did not always generalize to the mask condition. Additionally, the mask generally has a more negative impact in those participants with better performance in the full-view condition. The theoretical and practical implications of these findings are discussed.


2016 ◽  
Vol 3 (10) ◽  
pp. 160321 ◽  
Author(s):  
Louise Beattie ◽  
Darragh Walsh ◽  
Jessica McLaren ◽  
Stephany M. Biello ◽  
David White

Previous studies have shown impaired memory for faces following restricted sleep. However, it is not known whether lack of sleep impairs performance on face identification tasks that do not rely on recognition memory, despite these tasks being more prevalent in security and forensic professions—for example, in photo-ID checks at national borders. Here we tested whether poor sleep affects accuracy on a standard test of face-matching ability that does not place demands on memory: the Glasgow Face-Matching Task (GFMT). In Experiment 1, participants who reported sleep disturbance consistent with insomnia disorder show impaired accuracy on the GFMT when compared with participants reporting normal sleep behaviour. In Experiment 2, we then used a sleep diary method to compare GFMT accuracy in a control group to participants reporting poor sleep on three consecutive nights—and again found lower accuracy scores in the short sleep group. In both experiments, reduced face-matching accuracy in those with poorer sleep was not associated with lower confidence in their decisions, carrying implications for occupational settings where identification errors made with high confidence can have serious outcomes. These results suggest that sleep-related impairments in face memory reflect difficulties in perceptual encoding of identity, and point towards metacognitive impairment in face matching following poor sleep.


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