Elsevier

Acta Psychologica

Volume 109, Issue 3, March 2002, Pages 227-238
Acta Psychologica

Effect of inversion on the recognition of external and internal facial features

https://doi.org/10.1016/S0001-6918(01)00058-0Get rights and content

Abstract

The purpose of the present study was to find out whether inversion affects recognition of external and internal facial features. 24 participants matched, under two experimental conditions (pair and multiple-choice matchings), upright target faces with three categories of facial test stimuli: full faces, external features and internal features, which were presented in either upright or inverted orientations. Data analysis showed that matching of facial stimuli was faster, more accurate and more consistent under upright than under inverted orientations for all stimulus categories; mostly for full faces, and least for internal features. As a rule, there were no speed-accuracy trade-offs. Implications of the data for accounts of the inversion effect in face recognition in terms of a shift from configurational to componential processing were discussed.

Introduction

One of the controversial issues regarding face recognition, which has important theoretical implications, concerns the question of whether or not inversion affects recognition of facial features. As a rule, when faces are inverted, recognition accuracy decreases (for a review, see Valentine, 1988). This decrement, called the “inversion effect”, is significantly bigger than a similar effect found for recognition of other inverted objects (Carey & Diamond, 1977; Diamond & Carey, 1986; Scapinello & Yarmey, 1970; Valentine & Bruce, 1986; Yarmey, 1971; Yin, 1969; but see Bruce, Doyle, Dench, & Burton, 1991). Whether or not this phenomenon demonstrates specificity of face perception is another controversial issue which has been dealt with elsewhere (de Gelder, Bachoud-Levi, & Degos, 1998; de Gelder & Rouw, 2000; Farah, Wilson, Drain, & Tanaka, 1995; Nachson, 1995).

One explanation of the inversion effect in face recognition is based on the assumption that upright faces are normally perceived configurationally (by considering the facial features as well as their spatial relationships), whereas inverted faces are recognized by componential analysis of the individual features (Bartlett & Searcy, 1993; Carey, 1978, Carey, 1981; Carey & Diamond, 1977; Endo, 1986; Frith, Stevens, Johnson, Owens, & Crow, 1983; Phillips & Rawls, 1979; Rhodes, Brake, & Atkinson, 1993; Sergent, 1984, Sergent, 1988; Tanaka & Farah, 1993; Vermeire & Hamilton, 1998; Yin, 1969). It was argued, that since inversion severely impairs configurational (but not componential) perception, recognition of inverted faces (but not of facial features) is impaired (Bartlett & Searcy, 1993; Bruyer & Coget, 1987; Carey, 1978, Carey, 1981; Leder & Bruce, 1998; Rhodes, Brake, Taylor, & Tan, 1989; Rhodes, Tan, Brake, & Taylor, 1989; Rhodes et al., 1993; Searcy & Bartlett, 1996; Tanaka & Farah, 1993; Valentine, 1988; Young, Hellawell, & Hay, 1987). Concerning configurational processing, Leder and Bruce (2000) recently argued that it should be defined in terms of spatial relationships (relational coding), rather than in terms of holistic processing (template-like coding), since only disruption of the former produces inversion effects. This notion is in line with findings showing that the qualitative changes in face processing which are involved in inversion of upright faces are due to encoding differences between the two orientations of the spatial–relational interactions among the internal features (Endo, 1986; Murray, Yong, & Rhodes, 2000; Rock, 1974; Sergent, 1984). However, Valentine, 1988, Valentine, 1991 argued that recognition of upright faces does not differ qualitatively from that of inverted faces, since accuracy differences between the two orientations is only a matter of degree.

The notion that recognition of facial features is unaffected by inversion was recently challenged by Rakover and Teucher (1997) who found that recognition of the forehead, eyes, nose, mouth and chin is less accurate when the features are inverted than when they are upright. According to the authors, this finding implies that configurational information extracted from a whole face is not necessary for obtaining inversion effects. This hypothesis was recently corroborated by Moscovitch and Moscovitch (2000) who found that inverted faces are not processed by piecemeal analysis of their features, since the spatial relationships of these features, as well as their orientation, are necessary for face recognition. If that is true, then the notion that upright and inverted faces are differentially processed by configural and featural analysis, respectively, should be revised.

Considering facial features, a distinction has been made between recognition of external (e.g., hair, ears, facial outline) and internal (e.g., eyes, nose, mouth) features. In a typical experiment on face matching, two facial stimuli, a target face and a test facial stimulus (consisting of either a full face, external features or internal features) are presented to the participants who are asked to tell whether they depict the same or different faces (de Haan & Hay, 1986; de Haan, Young, & Newcombe, 1987; Hines, Jordan-Brown, & Juzwin, 1987; Young, 1984; Young, Hay, McWeeny, Flude, & Ellis, 1985). Participants' responses are scored in terms of accuracy and reaction time. Differential results have been reported for matching familiar and unfamiliar faces (de Haan & Hay, 1986; Ellis, Shepherd, & Davies, 1979; Young et al., 1985). For the latter, matching of external features is usually faster and more accurate than matching of internal features (de Haan & Hay, 1986; Nachson, Moscovitch, & Umiltá, 1995; Young et al., 1985). Conflicting data exist regarding matches of isolated facial features with full faces. While some authors (Ellis et al., 1979; Hines et al., 1987; Phillips, 1979; Young et al., 1985, Experiment 1) have found no differences in accuracy rates and reaction times between the various features, other authors (Young et al., 1985, Experiment 2) reported shorter reaction times for matching external than internal features. Furthermore, when inverted, recognition of internal features is more impaired than that of external features (Phillips, 1979).

In the present study the interactive effects of feature and orientation on the recognition of facial stimuli were systematically investigated by matching upright target faces with three categories of facial test stimuli: full faces, external features and internal features which were presented in either upright or inverted orientations. It was predicted that face matching would be faster and more accurate under upright than under inverted orientations; mainly for full faces, less for external features, and least for internal features. These predictions were tested under two experimental conditions: pair matching (PM) and multiple choice (MC) matching.

Section snippets

Participants

24 female students at Bar-Ilan University were tested.

Stimuli

100 male faces were used in the two experiments; four target (full) faces, and 96 test faces which were divided into three series of 32 stimuli each: full faces, external features (hair, ears, and face outline) and internal features (eyes, nose and mouth) (see Fig. 1). Each series consisted of 16 facial stimuli in the upright orientation, and 16 identical stimuli in the inverted orientation. All stimuli were 3 cm long and 2.5 cm wide,

Results

For each participant, accuracy and reaction time scores were recorded for each task. Accuracy was measured in terms of percent correct responses. The data were analyzed by 2 Tasks (PM, MC) × 2 Orientations (upright, inverted) × 3 Modes (full face, external features, internal features) analysis of variance with repeated measurements. Additional analyses were performed where necessary.

Discussion

Overall, the data of the present study are consistent across tasks (PM/MC) and measures (accuracy/reaction time) regarding both, stimulus orientation (upright/inverted) and mode of presentation (full faces/external features/internal features).

Acknowledgements

The authors acknowledge the help given by Judith Abulafia in data analysis, and thank two anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments on an earlier draft of this paper.

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