Face-matching Task Research Articles

Benchmarking automation-aided performance in a forensic face matching task

Carragher and Hancock (2023) investigated how individuals performed in a one-to-one face matching task when assisted by an Automated Facial Recognition System (AFRS). Across five pre-registered experiments they found evidence of suboptimal aided performance, with AFRS-assisted individuals consistently failing to reach the level of performance the AFRS achieved alone. The current study reanalyses these data (Carragher and Hancock, 2023), to benchmark automation-aided performance against a series of statistical models of collaborative decision making, spanning a range of efficiency levels. Analyses using a Bayesian hierarchical signal detection model revealed that collaborative performance was highly inefficient, falling closest to the most suboptimal models of automation dependence tested. This pattern of results generalises previous reports of suboptimal human-automation interaction across a range of visual search, target detection, sensory discrimination, and numeric estimation decision-making tasks. The current study is the first to provide benchmarks of automation-aided performance in the one-to-one face matching task.

Trust in automation and the accuracy of human–algorithm teams performing one-to-one face matching tasks

The human face is commonly used for identity verification. While this task was once exclusively performed by humans, technological advancements have seen automated facial recognition systems (AFRS) integrated into many identification scenarios. Although many state-of-the-art AFRS are exceptionally accurate, they often require human oversight or involvement, such that a human operator actions the final decision. Previously, we have shown that on average, humans assisted by a simulated AFRS (sAFRS) failed to reach the level of accuracy achieved by the same sAFRS alone, due to overturning the system’s correct decisions and/or failing to correct sAFRS errors. The aim of the current study was to investigate whether participants’ trust in automation was related to their performance on a one-to-one face matching task when assisted by a sAFRS. Participants (n = 160) completed a standard face matching task in two phases: an unassisted baseline phase, and an assisted phase where they were shown the identification decision (95% accurate) made by a sAFRS prior to submitting their own decision. While most participants improved with sAFRS assistance, those with greater relative trust in automation achieved larger gains in performance. However, the average aided performance of participants still failed to reach that of the sAFRS alone, regardless of trust status. Nonetheless, further analysis revealed a small sample of participants who achieved 100% accuracy when aided by the sAFRS. Our results speak to the importance of considering individual differences when selecting employees for roles requiring human–algorithm interaction, including identity verification tasks that incorporate facial recognition technologies.

Happy people are always similar: The evidence from brain morphological and functional inter-subject correlations

A fundamental question in the study of happiness is whether there is neural evidence to support a well-known hypothesis that happy people are always similar while unfortunate people have their own misfortunes. To investigate this, we employed several happiness-related questionnaires to identify potential components of happiness, and further investigated and confirmed their associations with personality, mood, aggressive behaviors, and amygdala reactivity to fearful faces within a substantial sample size of college students (n = 570). Additionally, we examined the functional and morphological similarities and differences among happy individuals using the inter-subject representational similarity analysis (IS-RSA). IS-RSA emphasizes the geometric properties in a high-dimensional space constructed by brain or behavioral patterns and focuses on individual subjects. Our behavioral findings unveiled two factors of happiness: individual and social, both of which mediated the effect of personality traits on individual aggression. Subsequently, mood mediated the impact of happiness on aggressive behaviors across two subgroup splits. Functional imaging data revealed that individuals with higher levels of happiness exhibited reduced amygdala reactivity to fearful faces, as evidenced by a conventional face-matching task (n = 104). Moreover, IS-RSA demonstrated that these participants manifested similar neural activation patterns when processing fearful faces within the visual pathway, but not within the emotional network (e.g., amygdala). Morphological observations (n = 425) indicated that individuals with similar high happiness levels exhibited comparable gray matter volume patterns within several networks, including the default mode network, fronto-parietal network, visual network, and attention network. Collectively, these findings offer early neural evidence supporting the proposition that happy individuals may share common neural characteristics.

