Face recognition in poor-quality video: Evidence from security surveillance

Security surveillance systems often produce poor-quality video, and this ma y be problematic in gathering forensic evidence. We examined the ability of subjects to identify target people captured by a commercially available vi deo security device. In Experiment 1, subjects personally familiar with the targets performed very well at identifying them, but subjects unfamiliar w ith the targets performed very pearly. Police officers with experience in f orensic identification performed as poorly as other subjects unfamiliar wit h the targets. In Experiment 2, we asked how familiar subjects can perform so well. Using the same video device, we edited clips to obscure the head, body, or gait of the targets. Obscuring body ol gait produced a small decre ment in recognition performance. Obscuring the targets' heads had a dramati c effect on subjects' ability to recognize the targets. These results imply that subjects recognized the targets' faces, even in these poor-quality im ages.