Recognizing disguised faces

Abstract

Across three experiments, we evaluated the effects of “disguises” on observers’ face identification performance using naturalistic images in which individuals posed with a variety of wigs and eyeglasses. Experiment 1 tested recognition memory performance with and without disguises and showed that any changes in these facial attributes hindered performance, replicating previous findings. More interestingly, Experiment 1 revealed that a change in hairstyle or the removal of eyeglasses had more impact on performance than did the addition of eyeglasses. In Experiment 2, disguised and undisguised faces were presented upright or inverted to examine whether the performance decrements seen in Experiment 1 were attributable to disruption of processing strategies for faces. Despite showing an overall effect of disguise on performance, there was no interaction between inversion and disguise. This suggests that disguises are not directly affecting processing strategies, but instead disguises are likely encoded as part of the overall representation. Similarly, in Experiment 3, the composite face paradigm was used to examine whether the impact of disguises is attributable to disruption of holistic processing for faces. Again, we found an overall effect of disguise on performance, but here we also observed that the presence of disguises interacted with participants’ tendency to form holistic face representations.