Do You Fail to Recognize Me with a Mask on? The Impact of Voice on Mask-Occluded Facial Identity Recognition

This research sought to examine differences in the cross-modal facilitation effect of voice on facial identity recognition under mask occlusion for both oneself and others. Employing a facial recognition paradigm, we examined the influence of voice on facial identity recognition under static and dynamic mask occlusion through two eye-tracking experiments. The behavioral results from Experiments 1 and 2 indicate that mask occlusion interfered with recognition for both static and dynamic faces, with greater interference observed for others' faces than for self-faces. In addition, voice exerts cross-modal enhancement effects on faces, with greater enhancement observed for masked faces than for no mask. Furthermore, voice provides stronger enhancement for others' dynamic faces than for their self-dynamic faces. Eye-tracking data from both experiments revealed that the difference in dynamic facial recognition between self-faces and others' faces due to voice emerged in the early stages of dynamic facial recognition and persisted into later stages. However, regardless of whether they were in the early or late stages of static facial recognition, the facilitation effect of voice did not differ between themselves and others. This study revealed that the cross-modal facilitation of visual stimuli by voice is influenced by the self-advantage effect.