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1 Introduction
In the present study we investigated the early processes of face recognition. We manip-
ulated the utility of featural and holistic features by presenting the eyes and the
mouth upright or upside down in upright or inverted faces. `Thatcherisation' of faces
(Thompson 1980) originates from turning the eyes and the mouth region upside
down. When thatcherised faces are inverted, the alteration is hardly detectable. As
Lewis and Johnston (1997) demonstrated, inverted thatcherised faces require a very
long time to be identified as odd faces in a matching task. As a result, featural and
holistic information can be dissociated and specific processing hypotheses can be tested.
We investigated the early processes underlying face recognition; specifically, whether
face recognition is based on a holistic process or whether its nature is microgenetic.
Holistic processing is commonly defined as a mode in which different classes of
information are combined in one single step without independent processing of these
classes. Holistic processing enables simultaneous processing of facial features (Bradshaw
and Wallace 1971), the processing of spatial relations between features (Rhodes 1988;
Sergent 1984; Tanaka and Sengco 1997), as well as the recognition of low spatial
frequencies (Harmon 1973). Although the holistic processing account as formulated
by Tanaka and Farah (1993) proposes global processing of the whole face, this does
not fully exclude additional processing of local features. As Sieroff (2001) pointed out,
holistic processing does not mean that analytical processes, like the local processing
of some features, could not play a role in the recognition process under some circum-
stances. We will focus on a very simple definition of holistic processing throughout
this paper. We define holistic processing as the processing of a holistic coherent Gestalt.
Thus, in holistic processing a coherent Gestalt
ö
like an unmanipulated normal face
ö
should be processed fast and accurately.
When feature information comes first! Early processing
of inverted faces
Perception, 2005, volume 3 4, pages 1117 ^ 1134
Claus-Christian Carbonô
Institute of Cognitive Psychology, Freie Universita
«t Berlin, Habelschwerdter Allee 45, D 14169 Berlin,
Germany; e-mail: ccc@experimental-psychology.com
Helmut Leder
Institute of Psychology, University of Vienna, Liebiggasse 5, A 1010 Vienna, Austria
Received 8 December 2003, in revised form 7 September 2004; published online 12 August 2005
Abstract. We investigated the early stages of face recognition and the role of featural and holistic
face information. We exploited the fact that, on inversion, the alienating disorientation of the
eyes and mouth in thatcherised faces is hardly detectable. This effect allows featural and holistic
information to be dissociated and was used to test specific face-processing hypotheses. In inverted
thatcherised faces, the cardinal features are already correctly oriented, whereas in undistorted faces,
the whole Gestalt is coherent but all information is disoriented. Experiment 1 and experiment 3
revealed that, for inverted faces, featural information processing precedes holistic information.
Moreover, the processing of contextual information is necessary to process local featural informa-
tion within a short presentation time (26 ms). Furthermore, for upright faces, holistic information
seems to be available faster than for inverted faces (experiment 2). These differences in processing
inverted and upright faces presumably cause the differential importance of featural and holistic
information for inverted and upright faces.
DOI:10.1068/p5192
ô Current address: Faculty of Psychology, Department of Psychological Brain Research, University
of Vienna, Liebiggasse 5, A 1010 Vienna, Austria; e-mail: ccc@experimental-psychology.com
Featural processing, on the other hand, refers to the processing of single features.
According to the microgenetic account, features are processed as a sequence of events
which are assumed to occur between the presentation of a stimulus and the formation
of a single, relatively stable cognitive response (Flavell and Draguns 1957). The main
idea behind this approach is that different aspects of the stimulus become perceptually
available at different moments of time, while the accumulative process of perception
development is still going on (Bachmann 1991). Although the perception of faces appears
to be taking place at once, according to the microgenetic account, our visual repre-
sentation of a scene is not achieved in one step but, rather, is built up incrementally.
Marr (1982) proposed an important base for microgenesis at the psychobiological level.
He demonstrated that perceptual information is carried by intensity changes which
can occur at different scales and are best detected by analysing each response channel
separately. According to Marr's approach, edges at intensity changes carry enough per-
ceptual information for a first visual report for further analysis. Thus, Marr describes
the location of edges in the visual scene as the first step in the decoding process.
However, not all visual features will be represented in all channels. For example,
small-scale channels are insensitive to gradual changes in illumination from one spatial
position to another, while larger-scale channels are insensitive to fine detail, such as
narrow lines and fine texture. Thus, the overall perception may be a composite of features
which are separately processed at different scales, as well as features that activate channels
simultaneously (Biederman and Kalocsai 1997).
