Facial age estimation at a glance: Effects of exposure duration.

Abstract

The time available to view a face affects various face processes. For example, some trait judgements (e.g., trustworthiness) can be made from an exposure duration as brief as 100 ms, and some emotional expressions (e.g., surprise) can be identified in 20 ms. While other aspects of face perception, such as face identity recognition, benefit from longer durations. The impact of exposure time on facial age estimation, however, is scarcely examined. Across two experiments, we found that age estimates that approximate true chronological age are possible even with a brief exposure duration of100 ms, and accuracy improves slightly with longer durations (1000 and 3000 ms). However, there was large variability in performance across participants and although improvement was significant, the differences are numerically small. Therefore, it seems possible for age estimates to be made rapidly, and although there can be further refinement with additional time leading to slightly better accuracy, this improvement is not extensive.