Inversion and Configuration of Faces

Face Recognition in Young Children: When the Whole is Greater than the Sum of Its Parts

“…While we interpret our results as supporting the holistic approach to face processing, these findings are also consistent with the relational view of face recognition (Bartlett & Searcy, 1993;Diamond & Carey, 1986;Rhodes et al, 1993). According to the relational view, the spatial relations between facial features are as vital to face recognition processes as the features themselves.…”

“…The more veridical norm representation can be used to resolve relational differences between highly similar faces, thereby leading to improved recognition of upright faces. Inversion, on the other hand, eliminates any expertise advantage by blocking norm-based encoding of relational properties (Bartlett & Searcy, 1993;Rhodes, Brake, & Atkinson, 1993;Tanaka & Sengco, 1997). Thus, the norm-based model predicts that, whereas recognition of upright faces should improve with age, recognition of inverted faces should remain fairly constant across different groups.…”

Sex-contingent face after-effects suggest distinct neural populations code male and female faces

“…Greater experience with upright than inverted faces causes greater configural processing for upright faces (Yin 1969;Diamond & Carey 1986;Bartlett & Searcy 1993;Moscovitch et al 1997;Hancock et al 2000;Maurer et al 2002). Rhodes et al (2004) found that opposite aftereffects could be induced for upright and inverted faces simultaneously, and concluded that distinct neural populations code upright and inverted faces.…”

The Effect of Rotation on Configural Encoding in a Face-Matching Task

“…Inversion significantly hindered participants' ability to decide, within a given time frame, that a pair of spatially distorted faces were the same or different; but this effect was not found with featurally distorted pairs, and responses made within this time feature (3 s) were longer for detecting configural differences than for detecting featural changes. There is, therefore, evidence to suggest that the processing of upright, normal faces is largely dependent on configural processing, whereas inverted faces are thought to require a more featural means of processing (see also Bartlett and Searcy 1993;Rhodes et al 1993;Lewis and Johnston 1997).It is important to note that, although there is a wide range of evidence to support the notion that two types of encoding öconfigural and featuralöare involved in face perception, a number of different terms have been used to refer to different definitions of these types of information. Terms such as`second-order relational information', configural' information, and`holistic' information have referred to configural information as being the combination of components that make up an individual face (eg Sergent 1984), or the configuration formed by the individual arrangements of facial features (eg Diamond and Carey 1986; Bartlett and Searcy 1993).…”

“…Inversion significantly hindered participants' ability to decide, within a given time frame, that a pair of spatially distorted faces were the same or different; but this effect was not found with featurally distorted pairs, and responses made within this time feature (3 s) were longer for detecting configural differences than for detecting featural changes. There is, therefore, evidence to suggest that the processing of upright, normal faces is largely dependent on configural processing, whereas inverted faces are thought to require a more featural means of processing (see also Bartlett and Searcy 1993;Rhodes et al 1993;Lewis and Johnston 1997).…”