Associations between perceived parenting, brain activity and connectivity, and depression symptoms in Brazilian adolescents

ABSTRACT In adolescence, parental care is associated with lower depression symptoms whereas parental overprotection is associated with greater depression symptoms, effects which may be mediated by adolescent brain activity and connectivity. The present study examined associations between perceived parenting, brain activity and connectivity, and depression symptoms in adolescents from Brazil, a middle-income country (MIC). Analyses included 100 adolescents who underwent functional magnetic resonance imaging scanning while completing a face matching task. Parental care and overprotection were associated with adolescent depression symptoms in expected directions. We also found that parental care and overprotection were associated with amygdala connectivity with several brain regions; however, amygdala activity was not associated with parenting and neither activity or connectivity mediated the association between parenting and depression symptoms. Results identify how parenting influences brain function and depression symptoms in youth from a MIC.

Altered effective connectivity among face-processing systems in major depressive disorder.

Neuroimaging studies have revealed abnormal functional interaction during the processing of emotional faces in patients with major depressive disorder (MDD), thereby enhancing our comprehension of the pathophysiology of MDD. However, it is unclear whether there is abnormal directional interaction among face-processing systems in patients with MDD. A group of patients with MDD and a healthy control group underwent a face-matching task during functional magnetic resonance imaging. Dynamic causal modelling (DCM) analysis was used to investigate effective connectivity between 7 regions in the face-processing systems. We used a Parametric Empirical Bayes model to compare effective connectivity between patients with MDD and controls. We included 48 patients and 44 healthy controls in our analyses. Both groups showed higher accuracy and faster reaction time in the shape-matching condition than in the face-matching condition. However, no significant behavioural or brain activation differences were found between the groups. Using DCM, we found that, compared with controls, patients with MDD showed decreased self-connection in the right dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC), amygdala, and fusiform face area (FFA) across task conditions; increased intrinsic connectivity from the right amygdala to the bilateral DLPFC, right FFA, and left amygdala, suggesting an increased intrinsic connectivity centred in the amygdala in the right side of the face-processing systems; both increased and decreased positive intrinsic connectivity in the left side of the face-processing systems; and comparable task modulation effect on connectivity. Our study did not include longitudinal neuroimaging data, and there was limited region of interest selection in the DCM analysis. Our findings provide evidence for a complex pattern of alterations in the face-processing systems in patients with MDD, potentially involving the right amygdala to a greater extent. The results confirm some previous findings and highlight the crucial role of the regions on both sides of face-processing systems in the pathophysiology of MDD.

Face matching and self-insight: A Registered Report investigating individual differences in metacognitive sensitivity, efficiency, and bias.

Deciding whether two face photographs depict the same person or not can be a challenging task, and there are substantial individual differences in face matching ability. Far less is known about differences in metacognitive ability; that is, how well people can estimate the quality of their own face matching judgements. The purpose of this Registered Report was to determine the relationship between first-order performance in a face matching task, and three metacognitive measures: metacognitive sensitivity (the information exploited by metacognition), metacognitive efficiency (the quality of metacognitive processing itself), and metacognitive bias (the overall tendency towards high or low confidence). Participants completed a 200-trial unfamiliar face matching task, providing a second-order (metacognitive) confidence rating after each first-order (cognitive) response. Cognitive performance and metacognitive sensitivity showed a substantial positive association (rs = .60), suggesting that they were based on overlapping information, with poorer performers having lower quality information available. Once these differences in the information available to metacognition were accounted for, the quality of metacognitive processing itself (metacognitive efficiency) did not vary systematically with cognitive performance (rs = .00). Moreover, poor performers were not less or more confident overall than good performers, as cognitive performance and metacognitive bias did not correlate significantly (rs = .11). These findings allow us to move beyond consideration of group-level insight and inform regarding individual differences in cognitive and metacognitive abilities.

Specialization of amygdala subregions in emotion processing.

