Abstract
Recent evidence suggests that while reflectance information (including color) may be more diagnostic for familiar face recognition, shape may be more diagnostic for unfamiliar face identity processing. Moreover, event-related potential (ERP) findings suggest an earlier onset for neural processing of facial shape compared to reflectance. In the current study, we aimed to explore specifically the roles of facial shape and color in a familiarity decision task using pre-experimentally familiar (famous) and unfamiliar faces that were caricatured either in shape-only, color-only, or both (full; shape + color) by 15%, 30%, or 45%. We recorded accuracies, mean reaction times, and face-sensitive ERPs. Performance data revealed that shape caricaturing facilitated identity processing for unfamiliar faces only. In the ERP data, such effects of shape caricaturing emerged earlier than those of color caricaturing. Unsurprisingly, ERP effects were accentuated for larger levels of caricaturing. Overall, our findings corroborate the importance of shape for identity processing of unfamiliar faces and demonstrate an earlier onset of neural processing for facial shape compared to color.
Highlights
Accurate face recognition is relevant for social interactions on a personal level, it is important for several occupational fields, in which identifying persons by their faces is crucial, as is the case for instance for cashiers or passport controllers (e.g. [1, 2])
For accuracies and mean reaction times we performed 2x3x4 ANOVAs with repeated measurements on familiarity, face type (shape-only caricatures [SC] vs. coloronly caricatures [CC] vs. full caricatures (FC), and caricature level (0% vs. 15% vs. 30% vs. 45%)
The ANOVA yielded a main effect of familiarity, F(1,30) = 25.55, p < .001, ηp2 = .460, which interacted with face type and caricature level, F(6,180) = 3.08, p = .014, ηp2 = .093, εHF =
Summary
Accurate face recognition is relevant for social interactions on a personal level, it is important for several occupational fields, in which identifying persons by their faces is crucial, as is the case for instance for cashiers or passport controllers (e.g. [1, 2]). Accurate face recognition is relevant for social interactions on a personal level, it is important for several occupational fields, in which identifying persons by their faces is crucial, as is the case for instance for cashiers or passport controllers [3]), unfamiliar face identity processing is highly error prone [4]. While familiar face identification occurs almost effortlessly for most of us It has been shown repeatedly in behavioral as well as neural findings that we process unfamiliar and familiar faces in qualitatively different ways (for a review, see [5]). A fundamental question is whether there are facial characteristics that facilitate recognition of familiar compared to unfamiliar faces. A related and important issue for applied research (e.g. [1, 2]) is whether face identification performance can be improved in PLOS ONE | DOI:10.1371/journal.pone.0149796 February 22, 2016
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