Sanders Jet Gabrielle, Ueda Yoshiyuki, Yoshikawa Sakiko, Jenkins Rob
Department of Psychology, University of York, York, UK.
Department of Psychology and Behavioural Science, London School of Economics and Political Sciences, London, UK.
Cogn Res Princ Implic. 2019 Nov 21;4(1):43. doi: 10.1186/s41235-019-0197-9.
Recent experimental work has shown that hyper-realistic face masks can pass for real faces during live viewing. However, live viewing embeds the perceptual task (mask detection) in a powerful social context that may influence respondents' behaviour. To remove this social context, we assessed viewers' ability to distinguish photos of hyper-realistic masks from photos of real faces in a computerised two-alternative forced choice (2AFC) procedure.
In experiment 1 (N = 120), we observed an error rate of 33% when viewing time was restricted to 500 ms. In experiment 2 (N = 120), we observed an error rate of 20% when viewing time was unlimited. In both experiments we saw a significant performance cost for other-race comparisons relative to own-race comparisons.
We conclude that viewers could not reliably distinguish hyper-realistic face masks from real faces in photographic presentations. As well as its theoretical interest, failure to detect synthetic faces has important implications for security and crime prevention, which often rely on facial appearance and personal identity being related.
近期的实验研究表明,超逼真的面部面具在实时观看时可被误认作真实面孔。然而,实时观看将感知任务(面具检测)置于一个可能影响受访者行为的强大社会情境中。为消除这种社会情境的影响,我们采用计算机化二选一强制选择(2AFC)程序,评估了观看者区分超逼真面具照片与真实面孔照片的能力。
在实验1(N = 120)中,当观看时间限制为500毫秒时,我们观察到错误率为33%。在实验2(N = 120)中,当观看时间不受限制时,我们观察到错误率为20%。在两个实验中,我们都发现与同种族比较相比,其他种族比较存在显著的表现成本。
我们得出结论,观看者在照片展示中无法可靠地区分超逼真的面部面具与真实面孔。除了其理论意义外,无法检测合成面孔对安全和犯罪预防具有重要影响,因为安全和犯罪预防通常依赖于面部外观与个人身份之间的关联。