title: Matching identities of familiar and unfamiliar faces caught on CCTV images.
abstract: People can be inaccurate at matching unfamiliar faces shown in high-quality video images, even when viewpoint and facial expressions are closely matched. However, identification of highly familiar faces appears good, even when video quality is poor. Experiment 1 reported a direct comparison between familiar and unfamiliar faces. Participants who were personally familiar with target items appearing on video were highly accurate at a verification task. Unfamiliar participants doing the same task performed very inaccurately. Familiarity affected discriminability, but not bias. Experiments 2 and 3 showed that brief periods of familiarization have little beneficial effect unless "deep" or "social" processing is encouraged. The results show that video evidence can be used effectively as a probe to identity when the faces shown are highly familiar to observers, but caution should be used where images of unfamiliar people are being compared.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, University of Stirling, Stirling FK9 4LA, Scotland. vicki.bruce@stir.ac.uk
authors.forename: V
authors.initials: V
authors.lastname: Bruce
authors.forename: Z
authors.initials: Z
authors.lastname: Henderson
authors.forename: C
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Newman
authors.forename: A M
authors.initials: AM
authors.lastname: Burton
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D001288:Attention; D004193:Discrimination Learning; D005145:Face; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D011939:Mental Recall; D010364:Pattern Recognition, Visual; D010470:Perceptual Masking; D013690:Television