The Effect of Feature Displacement on Face Recognition

Abstract

Human beings possess a remarkable ability to recognise familiar faces quickly and without apparent effort. In spite of this facility, the mechanisms of visual recognition remain tantalizingly obscure. An experiment is reported in which image processing equipment was used to displace slightly the features of a set of original facial images to form groups of modified images. Observers were then required to indicate whether they were being shown the "original" or a "modified" face, when shown one face at a time on a TV monitor screen. Memory reinforcement was provided by displaying the original face at another screen position, between presentations. The data show, inter alia, the very high significance of the vertical positioning of the mouth, followed by eyes, and then the nose, as well as high sensitivity to close-set eyes, coupled with marked insensitivity to wide-set eyes. Implications of the results for the use of recognition aids such as Identikit and Photofit are briefly discussed.

Recognition of monkey faces by monkey experts

“…Other studies suggest that brain regions thought to be mainly engaged in face recognition can be activated by non-facial stimuli in experts (Tarr and Gauthier 2000). In human faces, changes in the second-order relationship between features is known to be easily detected (Haig 1984;see Maurer et al 2002 for a review). Interestingly, recent work has shown that learning to recognise non-facial stimuli at the individual level leads to a higher sensitivity to second-order relationships between features of the stimuli in experts (Nishimura and Maurer 2008).…”

Holistic face processing is mature at 4 years of age: Evidence from the composite face effect

“…First, conWgural information may refer to metric distances between facial features such as the interocular or eye-mouth distance. These distances between facial features can be measured and manipulated on the stimulus, and the sensitivity of the face processing system to perceive and encode this information can be tested in discrimination or recognition tasks (e.g., Barton, Keenan, & Bass, 2001;Freire, Lee, & Symons, 2000;Haig, 1984;Leder, Candrian, Huber, & Bruce, 2001). The second type of conWguration is referred to as holistic processing.…”

Holistic face processing can inhibit recognition of forensic facial composites.

“…While this is efficient, it has consequences for how facial information is perceived: for example, individual features are recognised better within the context of the whole face image (Tanaka & Farah, 1993), but alterations to a facial configuration will impair recognition of the individual features (Tanaka & Sengco, 1997). Sensitivity to familiar faces (Haig, 1984;Hosie, Ellis, & Haig, 1988) means that any changes to the configuration will alter holistic perception of the whole image and the face will appear different (Tanaka & Sengco, 1997). Wilford and Wells (2010) showed that holistic face perception enhances detection of any face alteration but makes it difficult to identify what feature has changed.…”