Masked face matching benefits from isolated facial features.

ABSTRACT: Verifying the identity of an unfamiliar person is a difficult task, especially when targets wear masks that cover most of their faces. This presents a major challenge for law enforcement in border control, security, and criminal investigations. Therefore, we aim to explore ways to improve face-matching performance when a face is heavily masked. In two experiments, we investigated whether face-matching performance can benefit from the presentation of isolated facial features, namely the eyes (Experiment 1) and the mouth (Experiment 2), when a target face is masked. Participants viewed pairs of faces and determined whether they belonged to the same person or different people. In congruent pairs, participants matched a full-face image to another full-face image or a masked image to an isolate

SUBMITTER: Zhang M 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC12212515 | biostudies-literature | 2025

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature