Abstract
The ability to process facial information is vital for social interactions. Previous research has shown that mature face processing depends on the extraction of featural and configural face information. It has been also shown that the acquisition of these processing skills is prolonged in children. The order in which different face properties are processed is currently less understood. Namely, while some research has supported a parallel-route model which groups different properties according to their variability, other studies have shown that specific invariant properties, such as facial identity, can serve as a reference frame for interpreting more dynamic aspects, such as facial expression or eye gaze direction. The current study tested a different approach, which proposes that face property processing varies with task requirements. Sixteen adults did a same-different task where the second face could differ from the first in the identity, expression, or gaze, or any combination of those. We found that reaction times increased and accuracy rates decreased when the identity was repeated, suggesting that changes in facial identity were the most salient ones. Finally, we tested two groups of 7-to 8- and 10- to 11-year-old children and found lower accuracy rates for those face properties that rely in particular on configural information processing strategies. This suggests that while overall, face processing strategies are adult-like from 7 years of age, the processing of specific face properties develops continuously throughout mid-childhood.
Highlights
Humans consult a person’s face to determine the identity of its bearer, his emotional state, or the current focus of attention via the direction of their eye gaze
With regard to the orientation factor, it was found that the dominant effect of identity processing was more pronounced in the inverted orientation condition, a finding that runs in line with the evidence for disrupted configural information processing for inverted faces
We found that while the overall processing order did not differ for children from 7 years of age, both child groups were less accurate at processing facial identity and the younger children made more mistakes in detecting expression changes
Summary
Humans consult a person’s face to determine the identity of its bearer, his emotional state, or the current focus of attention via the direction of their eye gaze. It has been shown that adults use these inter-featural distances to recognize facial identities (Mondloch et al, 2006) or changes in expression (Calder and Young, 2005; Leppaenen and Nelson, 2006; Durand et al, 2007), while featural strategies are more often used to determine the direction of gaze (Mondloch et al, 2002). In 1969,Yin showed that turning faces upside down has a disruptive effect on the recognition and this inversion effect was not obtained in this magnitude for any other group of objects in a variety of follow-up studies. It has been shown that turning a face upside down will be disruptive for the processing of facial identity, but less so for the processing of gaze (Mondloch et al, 2003). We note that while configural and featural information processing strategies have proved to be extremely useful models to describe face processing strategies in humans, much remains to be learned from investigating the effect of changing face properties on performance directly
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