Making heads turn: the effect of familiarity and stimulus rotation on a gender-classification task.

Full Abstract

Recent work has demonstrated that facial familiarity can moderate the influence of inversion when completing a configural processing task. Here, we examine whether familiarity interacts with intermediate angles of orientation in the same way that it interacts with inversion. Participants were asked to make a gender classification to familiar and unfamiliar faces shown at seven angles of orientation. Speed and accuracy of performance were assessed for stimuli presented (i) as whole faces and (ii) as internal features. When presented as whole faces, the task was easy, as revealed by ceiling levels of accuracy and no effect of familiarity or angle of rotation on response times. However, when stimuli were presented as internal features, an influence of facial familiarity was evident. Unfamiliar faces showed no increase in difficulty across angle of rotation, whereas familiar faces showed a marked increase in difficulty across angle, which was explained by significant linear and cubic trends in the data. Results were interpreted in terms of the benefit gained from a mental representation when face processing was impaired by stimulus rotation.

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Author information

Author/s: Stevenage, Sarah V (SV); Osborne, Cara D (CD);

Affiliation: Centre for Visual Cognition, School of Psychology, University of Southampton, Highfield, Southampton SO17 1BJ, UK. svs1(-atsign-)soton.ac.uk

Journal and publication information

Publication Type: Journal Article; Randomized Controlled Trial

Journal: Perception (Perception), published in England. (Language: eng)

Reference: 2006-; vol 35 (issue 11) : pp 1485-94

Dates: Created 2007/02/08; Completed 2007/07/16;

PMID: 17286119, status: MEDLINE (last retrieval date: 12/26/2008)

Sourced from the National Library of Medicine. Abstract text and other information may be subject to copyright.

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