Experimental Psychology, Justus Liebig University, Giessen, Germany.
Cogn Res Princ Implic. 2022 May 15;7(1):45. doi: 10.1186/s41235-022-00396-4.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, the wearing of face masks became mandatory in public areas or at workplaces in many countries. While offering protection, the coverage of large parts of our face (nose, mouth and chin) may have consequences for face recognition. This seems especially important in the context of contact tracing which can require memory of familiar and unfamiliar contacts and whether they were wearing a mask. In this study, we tested how well participants perform at remembering faces and whether they wore a mask, and if this depends on familiarity. Our results show that: (a) Participants remembered familiar faces better than unfamiliar ones, regardless of mask wearing. (b) Participants remembered unmasked faces better than masked faces, regardless of familiarity. (c) Participants were significantly worse at remembering whether an unfamiliar face was wearing a mask or not-even if they indicated remembering the face. (d) Participants showed a bias to indicate no memory of unfamiliar faces. (e) Participants showed a bias to indicate that unfamiliar faces wore a mask, even if they did not. In sum, it was harder to remember both, the identity of unfamiliar faces and whether they wore a mask. These findings have practical relevance for contact tracing and epidemic control.
在 COVID-19 大流行期间，许多国家在公共场所或工作场所都强制要求佩戴口罩。虽然口罩能提供保护，但它覆盖了我们面部的大部分区域（鼻子、嘴巴和下巴），可能会对面部识别产生影响。在接触者追踪的背景下，这一点似乎尤为重要，因为接触者追踪可能需要记忆熟悉和不熟悉的接触者，以及他们是否戴口罩。在这项研究中，我们测试了参与者在记住面部特征和口罩佩戴情况方面的表现，以及这是否取决于熟悉程度。我们的研究结果表明：（a）无论是否戴口罩，参与者对熟悉面孔的记忆都比对不熟悉面孔的记忆要好；（b）无论熟悉程度如何，参与者对未戴口罩的面孔的记忆都比对戴口罩的面孔的记忆要好；（c）即使参与者表示记住了面孔，他们也明显更难记住陌生面孔是否戴了口罩；（d）参与者倾向于表示对不熟悉的面孔没有记忆；（e）即使他们没有记忆，参与者也倾向于表示不熟悉的面孔戴了口罩。总的来说，无论是不熟悉的面孔的身份还是他们是否戴口罩，都更难被记住。这些发现对接触者追踪和疫情防控具有实际意义。
