Sandford, Adam and Burton, Mike orcid.org/0000-0002-2035-2084 (2014) Tolerance for distorted faces:Challenges to a configural processing account of familiar face recognition. Cognition. pp. 262-268. ISSN 0010-0277
Abstract
Face recognition is widely held to rely on 'configural processing', an analysis of spatial relations between facial features. We present three experiments in which viewers were shown distorted faces, and asked to resize these to their correct shape. Based on configural theories appealing to metric distances between features, we reason that this should be an easier task for familiar than unfamiliar faces (whose subtle arrangements of features are unknown). In fact, participants were inaccurate at this task, making between 8% and 13% errors across experiments. Importantly, we observed no advantage for familiar faces: in one experiment participants were more accurate with unfamiliars, and in two experiments there was no difference. These findings were not due to general task difficulty - participants were able to resize blocks of colour to target shapes (squares) more accurately. We also found an advantage of familiarity for resizing other stimuli (brand logos). If configural processing does underlie face recognition, these results place constraints on the definition of 'configural'. Alternatively, familiar face recognition might rely on more complex criteria - based on tolerance to within-person variation rather than highly specific measurement.
Metadata
Item Type: | Article |
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Authors/Creators: |
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Keywords: | Aspect ratio,Configural processing,Face recognition,Holistic processing |
Dates: |
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Institution: | The University of York |
Academic Units: | The University of York > Faculty of Sciences (York) > Psychology (York) |
Depositing User: | Pure (York) |
Date Deposited: | 19 Nov 2015 10:24 |
Last Modified: | 16 Oct 2024 12:30 |
Published Version: | https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cognition.2014.04.005 |
Status: | Published |
Refereed: | Yes |
Identification Number: | 10.1016/j.cognition.2014.04.005 |
Related URLs: | |
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:83494 |
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