The amygdala is important for human fear processing. However, recent research has failed to reveal specificity, with evidence that the amygdala also responds to other emotions. A more nuanced understanding of the amygdala's role in emotion processing, particularly relating to fear, is needed given the importance of effective emotional functioning for everyday function and mental health. We studied 86 healthy participants (44 females), aged 18-49 (mean 26.12 ± 6.6) years, who underwent multiband functional magnetic resonance imaging. We specifically examined the reactivity of four amygdala subregions (using regions of interest analysis) and related brain connectivity networks (using generalized psycho-physiological interaction) to fear, angry, and happy facial stimuli using an emotional face-matching task. All amygdala subregions responded to all stimuli (p-FDR < .05), with this reactivity strongly driven by the superficial and centromedial amygdala (p-FDR < .001). Yet amygdala subregions selectively showed strong functional connectivity with other occipitotemporal and inferior frontal brain regions with particular sensitivity to fear recognition and strongly driven by the basolateral amygdala (p-FDR < .05). These findings suggest that amygdala specialization to fear may not be reflected in its local activity but in its connectivity with other brain regions within a specific face-processing network.

Multiple images captured from a single encounter do not promote face learning.

Viewing multiple images of a newly encountered face improves recognition of that identity in new instances. Studies examining face learning have presented high-variability (HV) images that incorporate changes that occur from moment-to-moment (e.g., head orientation and expression) and over time (e.g., lighting, hairstyle, and health). We examined whether low-variability (LV) images (i.e., images that incorporate only moment-to-moment changes) also promote generalisation of learning such that novel instances are recognised. Participants viewed a single image, six LV images, or six HV images of a target identity before being asked to recognise novel images of that identity in a face matching task (training stimuli remained visible) or a memory task (training stimuli were removed). In Experiment 1 (n = 71), participants indicated which image(s) in 8-image arrays belonged to the target identity. In Experiment 2 (n = 73), participants indicated whether sequentially presented images belonged to the target identity. Relative to the single-image condition, sensitivity to identity improved and response biases were less conservative in the HV condition; we found no evidence of generalisation of learning in the LV condition regardless of testing protocol. Our findings suggest that day-to-day variability in appearance plays an essential role in acquiring expertise with a novel face.

Criterion shifting in an unfamiliar face-matching task: Effects of base rates, payoffs, and perceptual discriminability.

Criterion shifting in an unfamiliar face-matching task: Effects of base rates, payoffs, and perceptual discriminability.

Biases in face perception: Evidence from face matching tasks with own and other races, ages and species

We know from the literature that we are better at remembering people from our own groups (own ethnic heritage, age, social groups etc). This article outlines three experiments looking at biases in face matching tasks – tasks which do not require memory. We tested people with faces from their own and other ethnic heritage, age, and species and did not find coherent evidence for own group biases in face matching.

Childhood Maltreatment and Amygdala Response to Interpersonal Threat in a Transdiagnostic Adult Sample: The Role of Trait Dissociation

BackgroundChildhood maltreatment (CM) confers risk for different mental disorders as well as transdiagnostic symptoms such as dissociation. Aberrant amygdala response to interpersonal threat may link CM to transdiagnostic psychopathology and has recently been shown to depend on type and developmental timing of CM experiences. Still, most studies on CM and threat-related amygdala response employ categorical disorder-specific perspectives and fail to consider type and timing of CM exposure. We aimed to investigate associations between CM, amygdala response to interpersonal threat, and dimensional psychopathological symptoms including trait dissociation in a transdiagnostic adult sample, specifically considering type, timing, and duration of CM. MethodsWe conducted a cross-sectional neuroimaging study in 141 participants with varying levels of CM, including mostly female participants with major depressive disorder (n = 36), posttraumatic stress disorder (n = 34), and somatic symptom disorder (n = 35) and healthy volunteers (n = 36). Participants underwent functional magnetic resonance imaging during an emotional face–matching task, completed the brief German interview version of the Maltreatment and Abuse Chronology of Exposure scale, and answered self-report measures of transdiagnostic CM-related symptoms including trait dissociation. Data were analyzed using a machine learning-based model comparison procedure. ResultsIn our transdiagnostic sample, neither type nor timing or duration of CM predicted amygdala response to interpersonal threat. Instead, trait dissociation predicted blunted bilateral amygdala response and emerged as a possible mediator between CM and amygdala function. ConclusionsTrait dissociation may be an important confounder in the widely documented association between CM and threat-related amygdala response, which should be considered in future longitudinal studies.

