Effects of Familiarity on the Perceptual Integrality of the Identity and Expression of Faces: The Parallel-Route Hypothesis Revisited.

Abstract

The effects of familiarity on selective attention for the identity and expression of faces were tested using Garner's speeded-classification task. In 2 experiments, participants classified expression (or identity) of familiar and unfamiliar faces while the irrelevant dimension of identity (or expression) was either held constant (baseline condition) or varied randomly (filtering condition). Selective attention was measured by the difference in performance between these 2 conditions. Failure of selective attention was larger for familiar than for unfamiliar faces. In addition, failure of selective attention was found both for identity and for expression judgments. These findings show that familiarity increases (he perceptual integrality between identity and expression, and they question previous studies arguing that identity judgments are always resistant to irrelevant variations in expression. The authors suggest that the systems processing identity and expression are interconnected in that facial identity serves as a reference from which expressions can be more easily derived.

Factors contributing to the adaptation aftereffects of facial expression

“…We have demonstrated in the current study that identity-dependent expression aftereffects are not the result of local adaptation to image elements of the faces. The existence of an identity-dependent neural representations of expression is also consistent with a number of previous studies (Baudouin, Martin, Tiberghien, Verlut, & Franck, 2002;Ganel, Goshen-Gottstein, & Ganel, 2004;Schweinberger, Burton, & Kelly, 1999;Schweinberger & Soukup, 1998). For example, a recent study of neural responses in monkeys demonstrated that the responses of cells in the amygdala to facial expression depended upon the identity of the monkey demonstrating that expression (Kuraoka & Nakamura, 2006).…”

Interactions between facial emotion and identity in face processing: Evidence based on redundancy gains

“…Second, in the present study the effect of differences in the discriminability of identity and emotional expression was controlled. The effects of discriminability on the processing of identity and emotional expression has previously been demonstrated in studies of Garner interference (Ganel & Goshen-Gottstein, 2004;Melara, Rao, & Tong, 2002). For instance, Ganel and GoshenGottshtein showed that when the discriminability of identity and expression judgments were equated, Garner interference occurred in both directions.…”

“…Contrasting data have been reported by Ganel and Goshen-Gottstein (2004), who have explored face processing using the Garner task, which tests for interference effect from one stimulus property on responses to another. Participants categorized photographs according to personal identity information or to emotional expressions, and the effects of variation along the other dimension were explored.…”

“…Task-irrelevant information from the other dimension influenced participants' judgment equally in the identity and emotional expression categorization tasks. The authors argued that the systems involved in processing identity and expression are interconnected and that facial identity can serve as a reference from which different expressions can be more easily derived (Ganel & Goshen-Gottstein, 2004). On the other hand, Etcoff (1984), also using Garner (1974) interference, showed that participants could selectively attend to either unfamiliar identity or emotional expression without interference from the irrelevant stimulus dimension.…”

“…Another important issue is that different picture-based strategies may be used for either identity or emotion decision tasks in the Garner paradigm. In the identity decision task, pictorial strategies might be used to discriminate individuals on the basis of the shape of a face and of nonfacial cues such as hair style (see, e.g., Ganel & Goshen-Gottstein, 2004;Schweinberger & Soukup, 1998). For the expression decision task, in which participants are required to attend to internal facial features, this strategy may be inappropriate.…”