When feature information comes first! Early processing of inverted faces

Author(s)
Claus-Christian Carbon, Helmut Leder
Abstract

We investigated the early stages of face recognition and the role of featural and holistic face information. We exploited the fact that, on inversion, the alienating disorientation of the eyes and mouth in thatcherised faces is hardly detectable. This effect allows featural and holistic information to be dissociated and was used to test specific face-processing hypotheses. In inverted thatcherised faces, the cardinal features are already correctly oriented, whereas in undistorted faces, the whole Gestalt is coherent but all information is disoriented. Experiment 1 and experiment 3 revealed that, for inverted faces, featural information processing precedes holistic information. Moreover, the processing of contextual information is necessary to process local featural information within a short presentation time (26 ms). Furthermore, for upright faces, holistic information seems to be available faster than for inverted faces (experiment 2). These differences in processing inverted and upright faces presumably cause the differential importance of featural and holistic information for inverted and upright faces.

Organisation(s)
Journal
Perception
Volume
34
Pages
1117-1134
No. of pages
18
ISSN
0301-0066
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1068/p5192
Publication date
2005
Peer reviewed
Yes
Austrian Fields of Science 2012
5010 Psychology
Portal url
https://ucris.univie.ac.at/portal/en/publications/when-feature-information-comes-first-early-processing-of-inverted-faces(962dc4f4-ec24-44b6-8813-483d5d68d501).html