Face identification within realistic contexts

在许多情况下，安全依赖于准确的人员识别。在机场，常规的身份识别是基于面部匹配，护照官员必须决定所出示的身份证件中的面部照片是否真的是其持有者。试图避免在此类安全控制中被发现的人可能会尝试使用非法ID。护照本身现在是高度复杂的文件，很难伪造。出于这个原因，诈骗者通常使用有效的身份证件，通常属于具有相似面部外观的人。现在有大量的实验室研究表明，即使是受过训练的专业人员，也很难发现这种冒名顶替者或身份不匹配者，而且极易出错。然而，所有现有的研究都是在相当基本的实验条件下进行的，通常是在普通背景或高度简化的现场设置中呈现成对的裁剪过的人脸。这些基于实验室的研究是有价值的，因为它们允许人们研究诸如个体差异、图像质量等重要变量。然而，这些方法为研究环境和社会互动如何影响这项任务提供了一个薄弱的代理，这提供了许多可以影响人脸匹配的其他因素。例如，护照官员可能会借助肢体语言中的信息来支持身份识别决策，但排队和人群动态等环境因素也可能对护照官员施加压力，从而影响他们的表现。这些因素的影响可能非常大，正如在其他现实环境中对人类表现的研究所表明的那样。然而，护照管制的敏感性和安全性使得在现实生活中几乎不可能进行研究。在这个项目中，我们提出了一种新的方法来研究这些因素，通过研究虚拟现实（VR）中的人脸匹配，它可以提供传统实验室实验无法提供的详细交互环境。这种方法在人脸匹配中是全新的，可以研究在现实世界中可能影响人识别但无法通过实验室实验捕获的因素。我们提出了一系列的三个验证实验，以建立一个虚拟环境捕捉关键的视觉方面需要的人识别。接下来是11个主要实验，这些实验将测试环境和社会互动因素如何影响现实背景下的法医鉴定。这些实验将检验一些因素的影响，比如一个人的肢体语言、乘客排队和人群动态。从这些实验中获得的知识将大大提高我们对人脸匹配的理论认识，这些理论认识目前无法适应环境和社会相互作用因素对这一任务的重要影响。该项目还将产生具有应用重要性的研究结果，例如，在了解如何加强机场的人身识别安全方面。此外，该项目将制作一个免费的虚拟形象数据库，用于虚拟现实中人物识别的心理研究，并为其他有兴趣进行此类研究的研究人员提供开放获取的创业指南。这些资源将对心理学VR研究的发展产生持久的影响，超出了这个项目的范围。

In many situations, security relies on accurate person identification. At airports, routine person identifications are based on face matching, in which passport officers have to decide whether the face photograph in a presented identity document actually depicts its bearer. People seeking to avoid detection at such security controls may attempt to use illicit ID. Passports themselves are now highly sophisticated documents, which are difficult to forge. For this reason, fraudsters typically use valid identity documents, often belonging to someone with a similar facial appearance. A substantial body of laboratory research now exists to demonstrate that the detection of such impostors - or identity mismatches - is difficult and highly error-prone, even by trained professionals.However, all existing research has investigated face matching under fairly basic experimental conditions, often presenting pairs of cropped faces on plain backgrounds, or in highly simplified field settings. There is some value in these lab-based studies, because they allow one to study such important variables as individual differences, image quality and so forth. However, these approaches offer a weak proxy for studying how the environment and social interaction affect this task, which provide many additional factors that can affect face matching. For example, passport officers may resort to information from body language to support identification decisions, but environmental factors such as queues and crowd dynamics might also exert pressure on passport officers that could compromise their performance. The impact of such factors is likely to be very large, as suggested by research on human performance in other realistic settings. However, the sensitive and security-critical nature of passport control makes it practically impossible to study in real life. In this project, we propose a novel approach to investigate these factors, by examining face matching in virtual reality (VR), which can provide the detailed interactive environments that conventional laboratory experiments cannot. This approach is completely new in face matching and allows for the study of factors that may affect person identification in the real world but cannot be captured by laboratory experiments.We propose a series of three validation experiments to establish that a virtual environment captures the key visual aspects required for person identification. This is followed by eleven main experiments which will test how environmental and social interaction factors affect forensic person identification in a realistic context. These experiments will examine the impact of factors such as a person's body language, passenger queues, and crowd dynamics. The knowledge gained from these experiments will considerably advance our theoretical understanding of face matching, which currently cannot accommodate the important effects of environmental and social interaction factors on this task. The project will also yield findings of applied importance, for example, in terms of understanding how security in person identification could be enhanced at airports.In addition, the project will produce a free database of avatars for psychological research on person identification in VR, as well as an open access start-up guide for other researchers with an interest in conducting such research. These resources will create a lasting impact on the development of VR research in Psychology beyond the scope of this project.