The effects of spatial frequency overlap on face recognition

The effects of spatial frequency overlap between pairs of low-pass versus h igh-pass images on face recognition and matching were examined in 6 experim ents. Overlap was defined as the range of spatial frequencies shared by a p air of filtered images. This factor was manipulated by processing image pai rs with high-pass/low-pass filter pairs whose 50% cutoff points varied in t heir separation from one another. The effects of the center frequency of bi ter pairs were also investigated. In general, performance improved with gre ater overlap and higher center frequency. In control conditions, the image pain were processed with identical biters and thus had complete overlap. Ev en severely filtered low-pass or high-pass images in these conditions produ ced superior performance. These results suggest that face recognition is mo re strongly affected by spatial frequency overlap than by the frequency con tent of the images.