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Incongruence in Lighting Impairs Face Identification

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 wit...

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Autores principales: Lim, Denise Y., Lee, Alan L. F., Or, Charles C.-F.
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Frontiers Media S.A. 2022
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8918724/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35295374
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2022.834806
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author Lim, Denise Y.
Lee, Alan L. F.
Or, Charles C.-F.
author_facet Lim, Denise Y.
Lee, Alan L. F.
Or, Charles C.-F.
author_sort Lim, Denise Y.
collection PubMed
description 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 (“congruent”) or different (“incongruent”). This led to four experimental conditions: (1) Bright/Dim (learning bright faces, testing on dim faces); (2) Bright/Bright; (3) Dim/Bright; and (4) Dim/Dim. Our results revealed that incongruent lighting levels across sessions (Bright/Dim and Dim/Bright) significantly reduced sensitivity (d’) to faces and introduced conservative biases compared to congruent lighting levels (Bright/Bright and Dim/Dim). No significant differences in performance were detected between the congruent lighting conditions (Bright/Bright vs. Dim/Dim) and between the incongruent lighting conditions (Bright/Dim vs. Dim/Bright). 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.
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spelling pubmed-89187242022-03-15 Incongruence in Lighting Impairs Face Identification Lim, Denise Y. Lee, Alan L. F. Or, Charles C.-F. Front Psychol Psychology 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 (“congruent”) or different (“incongruent”). This led to four experimental conditions: (1) Bright/Dim (learning bright faces, testing on dim faces); (2) Bright/Bright; (3) Dim/Bright; and (4) Dim/Dim. Our results revealed that incongruent lighting levels across sessions (Bright/Dim and Dim/Bright) significantly reduced sensitivity (d’) to faces and introduced conservative biases compared to congruent lighting levels (Bright/Bright and Dim/Dim). No significant differences in performance were detected between the congruent lighting conditions (Bright/Bright vs. Dim/Dim) and between the incongruent lighting conditions (Bright/Dim vs. Dim/Bright). 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. Frontiers Media S.A. 2022-02-28 /pmc/articles/PMC8918724/ /pubmed/35295374 http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2022.834806 Text en Copyright © 2022 Lim, Lee and Or. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
spellingShingle Psychology
Lim, Denise Y.
Lee, Alan L. F.
Or, Charles C.-F.
Incongruence in Lighting Impairs Face Identification
title Incongruence in Lighting Impairs Face Identification
title_full Incongruence in Lighting Impairs Face Identification
title_fullStr Incongruence in Lighting Impairs Face Identification
title_full_unstemmed Incongruence in Lighting Impairs Face Identification
title_short Incongruence in Lighting Impairs Face Identification
title_sort incongruence in lighting impairs face identification
topic Psychology
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8918724/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35295374
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2022.834806
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