The Face Inversion Effect: Roles of First and Second-Order Configural Information
Civile, Ciro; McLaren, R; McLaren, Ian P.L.
Date: 1 February 2016
Journal
The American Journal of Psychology
Publisher
University of Illinois Press
Publisher DOI
Abstract
The face inversion effect (FIE) is a reduction in recognition performance for inverted faces
compared with upright faces. Several studies have proposed that a type of configural
information, called second-order relational information, becomes more important with increasing
expertise and gives rise to the FIE. However, recently it ...
The face inversion effect (FIE) is a reduction in recognition performance for inverted faces
compared with upright faces. Several studies have proposed that a type of configural
information, called second-order relational information, becomes more important with increasing
expertise and gives rise to the FIE. However, recently it has been demonstrated that it is possible
to obtain an FIE with facial features presented in isolation, showing that configural information
is not necessary for this effect to occur. In this article we test whether there is a role for
configural information in producing the FIE and whether second- or first-order relational
information is particularly important. In Experiment 1, we investigated the role of configural
information and local feature orientation by using a new type of “Thatcherizing” transformation
on our set of faces, aiming to disrupt second-order and local feature orientation information but
keeping all first-order properties unaltered. The results showed a significant reduction in the FIE
for these “new” Thatcherized faces, but it did not entirely disappear. Experiment 2 confirmed the
FIE for new Thatcherized faces, and Experiment 3 establishes that both local feature orientation
and first-order relational information have a role in determining the FIE.
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