Perceptual learning for a familiar category under inversion: An analogue of face inversion?

Abstract

This study investigated the link between expertise for a prototype-defined category and the face inversion effect. Participants in this study were first presented with a categorisation task in which they were asked to sort a number of chequerboards (in an upright orientation) into two categories. Then, in the next (study) phase, participants were presented with a set of chequerboards which included exemplars (some upright, some inverted) from one of the two categories that participants were familiar with, plus exemplars (also upright or inverted) from a novel category. Following this, participants were tested for old/new recognition for these exemplars We succeeded in obtaining the same pattern of effects reported in McLaren (1997), i.e. a significant inversion effect for stimuli drawn from the familiar category, but with standard recognition procedures. We interpret the results in terms of McLaren and Mackintosh's (2000) theory of representation development.