Face masks present a new challenge to face identification (here matching) and emotion recognition in Western cultures. Here, we present the results of three experiments that test the effect of masks, and also the effect of sunglasses (an occlusion that individuals tend to have more experienced with) on (i) familiar face matching, (ii) unfamiliar face matching and (iii) emotion categorization. Occlusion reduced accuracy in all three tasks, with most errors in the mask condition; however, there was little difference in performance for faces in masks compared with faces in sunglasses. Super-recognizers, people who are highly skilled at matching unconcealed faces, were impaired by occlusion, but at the group level, performed with higher accuracy than controls on all tasks. Results inform psychology theory with implications for everyday interactions, security and policing in a mask-wearing society.

It has been previously demonstrated that extensive activation in the dorsolateral temporal lobes associated with masking a speech target with a speech masker, consistent with the hypothesis that competition for central auditory processes is an important factor in informational masking. Here, masking from speech and two additional maskers derived from the original speech were investigated. One of these is spectrally rotated speech, which is unintelligible and has a similar (inverted) spectrotemporal profile to speech. The authors also controlled for the possibility of “glimpsing” of the target signal during modulated masking sounds by using speech-modulated noise as a masker in a baseline condition. Functional imaging results reveal that masking speech with speech leads to bilateral superior temporal gyrus (STG) activation relative to a speech-in-noise baseline, while masking speech with spectrally rotated speech leads solely to right STG activation relative to the baseline. This result is discussed in terms of hemispheric asymmetries for speech perception, and interpreted as showing that masking effects can arise through two parallel neural systems, in the left and right temporal lobes. This has implications for the competition for resources caused by speech and rotated speech maskers, and may illuminate some of the mechanisms involved in informational masking.

We present a new test–the UNSW Face Test (www.unswfacetest.com)–that has been specifically designed to screen for super-recognizers in large online cohorts and is available free for scientific use. Super-recognizers are people that demonstrate sustained performance in the very top percentiles in tests of face identification ability. Because they represent a small proportion of the population, screening large online cohorts is an important step in their initial recruitment, before confirmatory testing via standardized measures and more detailed cognitive testing. We provide normative data on the UNSW Face Test from 3 cohorts tested via the internet (combined n = 23,902) and 2 cohorts tested in our lab (combined n = 182). The UNSW Face Test: (i) captures both identification memory and perceptual matching, as confirmed by correlations with existing tests of these abilities; (ii) captures face-specific perceptual and memorial abilities, as confirmed by non-significant correlations with non-face object processing tasks; (iii) enables researchers to apply stricter selection criteria than other available tests, which boosts the average accuracy of the individuals selected in subsequent testing. Together, these properties make the test uniquely suited to screening for super-recognizers in large online cohorts.