A new study suggests that it may be difficult to identify familiar faces when people wear surgical masks to help them protect against COVID-19.

As per the findings published in the journal Scientific Reports, during the pandemic, the identification of people wearing masks has often presented a unique challenge. This new study led by researchers from Ben-Gurion University of the Negev (BGU) in Israel and York University in Canada reveals the impact of this predicament and its potentially significant repercussions.

"For those of you who don't always recognize a friend or acquaintance wearing a mask, you are not alone," according to the researchers group. "Faces are among the most informative and significant visual stimuli in human perception and play a unique role in communicative, social daily interactions," the researchers note. "The unprecedented effort to minimize COVID-19 transmission has created a new dimension in facial recognition due to mask-wearing."

To examine the effects of wearing masks, Prof. Ganel and Prof. Freud used a modified version of the Cambridge Face Memory Test, the standard for assessing facial perception, which included masked and unmasked faces. The study was conducted online with a large group of nearly 500 people. The researchers found that the success rate of identifying someone wearing a mask was reduced by 15%.

The research team also found that masks specifically interfered with extracting a holistic impression of faces and led to feature-by-feature processing which is a less accurate and more time-consuming strategy. "Instead of looking at the entire face, we're now forced to look at eyes, nose, cheeks, and other visible elements separately to construct an entire facial face percept - which we used to do instantly," the researchers say.

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