{"title":"Challenges of face identification with varied mask coverage in the post COVID-19 era.","authors":"Yi-Lang Chen, Shu-Yu Wang","doi":"10.3389/fpsyg.2025.1486808","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"<p><strong>Introduction: </strong>Recent studies have shown that wearing masks can influence face recognition abilities. During the COVID-19 pandemic, people became increasingly familiar with seeing masked faces, leading to a reduced familiarity with fully uncovered faces. With Taiwan now transitioning to a post-COVID-19 phase and the removal of mask mandates, this study investigates how varying levels of mask coverage affect face identification accuracy and response times.</p><p><strong>Methods: </strong>We examined three levels of mask coverage-full coverage (FC), coverage up to the middle of the nose bridge (MB), and coverage up to the bottom of the nose bridge (BB)-to determine their effects on identification performance. A computer-based simulation was conducted with 100 university students (50 men and 50 women), where participants completed 30 trials (5 trials for each mask coverage level across two target sexes). Each trial presented a masked target face corresponding to one of the three coverage levels, alongside four full-face images. Participants were instructed to choose the image that best matched the masked target face, with an option to select \"None\" if no match was found.</p><p><strong>Results: </strong>The findings indicate that faces with FC were identified both faster and more accurately, while those with MB coverage were the most challenging and time-consuming to recognize, particularly for female targets. The performance with BB coverage was intermediate between the other two levels.</p><p><strong>Conclusion: </strong>This study highlights a notable shift in face identification processes in the aftermath of the pandemic, with FC now leading to quicker and more accurate recognitions, suggesting a significant adaptability in human perceptual mechanisms. These results emphasize the importance of further research into face recognition as we continue to adapt to the pandemic's lasting effects on social interactions and identity verification.</p>","PeriodicalId":12525,"journal":{"name":"Frontiers in Psychology","volume":"16 ","pages":"1486808"},"PeriodicalIF":2.6000,"publicationDate":"2025-02-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC11905992/pdf/","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Frontiers in Psychology","FirstCategoryId":"102","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2025.1486808","RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"2025/1/1 0:00:00","PubModel":"eCollection","JCR":"Q2","JCRName":"PSYCHOLOGY, MULTIDISCIPLINARY","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
Introduction: Recent studies have shown that wearing masks can influence face recognition abilities. During the COVID-19 pandemic, people became increasingly familiar with seeing masked faces, leading to a reduced familiarity with fully uncovered faces. With Taiwan now transitioning to a post-COVID-19 phase and the removal of mask mandates, this study investigates how varying levels of mask coverage affect face identification accuracy and response times.
Methods: We examined three levels of mask coverage-full coverage (FC), coverage up to the middle of the nose bridge (MB), and coverage up to the bottom of the nose bridge (BB)-to determine their effects on identification performance. A computer-based simulation was conducted with 100 university students (50 men and 50 women), where participants completed 30 trials (5 trials for each mask coverage level across two target sexes). Each trial presented a masked target face corresponding to one of the three coverage levels, alongside four full-face images. Participants were instructed to choose the image that best matched the masked target face, with an option to select "None" if no match was found.
Results: The findings indicate that faces with FC were identified both faster and more accurately, while those with MB coverage were the most challenging and time-consuming to recognize, particularly for female targets. The performance with BB coverage was intermediate between the other two levels.
Conclusion: This study highlights a notable shift in face identification processes in the aftermath of the pandemic, with FC now leading to quicker and more accurate recognitions, suggesting a significant adaptability in human perceptual mechanisms. These results emphasize the importance of further research into face recognition as we continue to adapt to the pandemic's lasting effects on social interactions and identity verification.
期刊介绍:
Frontiers in Psychology is the largest journal in its field, publishing rigorously peer-reviewed research across the psychological sciences, from clinical research to cognitive science, from perception to consciousness, from imaging studies to human factors, and from animal cognition to social psychology. Field Chief Editor Axel Cleeremans at the Free University of Brussels is supported by an outstanding Editorial Board of international researchers. This multidisciplinary open-access journal is at the forefront of disseminating and communicating scientific knowledge and impactful discoveries to researchers, academics, clinicians and the public worldwide. The journal publishes the best research across the entire field of psychology. Today, psychological science is becoming increasingly important at all levels of society, from the treatment of clinical disorders to our basic understanding of how the mind works. It is highly interdisciplinary, borrowing questions from philosophy, methods from neuroscience and insights from clinical practice - all in the goal of furthering our grasp of human nature and society, as well as our ability to develop new intervention methods.