IngentaConnect Attention to internal face features in unfamiliar face matching

Authors: Fletcher, Kingsley I.¹; Butavicius, Marcus A.²; Lee, Michael D.³

Source: British Journal of Psychology, Volume 99, Number 3, August 2008 , pp. 379-394(16)

Publisher: British Psychological Society

Abstract:

Accurate matching of unfamiliar faces is vital in security and forensic applications, yet previous research has suggested that humans often perform poorly when matching unfamiliar faces. Hairstyle and facial hair can strongly influence unfamiliar face matching but are potentially unreliable cues. This study investigated whether increased attention to the more stable internal face features of eyes, nose, and mouth was associated with more accurate face-matching performance. Forty-three first-year psychology students decided whether two simultaneously presented faces were of the same person or not. The faces were displayed for either 2 or 6 seconds, and had either similar or dissimilar hairstyles. The level of attention to internal features was measured by the proportion of fixation time spent on the internal face features and the sensitivity of discrimination to changes in external feature similarity. Increased attention to internal features was associated with increased discrimination in the 2-second display-time condition, but no significant relationship was found in the 6-second condition. Individual differences in eye-movements were highly stable across the experimental conditions.

Document Type: Research article

DOI: 10.1348/000712607X235872

Affiliations: 1: School of Psychology, University of Adelaide, Australia 2: Defence Science and Technology Organisation, Edinburgh, Australia 3: Department of Cognitive Sciences, University of California, Irvine, California, USA

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