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A grey area: how does image hue affect unfamiliar face matching?

ABSTRACT: The role of image colour in face identification has received little attention in research despite the importance of identifying people from photographs in identity documents (IDs). Here, in two experiments, we investigated whether colour congruency of two photographs, shown side by side, affects face-matching accuracy. Participants were presented with two images from the Models Face Matching Test (experiment 1) and a newly devised matching task incorporating female faces (experiment 2) and asked to decide whether they show the same person or two different people. The photographs were either both in colour, both in grayscale, or mixed (one in grayscale and one in colour). Participants were more likely to accept a pair of images as a "match", i.e. same person, in the mixed condition, regardless of whether the identity of the pair was the same or not. This demonstrates a clear shift in bias between "congruent" colour conditions and the mixed trials. In addition, there was a small decline in accuracy in the mixed condition, relative to when the images were presented in colour. Our study provides the first evidence that the hue of document photographs matters for face-matching performance. This finding has important implications for the design and regulation of photographic ID worldwide.

SUBMITTER: Bobak AK

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6646495 | biostudies-literature | 2019 Jul

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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A grey area: how does image hue affect unfamiliar face matching?

Bobak Anna K AK Mileva Viktoria R VR Hancock Peter J B PJB

Cognitive research: principles and implications 20190722 1

The role of image colour in face identification has received little attention in research despite the importance of identifying people from photographs in identity documents (IDs). Here, in two experiments, we investigated whether colour congruency of two photographs, shown side by side, affects face-matching accuracy. Participants were presented with two images from the Models Face Matching Test (experiment 1) and a newly devised matching task incorporating female faces (experiment 2) and asked ...[more]

PMID: 31332556

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Project description:BackgroundInfants and children travel using passports that are typically valid for five years (e.g. Canada, United Kingdom, United States and Australia). These individuals may also need to be identified using images taken from videos and other sources in forensic situations including child exploitation cases. However, few researchers have examined how useful these images are as a means of identification.MethodsWe investigated the effectiveness of photo identification for infants and children using a face matching task, where participants were presented with two images simultaneously and asked whether the images depicted the same child or two different children. In Experiment 1, both images showed an infant (<1 year old), whereas in Experiment 2, one image again showed an infant but the second image of the child was taken at 4-5 years of age. In Experiments 3a and 3b, we asked participants to complete shortened versions of both these tasks (selecting the most difficult trials) as well as the short version Glasgow face matching test. Finally, in Experiment 4, we investigated whether information regarding the sex of the infants and children could be accurately perceived from the images.ResultsIn Experiment 1, we found low levels of performance (72% accuracy) for matching two infant photos. For Experiment 2, performance was lower still (64% accuracy) when infant and child images were presented, given the significant changes in appearance that occur over the first five years of life. In Experiments 3a and 3b, when participants completed both these tasks, as well as a measure of adult face matching ability, we found lowest performance for the two infant tasks, along with mixed evidence of within-person correlations in sensitivities across all three tasks. The use of only same-sex pairings on mismatch trials, in comparison with random pairings, had little effect on performance measures. In Experiment 4, accuracy when judging the sex of infants was at chance levels for one image set and above chance (although still low) for the other set. As expected, participants were able to judge the sex of children (aged 4-5) from their faces.DiscussionIdentity matching with infant and child images resulted in low levels of performance, which were significantly worse than for an adult face matching task. Taken together, the results of the experiments presented here provide evidence that child facial photographs are ineffective for use in real-world identification.

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A grey area: how does image hue affect unfamiliar face matching?

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A grey area: how does image hue affect unfamiliar face matching?

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