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Masked face matching benefits from isolated facial features
Mengying Zhang1, Melanie Sauerland1, Anna Sagana1
1Section Forensic Psychology, Department of Clinical Psychological Science, Faculty of Psychology and Neuroscience, Maastricht University, Maastricht, Limburg, Netherlands.
Plos One
|July 1, 2025
Summary
Matching faces is harder when people wear masks. This study found that focusing on isolated facial features like eyes or mouth improves accuracy for identifying masked individuals in law enforcement and security.
Area of Science:
- Cognitive psychology
- Forensic science
- Human-computer interaction
Background:
- Face verification is challenging with masked individuals, impacting law enforcement and security.
- Current methods struggle with heavily obscured facial identities.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate strategies for improving face-matching accuracy with masked faces.
- To determine if isolated facial features enhance identification of masked individuals.
Main Methods:
- Two experiments were conducted using face-matching tasks.
- Participants compared full-face, masked, and isolated facial feature (eyes, mouth) images.
- Congruent (full-to-full, masked-to-feature) and incongruent (full-to-feature, full-to-masked) pairs were presented.
Main Results:
- Face-matching accuracy was significantly higher for congruent pairs compared to incongruent pairs.
- Presenting isolated facial features (eyes or mouth) improved matching performance for masked faces.
- The benefit was observed even when only the mouth was presented.
Conclusions:
- Focusing on isolated facial features like eyes or mouth is a viable strategy to enhance identity matching with masked individuals.
- This finding has implications for improving security and criminal investigation protocols.
- Further research can explore optimal feature combinations for masked face recognition.
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