Pharmacological and Psychological Treatment Have Common and Specific Effects on Brain Activity in Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder

Initial treatment for obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) consists of pharmacological treatment with selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) and/or psychological treatment with cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT). The assumption is that both treatments have different neural working mechanisms, but empirical evidence is lacking. We investigated whether these treatments induce similar or different functional neural changes in OCD. We conducted a longitudinal nonrandomized controlled trial in which thirty-four OCD patients were treated with sixteen weeks of CBT or SSRIs. Functional magnetic resonance imaging was performed before and after treatment during emotional processing (emotional face matching and symptom provocation tasks) and response inhibition (stop signal task). Twenty matched healthy controls were scanned twice with a similar time interval. Both CBT and SSRIs were successful in reducing OCD symptoms. Compared to healthy controls, treatment led to a reduction of insula activity in OCD patients during symptom provocation. The comparison between treatment groups revealed widespread divergent brain changes in the cerebellum, posterior insula, caudate nucleus, hippocampus, and occipital and prefrontal cortex during all tasks, explained by relative increases of activity following CBT compared to relative decreases of activity following SSRIs. Pharmacological and psychological treatment primarily lead to opposite changes in brain function, with a common reduction of insula activity during symptom provocation. These findings provide insight into common and specific neural mechanisms underlying treatment response, suggesting that CBT and SSRIs support recovery from OCD along partly distinct pathways. This trial is registered with NTR6575.

The role of inversion and face masks on simultaneous and delayed face matching tasks.

Although it is generally accepted that face recognition relies on holistic processing, it has been suggested that the simultaneous face matching task may depend on a more analytical or featural processing approach. However, empirical evidence supporting this claim is limited. In two experiments, we further explored the role of holistic and featural processing on simultaneous face matching by manipulating holistic processing through inversion and presenting faces with or without face masks. The results from Experiment 1 revealed that both inversion and face masks impaired matching performance. However, while the inversion effect was evident in both full-view and masked faces, the mask effect was only found in upright, but not inverted, faces. These results were replicated in Experiment 2 but, the inversion and mask effects were stronger in delayed face matching than in simultaneous face matching. Our findings suggest that simultaneous face matching relies on holistic processing, but to a smaller extent compared to higher memory-demanding identification tasks.

Altered task-related decoupling of the rostral anterior cingulate cortex in depression

Dysfunctional activity of the rostral anterior cingulate cortex (rACC) – an extensively connected hub region of the default mode network – has been broadly linked to cognitive and affective impairments in depression. However, the nature of aberrant task-related rACC suppression in depression is incompletely understood. In this study, we sought to characterize functional connectivity of rACC activity suppression (‘deactivation’) – an essential feature of rACC function – during external task engagement in depression. Specifically, we aimed to explore neural patterns of functional decoupling and coupling with the rACC during its task-driven suppression. We enrolled 81 15- to 25-year-old young people with moderate-to-severe major depressive disorder (MDD) before they commenced a 12-week clinical trial that assessed the effectiveness of cognitive behavioral therapy plus either fluoxetine or placebo. Ninety-four matched healthy controls were also recruited. Participants completed a functional magnetic resonance imaging face matching task known to elicit rACC suppression. To identify brain regions associated with the rACC during its task-driven suppression, we employed a seed-based functional connectivity analysis. We found MDD participants, compared to controls, showed significantly reduced ‘decoupling’ of the rACC with extended task-specific regions during task performance. Specifically, less decoupling was observed in the occipital and fusiform gyrus, dorsal ACC, medial prefrontal cortex, cuneus, amygdala, thalamus, and hippocampus. Notably, impaired decoupling was apparent in participants who did not remit to treatment, but not treatment remitters. Further, we found MDD participants showed significant increased coupling with the anterior insula cortex during task engagement. Our findings indicate that aberrant task-related rACC suppression is associated with disruptions in adaptive neural communication and dynamic switching between internal and external cognitive modes that may underpin maladaptive cognitions and biased emotional processing in depression.

