Zhang Mengying, Sauerland Melanie, Sagana Anna
Section Forensic Psychology, Department of Clinical Psychological Science, Faculty of Psychology and Neuroscience, Maastricht University, Maastricht, Limburg, Netherlands.
PLoS One. 2025 Jul 1;20(7):e0326706. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0326706. eCollection 2025.
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 isolated facial feature. In incongruent pairs, participants matched a full-face image to an image of the eyes or the mouth only or to a masked image. Matching accuracy was significantly better in congruent than incongruent pairs. Interestingly, the benefit of showing an isolated facial feature was even present when that single feature was the mouth. Overall, the findings showed that focusing on isolated facial features, such as the eyes or mouth, can be a valuable strategy for enhancing identity matching with masked perpetrators.
核实一个不熟悉的人的身份是一项艰巨的任务，尤其是当目标人物戴着遮住大部分脸部的口罩时。这给边境管制、安保和刑事调查中的执法工作带来了重大挑战。因此，我们旨在探索在脸部被严重遮挡时提高面部匹配性能的方法。在两项实验中，我们研究了在目标脸部被遮挡时，面部匹配性能是否能从孤立面部特征（即眼睛（实验1）和嘴巴（实验2））的呈现中受益。参与者观看成对的脸部，并判断它们是否属于同一个人或不同的人。在一致的配对中，参与者将全脸图像与另一个全脸图像进行匹配，或将戴口罩的图像与孤立的面部特征进行匹配。在不一致的配对中，参与者将全脸图像与仅眼睛或嘴巴的图像或戴口罩的图像进行匹配。一致配对中的匹配准确率明显高于不一致配对。有趣的是，即使单一特征是嘴巴，展示孤立面部特征的好处仍然存在。总体而言，研究结果表明，关注孤立的面部特征，如眼睛或嘴巴，可能是增强与戴口罩犯罪者身份匹配的一种有价值的策略。
