Analysis of answer times in recognition of facial images

Abstract

In visual interaction between people, faces are the element that most attracts observers, so facial images are also an important element of communication between people. The aspect of observing and memorizing facial images has often been the subject of research. When observing facial images, there are two important parameters: the dimensions of the facial images and the observation time. Both of them have a great influence on recognition performance. In our research, we set three different dimensions of face images (small, medium, and large) and four observation times for the observation test (1, 2, 4, and 8 seconds). Since the results of face image recognition success in terms of these parameters have already been reported in other studies, we focused on the observation times for face images in the recognition process. We hypothesized that when participants looked the facial image quickly (short answer times), they were more likely to be convinced of the correctness of the answer and, consequently, fewer false recognitions would occur. In contrast, when participants looked at the face image for a longer time during the recognition process, they hesitated more, and the rate of incorrect recognition was higher because they were not completely sure of their answer. We found that in all 12 cases, the average duration of correct answers was shorter than that of incorrect answers. According to the time distribution of the duration of all answers, we set two limits (2 and 3 seconds) and analyzed the wrong answers according to these time limits. We found that with longer answer times, the proportion of incorrect recognition increased strongly. This is particularly noticeable in the tests where participants observed the facial images for a longer time (8 seconds) and could therefore memorize them better.