Cargando…
The influence of familiarity on memory for faces and mask wearing
During the COVID-19 pandemic, the wearing of face masks became mandatory in public areas or at workplaces in many countries. While offering protection, the coverage of large parts of our face (nose, mouth and chin) may have consequences for face recognition. This seems especially important in the co...
Autores principales: | , |
---|---|
Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
Springer International Publishing
2022
|
Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9107586/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35569049 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s41235-022-00396-4 |
_version_ | 1784708515663708160 |
---|---|
author | Kollenda, Diana de Haas, Benjamin |
author_facet | Kollenda, Diana de Haas, Benjamin |
author_sort | Kollenda, Diana |
collection | PubMed |
description | During the COVID-19 pandemic, the wearing of face masks became mandatory in public areas or at workplaces in many countries. While offering protection, the coverage of large parts of our face (nose, mouth and chin) may have consequences for face recognition. This seems especially important in the context of contact tracing which can require memory of familiar and unfamiliar contacts and whether they were wearing a mask. In this study, we tested how well participants perform at remembering faces and whether they wore a mask, and if this depends on familiarity. Our results show that: (a) Participants remembered familiar faces better than unfamiliar ones, regardless of mask wearing. (b) Participants remembered unmasked faces better than masked faces, regardless of familiarity. (c) Participants were significantly worse at remembering whether an unfamiliar face was wearing a mask or not—even if they indicated remembering the face. (d) Participants showed a bias to indicate no memory of unfamiliar faces. (e) Participants showed a bias to indicate that unfamiliar faces wore a mask, even if they did not. In sum, it was harder to remember both, the identity of unfamiliar faces and whether they wore a mask. These findings have practical relevance for contact tracing and epidemic control. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s41235-022-00396-4. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-9107586 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2022 |
publisher | Springer International Publishing |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-91075862022-05-16 The influence of familiarity on memory for faces and mask wearing Kollenda, Diana de Haas, Benjamin Cogn Res Princ Implic Original Article During the COVID-19 pandemic, the wearing of face masks became mandatory in public areas or at workplaces in many countries. While offering protection, the coverage of large parts of our face (nose, mouth and chin) may have consequences for face recognition. This seems especially important in the context of contact tracing which can require memory of familiar and unfamiliar contacts and whether they were wearing a mask. In this study, we tested how well participants perform at remembering faces and whether they wore a mask, and if this depends on familiarity. Our results show that: (a) Participants remembered familiar faces better than unfamiliar ones, regardless of mask wearing. (b) Participants remembered unmasked faces better than masked faces, regardless of familiarity. (c) Participants were significantly worse at remembering whether an unfamiliar face was wearing a mask or not—even if they indicated remembering the face. (d) Participants showed a bias to indicate no memory of unfamiliar faces. (e) Participants showed a bias to indicate that unfamiliar faces wore a mask, even if they did not. In sum, it was harder to remember both, the identity of unfamiliar faces and whether they wore a mask. These findings have practical relevance for contact tracing and epidemic control. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s41235-022-00396-4. Springer International Publishing 2022-05-15 /pmc/articles/PMC9107586/ /pubmed/35569049 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s41235-022-00396-4 Text en © The Author(s) 2022 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Open AccessThis article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) . |
spellingShingle | Original Article Kollenda, Diana de Haas, Benjamin The influence of familiarity on memory for faces and mask wearing |
title | The influence of familiarity on memory for faces and mask wearing |
title_full | The influence of familiarity on memory for faces and mask wearing |
title_fullStr | The influence of familiarity on memory for faces and mask wearing |
title_full_unstemmed | The influence of familiarity on memory for faces and mask wearing |
title_short | The influence of familiarity on memory for faces and mask wearing |
title_sort | influence of familiarity on memory for faces and mask wearing |
topic | Original Article |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9107586/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35569049 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s41235-022-00396-4 |
work_keys_str_mv | AT kollendadiana theinfluenceoffamiliarityonmemoryforfacesandmaskwearing AT dehaasbenjamin theinfluenceoffamiliarityonmemoryforfacesandmaskwearing AT kollendadiana influenceoffamiliarityonmemoryforfacesandmaskwearing AT dehaasbenjamin influenceoffamiliarityonmemoryforfacesandmaskwearing |