The Muslim headscarf conceals the hair and other external features of a face. For this reason
it may have implications for the recognition of such faces. The experiments reported in this
thesis aimed to investigate anecdotal reports, which suggested that headscarf wearing females
are more difficult to recognise. This was done by employing a series of experiments which
involved a yes/no recognition task. The stimuli that were used were images of South Asian
females who were photographed wearing a Muslim headscarf (HS), with their own hair
visible (H), and a third set of stimuli were produced in which their external features were
cropped (CR). Most importantly, participants either took part in the condition in which the
state of the external features remained the same between the learning and test stage (Same) or
the condition in which they were switched between the two stages (Switch). In one
experiment participants completed a Social Contact Questionnaire. Surprisingly, in the Same
condition, there was no difference in the recognition rates of faces that were presented with
hair, with headscarf, or cropped faces. However, participants in the Switch condition
performed significantly worse than those in the Same condition. It was also found that there
was no difference in the % of fixations to the external features between the Same and Switch
condition, which implied that the drop in performance between the two conditions was not
mediated by eye-movements. These results suggest that the internal and external features of
a face are processed interactively and, although the external features were not fixated on, a
manipulation to them caused a drop in performance. This was confirmed in a separate
experiment in which participants were unable to ignore the external features when they were
asked to judge the similarity of the internal features of pairs of faces. Pairs of headscarf faces
were rated as being more similar compared to pairs of faces with hair. Finally, for one group
of participants it was found that contact with headscarf-wearing females was positively
correlated with the recognition of headscarf-wearing faces. It was concluded that the
headscarf per se did not impair face recognition and that there is enough information in the
internal features of a face for optimal recognition, however, performance was disrupted when
the presence or absence of the headscarf was manipulated.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:BRADFORD/oai:bradscholars.brad.ac.uk:10454/5522 |
| Date | January 2012 |
| Creators | Toseeb, Mohammed U. |
| Contributors | Keeble, David R.T., Bryant, Eleanor J., Horrocks, Christine |
| Publisher | University of Bradford, Bradford School of Optometry and Vision Science |
| Source Sets | Bradford Scholars |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis, doctoral, PhD |
| Rights | <a rel="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/"><img alt="Creative Commons License" style="border-width:0" src="http://i.creativecommons.org/l/by-nc-nd/3.0/88x31.png" /></a><br />The University of Bradford theses are licenced under a <a rel="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/">Creative Commons Licence</a>. |
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