Face Inversion Effect Emerges Under Critical Configural Discrepancy

Abstract

Configural processing has been considered the major contributor to the face inversion effect (FIE) in face recognition. However, most researchers have only obtained the FIE with one specific ratio of configural alteration. It remains unclear whether the ratio of configural alteration itself can mediate the occurrence of the FIE. We aimed to clarify this issue by manipulating the configural information parametrically using six different ratios, ranging from 4% to 24%. Participants were asked to judge whether a pair of faces were entirely identical or different. The paired faces that were to be compared were presented either simultaneously (Experiment 1) or sequentially (Experiment 2). Both experiments revealed that the FIE was observed only when the ratio of configural alteration was in the intermediate range. These results indicate that even though the FIE has been frequently adopted as an index to examine the underlying mechanism of face processing, the emergence of the FIE is not robust with any configural alteration but dependent on the ratio of configural alteration.

Face inversion disproportionately disrupts sensitivity to vertical over horizontal changes in eye position.

“…Procedure and presentation times were based on those used by Yang and Schwaninger (2010, Experiment 2). On each trial, participants saw a fixation cross (500 ms), followed by the first face (500 ms), then a blank screen (500 ms), and then the second face (500 ms).…”

“…On same trials, the faces were exactly identical (e.g., both Face A eyes out 6%) but only spacing-altered faces were presented (i.e., the unaltered faces did not appear on same trials). This design avoids overfamiliarization with the unaltered face and allows calculation of d ' for each change type at each change-size level (Yang & Schwaninger, 2010).…”

“…Sekunova and Barton (2008) tested three levels of change difficulty but reported results only for the “easy” condition because it produced performance across change types that were well matched for accuracy for upright faces. It is possible, particularly given the results of Yang and Schwaninger (2010), that the differences in the size of the inversion effect observed for different types of change in the previous studies resulted from perceptual differences in the size of the changes used. For example, in Goffaux and Rossion's (2007) study, the horizontal changes may have been relatively large and outside the range that produces a robust inversion effect.…”

The Ability of Face Viewpoint Transformation Remains Immature at Age of 12: Evidence from Recognition of Faces with Different Familiarity in Children

“…Finally, the adult group performed better than the novel class group ( M = .116; p < .001). Performance for upright stimuli ( M = .404) was better than for inverted stimuli ( M = .180), that is, the inversion effect was clearly demonstrated (Yang & Schwaninger, ; Yin, ). Finally, Bonferroni‐corrected pair‐wise comparisons revealed that performance was equivalent between the whole silhouette ( M = .428) and head silhouette ( M = .411) conditions ( p = .129).…”

Left-Side Bias Is Observed in Sequential Matching Paradigm for Face Processing

“…Especially in face processing, when the paired faces were presented sequentially, it may encourage participants to process the faces holistically. In addition, this sequential presentation paradigm reduced the amount of comparison of faces with respect to local features (e.g., Yang and Schwaninger, 2010 ); therefore, participants may adopt memory based-implicating strategies or the outcome-of-an-attention strategies ( Richler et al, 2009 , 2012 ; Menon et al, 2015 ). In contrast, in the simultaneous presentation paradigm, participants may adopt part-based, feature-matching strategies or image-matching strategies ( Hole, 1994 ; Richler et al, 2009 ).…”