Abstract
Face masks became the first line of defense in the effort to minimize the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic. We demonstrated that face masks modulate holistic face processing, with participants engaging in a local, feature-based processing style and showing worse face perception for masked faces (Freud et al., 2020). An outstanding question is whether there are individual differences in the effect of face masks on face perception. Previous studies have demonstrated that better face recognition abilities are associated with a greater degree of holistic processing (Wang et al., 2012). Given the detrimental effect of masks on holistic processing, we predicted that individuals who have better face recognition abilities would be more adversely affected by the inclusion of masks. To examine this hypothesis, we tested face perception using the Cambridge Face Memory Test (CFMT) in 179 participants. The extended CFMT is comprised of four phases that progress in difficulty, for a total of 102 trials. Participants were asked to learn to recognize six target faces from three different viewpoints (targets shown for 3s each) and were subsequently tested on their face recognition in a 3-AFC task. Participants completed the CFMT twice, with masked faces and non-masked faces. In line with our prior work, a substantial decrease in performance was found for masked faces. Importantly, participants with better face recognition abilities showed higher susceptibility to the effect of face masks compared to lower-performing individuals. Particularly, data were binned into five bins based on performance with non-mask faces. The mask effect linearly increased from bin 1 (lowest performance, mask effect = 1%) to bin 5 (highest performance, mask effect = 15%). Taken together, our results show that face masks disrupt face perception and that the severity of this disruption depends in part on individual differences along the degree of holistic processing of faces.