Making heads turn: the effect of familiarity and stimulus rotation on a gender-classification task
Making heads turn: the effect of familiarity and stimulus rotation on a gender-classification task
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
1485-1494
Stevenage, Sarah V.
493f8c57-9af9-4783-b189-e06b8e958460
Osborne, Cara D.
1fa68983-88a7-4ccd-bba4-538b099baad7
November 2006
Stevenage, Sarah V.
493f8c57-9af9-4783-b189-e06b8e958460
Osborne, Cara D.
1fa68983-88a7-4ccd-bba4-538b099baad7
Stevenage, Sarah V. and Osborne, Cara D.
(2006)
Making heads turn: the effect of familiarity and stimulus rotation on a gender-classification task.
Perception, 35 (11), .
(doi:10.1068/p5409).
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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Published date: November 2006
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Local EPrints ID: 40333
URI: http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/id/eprint/40333
PURE UUID: 337762f2-b26b-4c34-b0a3-ca3338e9df8a
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Date deposited: 06 Jul 2006
Last modified: 16 Mar 2024 02:46
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Author:
Cara D. Osborne
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