Previous literature has consistently proven the negative effects that sleep-deprivation has on functions and cognitions. Research has indicated that sleep-deprivation has serious negative effects on well-being, and cognition such as memory and facial recognition. The literature investigating familiar and unfamiliar face matching has proven that humans are significantly worse at recognising unfamiliar faces, which can have severe consequences in an occupational setting such as a security guard, an immigration officer, or even a shopkeeper where they have to match faces on a regular basis. Recent research into facial recognition have used the GFMT (Glasgow Face Matching Task), an unfamiliar face identification measure where participants have to decide whether a pair of faces are the same person, or two different people. It has been reported that sleep-deprivation led to a decreased performance on the GFMT, suggesting that sleep-deprivation decreases facial recognition accuracy. The present study seeks to investigate whether full-night sleep deprivation effects unfamiliar facial recognition accuracy, by using the GFMT2 with participants who have a normal sleep routine, without any sleep or neurological disorders. 20 participants will either be sleep deprived for a full night, with another 20 participants experiencing their normal nightly routine. Participants will then complete two short form versions of the GFMT2 – one before the sleep intervention at 9 pm, and another after the sleep intervention at 9 am. It was significantly found that people who were sleep-deprived decreased in performance on the GFMT2, suggesting that sleep-deprivation significantly decreases facial recognition ability. It was also found that over-confidence leads to a decrease in performance on the GFMT. This has serious implications for occupational roles constantly using unfamiliar face identification.
Keyword: Sleep-Deprivation, Facial Recognition, Unfamiliar Faces, GFMT2, Confidence
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