ArticleScientific reports2020
The COVID-19 pandemic masks the way people perceive faces.
Article in Scientific reports, 2020. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 105 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
What it found
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
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Who cites it
105 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it, 196 citations in OpenAlex.
- Face Processing in Early Development: A Systematic Review of Behavioral Studies and Considerations in Times of COVID-19 Pandemic.Frontiers in psychology · 2022Pooled it
- Individual gaze preferences and attentional cues interact in masked and unmasked face recognition.Attention, perception & psychophysics · 2026Article
- Masked and elusive: congruency fails in video-to-photo face matching.Cognitive research: principles and implications · 2026Article
- The effect of mask use on cross-race face perception: a simultaneous EEG and eye-tracking study.Cognitive research: principles and implications · 2026Article
- Do You Fail to Recognize Me with a Mask on? The Impact of Voice on Mask-Occluded Facial Identity Recognition.Behavioral sciences (Basel, Switzerland) · 2026Article
- Visual exposure to masked faces benefits personally familiar but not famous face recognition.Frontiers in psychology · 2026Article
- Impact of mask-wearing on emotion recognition accuracy and fixation duration in young children.Frontiers in psychology · 2026Article
- Effects of face coverings on people and interactions in mental health settings: scoping review.BJPsych open · 2025Review
- Facemasks reduce face trustworthiness perceived by deaf individuals.Scientific reports · 2025Article
- Congruency effects and individual differences in masked face recognition under limited feature visibility.Memory & cognition · 2025Article
- Mask dynamics in eye region-based person identification: Effects of mask removal and addition.Journal of vision · 2025Article
- Embodied Impact of Facial Coverings: Triggering Self-Expression Needs to Drive Conspicuous Preferences.Behavioral sciences (Basel, Switzerland) · 2025Article
- Ensemble perception of faces with naturalistic occlusions.Journal of vision · 2025Article
- The impact of face masks on metacognition in sign language is mediated by proficiency.Cognitive processing · 2025Article
- Association Between Sociodemographic Disparities and Door to Computerized Tomography Time in Patients with Acute Ischemic Stroke Across COVID-19 Periods in the Emergency Department: A Multi-Center Cohort Study.Medical sciences (Basel, Switzerland) · 2025Article
- The Influence of Face Masks on Micro-Expression Recognition.Behavioral sciences (Basel, Switzerland) · 2025Article
- Masked face matching benefits from isolated facial features.PloS one · 2025Article
- Beyond the Whole: Reduced Empathy for Masked Emotional Faces Is Not Driven by Disrupted Configural Face Processing.Behavioral sciences (Basel, Switzerland) · 2024Article
- 'The mirror of the soul?' Inferring sadness in the eyes.Scientific reports · 2024Article
- Emotion recognition in autism spectrum condition during the COVID-19 pandemic.Autism : the international journal of research and practice · 2024Article
45 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
5 authors at 3 institutions in 2 countries.
Funding
Abstract
The unprecedented efforts to minimize the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic introduce a new arena for human face recognition in which faces are partially occluded with masks. Here, we tested the extent to which face masks change the way faces are perceived. To this end, we evaluated face processing abilities for masked and unmasked faces in a large online sample of adult observers (n = 496) using an adapted version of the Cambridge Face Memory Test, a validated measure of face perception abilities in humans. As expected, a substantial decrease in performance was found for masked faces. Importantly, the inclusion of masks also led to a qualitative change in the way masked faces are perceived. In particular, holistic processing, the hallmark of face perception, was disrupted for faces with masks, as suggested by a reduced inversion effect. Similar changes were found whether masks were included during the study or the test phases of the experiment. Together, we provide novel evidence for quantitative and qualitative alterations in the processing of masked faces that could have significant effects on daily activities and social interactions.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.