An experiment on human face recognition performance for access control

Abstract

An experiment was conducted on human face recognition performance in an access control scenario. Ten judges compared fifty individuals to security ID style photos where 20% of the photos were of different people, assessed to look similar to the individual presenting the photo. Performance was better than that observed in the only other comparable live-to-photo experiment [1] with a false match rate of 9% [CI95%: 2%, 16%] in this study compared to 66% [CI95%: 50%, 82%] and a false reject rate of 5% [CI95%: 0%, 11%] compared to 14% [CI95%: 0.3%, 28%]. These differences were attributed to divergences in experimental methodology, especially with regards to the distractor tasks used. It is concluded that the figures provided in the current study are more appropriate estimates of performance in access control scenarios. Substantial individual variation in face matching abilities, response time and confidence ratings was observed. © 2008 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.