Face recognition is a candidate for special processing owing to the high relevance
of faces in everyday life and the number of faces which have to be differentiated at
the subordinate level (Tanaka 2001). Beside holistic processing, configural process-
ing also seems to be particularly important in face recognition (McKone et al 2001;
Rhodes et al 1993; Tanaka and Sengco 1997). Leder and Bruce (2000) have shown the
importance of configural processing for the recognition of faces, and how configural
processing contributes to face specific effects such as the inversion effect. Moreover,
they showed that distinctive configural features are somehow explicitly represented.
However, the importance of higher-order processing, like holistic or configural
processing, does not rule out other types of processing. For example, an explicit repre-
sentation of cardinal distinctive features, such as the nose of Gerard Depardieu or the
chin of Kirk Douglas, might be particularly useful. Single features and their micro-
configuration are also of great importance in social interaction. For example, the
muscles around the eyes reveal the secret of true or false laughing (Ekman et al 1972)
and can give us a hint about the emotional involvement and the state of health of a
person (Reis and Zaidel 2001).
The eyes and the mouth play prominent roles for face recognition as well. For instance,
owing to the high contrast between the white sclera and the black pupils, and their
symmetric positioning, eyes are ideal indicators for both the presence of a face and the
current alignment of this face. Therefore, eyes can operate as an `artificial horizon'
which facilitates the alignment of the face. This property of the eyes might be partic-
ularly advantageous for recognition of the whole face, because a valid alignment
method helps to compare the visual pattern with a standardised representation and to
quickly locate less dominant features. Similar methods are commonly used by face-
recognition machines (Huang et al 1998; Scassellati 1998). Moreover, the advantage
of a simple symmetry detector is that it does not require knowledge of the shape of
the object. Nevertheless, such a device needs valid anchor points like the eye-to-eye
axis or the mouth ^eyes triangle. These arguments support the idea of Rakover (1998)
and Rakover and Teucher (1997), who suggested that featural information is the most
important class of information for face recognition, which probably should be analysed
very quickly. Other findings suggest that piecemeal-feature or part-based processing
1118 C-C Carbon, H Leder
also plays an important role in face recognition (Bartlett et al 2003; Biederman and
Bar 1999). Furthermore, Leder et al (2001) demonstrated that even eye-distance, a
relational configuration, is processed quite locally and independently of the context.
Additionally, Macho and Leder (1998) showed in a forced-choice similarity decision
task that facial features are processed in a noninteractive manner. In accordance with
all these findings, it would not be surprising if face processing somehow started at
the level of individual elements (Parks et al 1985).
When faces are presented upside down, some information seems to be particularly
disrupted. Leder and Bruce (1998) for example, have shown that configurally distinctive
faces were particularly affected by inversion, but locallydistinctive faces were not.Tanaka
and Farah (1993) found that holistic processing also is somehow disrupted in upside-
down faces. The Thatcher illusion is based on a similar dissociation: when thatcherised
faces are shown in upright orientation they appear grotesque, but, when they are
turned upside down, this grotesqueness disappears and they look normal (Bartlett and
Searcy 1993). One prominent explanation is that the processing of configural infor-
mation is disrupted in inverted faces. However, Rakover (1999) recently demonstrated
that the configurational hypothesis is not adequate in explaining the Thatcher illusion.
Rakover (1999) and Rakover and Teucher (1997) demonstrated that the processing
of individual features is also disrupted by inversion. Another explanation for the loss of
holistic information was given by Rock (1974), who claimed that the mental rotation
of disorientated complex figures will overtax the cognitive apparatus. Since mental rota-
tion is a time-consuming process (Jolicoeur 1985; Shepard and Metzler 1971), dissociate
rotation of inner facial features and outer facial features seems to be ideal to test specific
processing hypotheses.
1.1 The present study
In order to separate different kinds of facial information and to investigate their impor-
tance at different time stages in the present study, we used thatcherised faces (Thompson
1980) in a speeded identification task with limited presentation times (PTs). In experi-
ment 1 and experiment 3, inverted normal (original) and thatcherised (Thatcher) faces
were used. For inverted Thatcher faces, the eyes and the mouth region are correctly
oriented with reference to the viewer's position. However, the whole Gestalt of a Thatcher
face is not coherent. On the other hand, normal upside-down faces show a coherent
Gestalt, but the cardinal local features (eyes and mouth) are inverted with reference
to the viewer's position. Thus, by using normal (original) and Thatcher faces, featural
and holistic information can be dissociated. If we assume that the early processing of
(local) features is beneficial for the identification of the face, then inverted Thatcher
faces should be processed faster than their original counterparts, as no mental rotation
of the cardinal features
ö
the eyes and the mouth
ö
is required. On the other hand,
if holistic processes are indeed beneficial for face recognition, then original faces have
to be identified faster than Thatcher faces owing to the holistic overall coherence of
the originals.
