The COVID-19 pandemic masks the way people perceive faces

The unprecedented effort to minimize the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic introduces a new arena for human face recognition in which faces are partially occluded with masks. Here, we tested the extent to which face masks change the way faces are perceived. To this end, we evaluated face processing abilities for masked and unmasked faces in a large online sample of adult observers (n=496) using an adapted version of the Cambridge Face Memory Test, the mostvalidated measure of face perception abilities in humans. As expected, a substantial decrease in performance was found for masked faces, along with a large increase in the proportion of individuals who exhibit a remarkable deficit in face perception. Unexpectedly, however, the inclusion of masks led to a qualitative change in the way masked faces are perceived. In particular, holistic processing, the hallmark of face perception, was severely impaired for maskedfaces. Similar changes were found when masks were included either during the study or the test phases of the experiment. Together, we provide robust evidence for qualitative alterations in the processing of masked faces that could have significant effects on daily activities and social interactions.