Recognition of briefly presented familiar and unfamiliar faces

Abstract

Early processing stages in the perception of familiar and unfamiliar faces were studied in four experiments by varying the type of available facial information in a four alternative forced choice recognition task. Both reaction time and recognition accuracy served as dependent measures. The observed data revealed an asymmetry in processing familiar and unfamiliar faces. A markedly weak inversion effect and strong blurring effect suggest a limited usage of spatial relations within early processing stages of unfamiliar faces. Recognition performance for whole familiar faces did not deteriorate due to blurring or the presentation of isolated internal features, suggesting a low level of representation for featural properties of familiar faces. Based on the data we propose that recognition of familiar faces relies much more on spatial relations among features, particularly internal features, than on featural characteristics. In contrast, recognition of unfamiliar faces resorts mainly to featural information.Odsek za psihologiju, Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz, Nemacka Rane faze u prepoznavanju poznatih i nepoznatih lica ispitane su u cetiri eksperimenta u kojima je varirana raspoloziva vrsta informacije na licima-stimulusima. Kao eksperimentalna paradigma koriscen je test prepoznavanja sa prinudnim izborom. U ovoj paradigmi lice-meta je prikazano na ekranu racunara sa jos tri lica, a zadatak ispitanika je bio da prepozna metu. Mereni su vreme reakcije i procenat gresaka. Podaci ukazuju na asimetriju u procesu obrade izmedju poznatih i nepoznatih lica. Pri procesu obrade nepoznatih lica ne javlja se efekat inverzije ali je efekat rezolucije vrlo izrazen. Sve ovo ukazuju na ogranicenu upotrebu prostornih relacija izmedju bazicnih crta. Nasuprot tome, efikasnost u prepoznavanju poznatih lica pociva pre svega na prostornim relacijama, uz vrlo ogranicenu reprezentaciju pojedinacnih crta lica. Podaci dalje ukazuju da za prepoznavanje poznatih lica narocito znacajnu ulogu igraju prostorne relacije izmedju ociju, nosa i usta.