Face processing
Do we still see faces 'as a whole' when they're tilted up or down?
Open access · cc by · source: Europe PMC
Turning faces upside down hurt recognition for all side-turned views and for moderate up/down tilts, but not for extreme up/down tilts, suggesting holistic face processing stops working at those unusual angles.
Study at a glance
- Design
- Human experiment — Within-subjects sequential same/different face matching: a full-face study image followed by a test face rotated 0, 15, 45 or 75 degrees in yaw (sideways) or pitch (up/down), with both faces upright or both inverted.
- N
- N=20 · 20 undergraduate volunteers, each completing 360 trials.
- Population
- Undergraduate students at the University of Wollongong, Australia, unfamiliar with the face stimuli
- Outcome
- Matching sensitivity (d′) and reaction time for correct 'same' responses; the face inversion effect (upright minus inverted) at each viewpoint
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Key findings
Recognition was best for front-on faces and got worse as rotation increased. Inversion reduced recognition sensitivity at every sideways view and at up/down tilts of 15 and 45 degrees, but there was no inversion effect at all at 75-degree tilts from above or below. Because performance at 75 degrees was still above floor (d′ around 0.5), the missing inversion effect was unlikely to be due to people simply failing the task.
Methodology
Twenty undergraduates saw a front-on photo of a man's face, then a second photo, and decided whether it was the same person. The second face could be rotated sideways (yaw) or tilted up or down (pitch) by 15, 45 or 75 degrees, and in separate blocks both faces were shown upside down. The logic was that if a view is processed holistically when upright, inverting it should disrupt recognition.
Limitations
The sample was small and the stimuli were only nine Caucasian male faces with hair removed, so the results may not extend to other face sets. The inversion effect is an indirect marker of holistic processing; the study did not use more direct tests such as the composite-face task. The authors cannot tell whether extreme pitch views are processed holistically but inefficiently, processed as faces but piece by piece, or treated like ordinary objects.
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