Adults are not learning to recognize masked faces during the pandemic, a study has found.
Despite exposure to masked faces for 2 1/2 years, adults still have difficulty recognizing someone whose face is obscured by a face covering, according to the York University study.
Research by scientists from York and Ben-Gurion University in Israel, titled “Recognition of Masked Faces in the Era of the Pandemic: No Improvement Despite Extensive Natural Exposure,” was published in the journal Psychological Science.
It shows repeated exposure to masked faces throughout the pandemic has made zero difference in an adult’s ability to recognize half-hidden faces, “despite the availability of critical information from uncovered face parts, especially the eyes,” the report states.
The findings provide compelling evidence that our face-processing system does not easily adapt to visual changes, even with lengthy real-life exposure.
“This tells us that the adult brain doesn’t seem to have the ability to change how it processes faces, even when presented with masked faces over an extended period of time,” says York University Assistant Professor Erez Freud, the study’s senior author.
Faces are among the most informative visual stimuli in human perception because they provide vital information for social interactions.
Humans can extract significant information from brief exposure to a person’s face, including their identity, gender, emotion, age, and race.
Face-perception abilities rapidly develop from early childhood to adolescence, but it is uncertain whether these abilities can improve later in life, particularly under conditions of less-than-ideal visual input.
More than 2,000 adults were tested repeatedly, showna series of faces — upright and inverted — with and without masks.
Different groups of adults were tested at six different times during the pandemic.
Adults showed absolutely no increase in their ability to recognize masked faces.
Previous research showed that adults’ facial recognition abilities decreased by about 15% when a person wore a mask using the Cambridge Face Memory Test (CFMT), considered the standard test of facial recognition abilities.
Masks interfere with how humans process faces — normally in a holistic manner, not the individual parts of the face.
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This new study used both the CFMT and the Glasgow Face Match Test, an additional measure of facial perception, to determine if anything changed since the last study.
“This shows that face processing in humans, at least in adults, is rigid even after prolonged real-life exposure to partially covered faces,” said Freud.
Whether children’s ability to recognize masked faces changes over time with exposure is yet to be examined.
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