Incongruence in Lighting Impairs Face Identification

Frontiers in Psychology 13 (2022)
  Copy   BIBTEX

Abstract

The effect of uniform lighting on face identity processing is little understood, despite its potential influence on our ability to recognize faces. Here, we investigated how changes in uniform lighting level affected face identification performance during face memory tests. Observers were tasked with learning a series of faces, followed by a memory test where observers judged whether the faces presented were studied before or novel. Face stimuli were presented under uniform bright or dim illuminations, and lighting across the face learning and the memory test sessions could be the same or different. This led to four experimental conditions: Bright/Dim ; Bright/Bright; Dim/Bright; and Dim/Dim. Our results revealed that incongruent lighting levels across sessions significantly reduced sensitivity to faces and introduced conservative biases compared to congruent lighting levels. No significant differences in performance were detected between the congruent lighting conditions and between the incongruent lighting conditions. Thus, incongruent lighting deteriorated performance in face identification. These findings implied that the level of uniform lighting should be considered in an illumination-specific face representation and potential applications such as eyewitness testimony.

Other Versions

No versions found

Links

PhilArchive



    Upload a copy of this work     Papers currently archived: 103,401

External links

Setup an account with your affiliations in order to access resources via your University's proxy server

Through your library

Similar books and articles

Individual differences in the detection, matching and memory of faces.Matthew Fysh - 2018 - Cognitive Research: Principles and Implications 3 (20).

Analytics

Added to PP
2022-04-09

Downloads
14 (#1,321,670)

6 months
4 (#864,415)

Historical graph of downloads
How can I increase my downloads?

Citations of this work

No citations found.

Add more citations