Abstract
Identification of personally familiar faces is highly efficient across various viewing conditions. While the presence of robust facial representations stored in memory is considered to aid this process, the mechanisms underlying invariant identification remain unclear. Two experiments tested the hypothesis that facial representations stored in memory are associated with differential perceptual processing of the overall facial geometry. Subjects who were personally familiar or unfamiliar with the identities presented discriminated between stimuli whose overall facial geometry had been manipulated to maintain or alter the original facial configuration (see Barton, Zhao & Keenan, 2003). The results demonstrate that familiarity gives rise to more efficient processing of global facial geometry, and are interpreted in terms of increased holistic processing of facial information that is maintained across viewing distances.
Highlights
Identification of personally familiar faces is highly efficient across various viewing conditions
Only familiar subjects were able to perceive differences in changes of the overall facial configuration, but did not exhibit a face geometry effect. These results indicate that personal familiarity is associated with more efficient integration of the overall facial configuration, i.e., holistic processing, but that the observation of a face geometry effect may depend on stimuli being presented simultaneously
Experiment 1: Veridicality decisions for personally familiar faces across manipulations of overall facial geometry Experiment 1 assessed whether specific alterations of the overall facial configuration would be discriminated more readily than others in personally familiar faces
Summary
Identification of personally familiar faces is highly efficient across various viewing conditions. Paradigms commonly used to measure holistic processing include the composite face illusion (Young, Hellawell & Hay, 1987), the whole-part advantage (Tanaka & Farah, 1993), or the face inversion effect (Yin, 1969), all of which demonstrate the inter-dependency of perceiving information in upright faces (for recent reviews see e.g., Rossion, 2009; Rossion, 2013). Another paradigm developed in the face processing literature that relies on holistic face processing was reported by Barton, Zhao & Keenan (2003).
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