Real-world interattribute distances lead to inefficient face gender categorization.

Abstract

The processing of interattribute distances is believed to be critical for upright face categorization. A recent study by Taschereau-Dumouchel, Rossion, Schyns, and Gosselin (2010) challenged this idea by showing that participants were nearly at chance when asked to identify faces on the sole basis of real-world interattribute distances, while they were nearly perfect when all other facial cues were shown. However, it remains possible that humans are highly tuned to interattribute distances but that the information conveyed by these cues is scarce. We tested this hypothesis by contrasting the efficiencies-a measure of performance that factors out task difficulty-of 60 observers in 6 face gender categorization tasks. Our main finding is that efficiencies for faces that varied only in terms of their interattribute distances were an order of magnitude lower than efficiencies for faces that varied in all respects, except their interattribute distances, or in all respects. These results provide a definitive blow to the idea that real-world interattribute distances are critical for upright face processing. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2014 APA, all rights reserved).