Face Matching as a Function of Prior Identity Information in Professional Screeners

Using a computer-based face matching task we objectively measured face matching performance (reaction time, sensitivity, accuracy) as a function of prior identity source type (Artificial Intelligence (AI), human, none), prior information accuracy (accurate, inaccurate) and task difficulty (high, low) in professional screeners. Participants were required to judge how similar they thought a pair of faces were, to decide whether the faces in each pair were the same person, and then to judge the difficulty of that decision. Professional screeners were more accurate, faster, and, more sensitive when normative task difficulty was low. Professional screeners were also more accurate, faster, and more sensitive when prior identity source information was accurate. There was no main effect of prior identity source type on performance (there was a trend-level effect). Face matching accuracy positively correlated with normative data from non-professional screeners. Professional screeners were more accurate 80.6% of the time, compared to non-professional screeners.

Catching wanted people at the border: prospective person memory and face matching in border control decisions

ABSTRACT Border control officers may be on the lookout for wanted people while they verify that travellers match their passport photos. We developed a novel experimental paradigm to investigate whether people are more likely to report that someone is wanted if they also believe that person is using a fraudulent passport. In two experiments, undergraduate students assumed the role of a border control officer and completed multiple “shifts” of a face matching task designed to simulate a passport verification check. Before each shift participants viewed posters of wanted people and were instructed to report any sightings if a wanted person appeared in any of the images during the passport check. Participants were more likely to say an individual was wanted if they also believed the person did not match their passport image. In addition, the accuracy of wanted person sightings was reduced for trials with nonmatching passports compared to trials with matching passports. This suggests wanted people with matching passports were easier to spot because participants had an additional image to compare with their memory of the person in the wanted poster.

Fine-grained topographic organization within somatosensory cortex during resting-state and emotional face-matching task and its association with ASD traits

Sensory atypicalities are particularly common in autism spectrum disorders (ASD). Nevertheless, our knowledge about the divergent functioning of the underlying somatosensory region and its association with ASD phenotype features is limited. We applied a data-driven approach to map the fine-grained variations in functional connectivity of the primary somatosensory cortex (S1) to the rest of the brain in 240 autistic and 164 neurotypical individuals from the EU-AIMS LEAP dataset, aged between 7 and 30. We estimated the S1 connection topography (‘connectopy’) at rest and during the emotional face-matching (Hariri) task, an established measure of emotion reactivity, and accessed its association with a set of clinical and behavioral variables. We first demonstrated that the S1 connectopy is organized along a dorsoventral axis, mapping onto the S1 somatotopic organization. We then found that its spatial characteristics were linked to the individuals’ adaptive functioning skills, as measured by the Vineland Adaptive Behavior Scales, across the whole sample. Higher functional differentiation characterized the S1 connectopies of individuals with higher daily life adaptive skills. Notably, we detected significant differences between rest and the Hariri task in the S1 connectopies, as well as their projection maps onto the rest of the brain suggesting a task-modulating effect on S1 due to emotion processing. All in all, variation of adaptive skills appears to be reflected in the brain’s mesoscale neural circuitry, as shown by the S1 connectivity profile, which is also differentially modulated during rest and emotional processing.

Orientation effects support specialist processing of upright unfamiliar faces in children and adults.

It is considerably harder to generalize identity across different pictures of unfamiliar faces, compared with familiar faces. This finding hints strongly at qualitatively distinct processing of unfamiliar face stimuli-for which we have less expertise. Yet, the extent to which face selective versus generic visual processes drive outcomes during this task has yet to be determined. To explore the relative contributions of each, we contrasted performance on a version of the popular Telling Faces Together unfamiliar face matching task, implemented in both upright and inverted orientations. Furthermore, we included different age groups (132 British children ages 6 to 11 years [69.7% White], plus 37 British White adults) to investigate how participants' experience with faces as a category influences their selective utilization of specialized processes for unfamiliar faces. Results revealed that unfamiliar face matching is highly orientation-selective. Accuracy was higher for upright compared with inverted faces from 6 years of age, which is consistent with selective utilization of specialized processes for upright versus inverted unfamiliar faces during this task. The effect of stimulus orientation did not interact significantly with age, and there was no graded increase in the magnitude of inversion effects observed across childhood. Still, a numerically larger inversion effect in adults compared to children provides a degree of support for developmental changes in these specialized face abilities with increasing age/experience. Differences in the pattern of errors across age groups are also consistent with a qualitative shift in unfamiliar face processing that occurs some time after 11 years of age. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

Association between brain serotonin 4 receptor binding and reactivity to emotional faces in depressed and healthy individuals

Brain serotonergic (5-HT) signaling is posited to modulate neural responses to emotional stimuli. Dysfunction in 5-HT signaling is implicated in major depressive disorder (MDD), a disorder associated with significant disturbances in emotion processing. In MDD, recent evidence points to altered 5-HT4 receptor (5-HT4R) levels, a promising target for antidepressant treatment. However, how these alterations influence neural processing of emotions in MDD remains poorly understood. This is the first study to examine the association between 5-HT4R binding and neural responses to emotions in patients with MDD and healthy controls. The study included one hundred and thirty-eight participants, comprising 88 outpatients with MDD from the NeuroPharm clinical trial (ClinicalTrials.gov identifier: NCT02869035) and 50 healthy controls. Participants underwent an [11C]SB207145 positron emission tomography (PET) scan to quantify 5-HT4R binding (BPND) and a functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) scan during which they performed an emotional face matching task. We examined the association between regional 5-HT4R binding and corticolimbic responses to emotional faces using a linear latent variable model, including whether this association was moderated by depression status. We observed a positive correlation between 5-HT4R BPND and the corticolimbic response to emotional faces across participants (r = 0.20, p = 0.03). This association did not differ between groups (parameter estimate difference = 0.002, 95% CI = −0.008: 0.013, p = 0.72). Thus, in the largest PET/fMRI study of associations between serotonergic signaling and brain function, we found a positive association between 5-HT4R binding and neural responses to emotions that appear unaltered in MDD. Future clinical trials with novel pharmacological agents targeting 5-HT4R are needed to confirm whether they ameliorate emotion processing biases in MDD.

Simulated automated facial recognition systems as decision-aids in forensic face matching tasks.

Automated Facial Recognition Systems (AFRS) are used by governments, law enforcement agencies, and private businesses to verify the identity of individuals. Although previous research has compared the performance of AFRS and humans on tasks of one-to-one face matching, little is known about how effectively human operators can use these AFRS as decision-aids. Our aim was to investigate how the prior decision from an AFRS affects human performance on a face matching task, and to establish whether human oversight of AFRS decisions can lead to collaborative performance gains for the human-algorithm team. The identification decisions from our simulated AFRS were informed by the performance of a real, state-of-the-art, Deep Convolutional Neural Network (DCNN) AFRS on the same task. Across five pre-registered experiments, human operators used the decisions from highly accurate AFRS (> 90%) to improve their own face matching performance compared with baseline (sensitivity gain: Cohen's d = 0.71-1.28; overall accuracy gain: d = 0.73-1.46). Yet, despite this improvement, AFRS-aided human performance consistently failed to reach the level that the AFRS achieved alone. Even when the AFRS erred only on the face pairs with the highest human accuracy (> 89%), participants often failed to correct the system's errors, while also overruling many correct decisions, raising questions about the conditions under which human oversight might enhance AFRS operation. Overall, these data demonstrate that the human operator is a limiting factor in this simple model of human-AFRS teaming. These findings have implications for the "human-in-the-loop" approach to AFRS oversight in forensic face matching scenarios. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).