In order to test how featural and holistic information processing changes over
time within the first 200 ms, the stimulus presentation was limited in different levels
with a visual mask. If featural information is beneficially processed at a very early
processing stage, a Thatcher advantage effect at short PTs is assumed. Alternatively,
if the processing of features comes into play later, then there should be an advantage
only at a later time. In all the studies presented here, only highly familiar faces were
used and processing speed was measured by analysing reaction times. Moreover, sensi-
tivity was measured by calculating A
0
.
In experiment 2, upright faces were used in a design similar to that in experiment 1
but, owing to the nature of the stimuli, the presentation times were much shorter.
Early processing of faces 1119
Temporal differences in the processing of upright and inverted faces do not warrant the
combination of all conditions in one experiment. Experiment 1 and experiment 2 together
reveal different processing times for upright and inverted faces. Experiment 2 provides a
direct test of whether holistic information is available earlier in upright faces. In experi-
ment 3, not only whole faces (
FULL
faces), but also inner parts of faces (
IN
faces),
outer parts (
OUT
faces), and faces rotated by 458(
R45
faces) were used. By presenting
IN
faces, we tested whether the processing of facial features needs contextual informa-
tion or whether both kinds of information can be processed separately. With
OUT
faces, similar conclusions can be drawn for contextual information and their dependence
from inner local features.
R45
faces at short presentation times were used to test the
mental-rotation hypothesis as an explanation of advantageously processed Thatcher faces.
2 Experiment 1
In experiment 1, the recognition of inverted thatcherised faces at very short presentation
times was used to test whether early processing of facial features is beneficial for the
whole-face recognition process.
2.1 Method
2.1.1 Subjects. Thirty students took part in the experiment. All participants were under-
graduate students (twenty-three women, seven men) of the Freie Universita
«tBerlin,
who were given a credit to fulfil course requirements. The mean age was 24.6 years
(with a range from 19 to 45 years). All participants had normal or corrected-to-normal
vision abilities. The number of thirty subjects was planned a priori to allow us to test
several null hypotheses with an acceptable b-failure of 0.15, which is 3:1compared
to a common aof 0.05 [see compromise strategy for power calculation in Erdfelder
et al (1996)]. For all computations, a size effect f
2
was fixed to 0.35, which is a large
effect according to the convention of Cohen (1988). Given these parameters, the power
(1ÿb) for the main effects and the main interaction (both df 1, 29) was 0.88.
2.1.2 Apparatus and stimuli. The material was constructed from the frontal photographs
of nine female celebrities,
(1)
including the face from the top of the hair to the bottom of
the chin. The celebrities were highly familiar to the participants. To exclude artifacts
of colourisation of the pictures, all pictures were transformed into a uniformly high-
colour format (2
16
colours) with 72 pixels per inch, fitting in a graphic window size of
2206220 pixels.
Two different stimulus versions (class) of the famous faces were used. On the one
hand, there was a class of original faces (original), which consisted of unmanipulated
pictures of the celebrities. On the other hand, there was a class consisting of thatcher-
ised faces (Thatcher) of the same celebrities. In Thatcher faces, the areas of the eyes
and the mouth were turned by 1808. Furthermore, the resulting edges of these areas
were smoothed by the image-editing software, Adobe Photoshop 4.0, to remove graph-
ical inconsistencies and high degrees of salience in the pictures (as in Leder et al
2001). An example of a pair of a Thatcher and an original version is given in figure 1.
2.1.3 Procedure. The experiment was conducted on an Apple iMac 350 with an integrated
15-inch CRT screen. The resolution of the monitor was 10246768 pixels with a 75 Hz
refresh rate, resulting in an averaged size of face of 6.0 cm66.0 cm; subjects sat about
60 cm in front of the screen, resulting in a corresponding visual angle of 5.7 deg65.7 deg.
The luminance of the screen was 220 cd m
ÿ2
. The experiment was controlled by the
computer program PsyScope PPC 1.25 (Cohen et al 1993), which allows the presentation
(1)
Julia Roberts (actress), Claudia Schiffer (model), Lady Diana (royal), Marilyn Monroe (actress),
Cindy Crawford (supermodel),Verona Feldbusch (national TV star), Cameron Diaz, Gwyneth Paltrow,
and Pamela Anderson (actresses).
1120 C-C Carbon, H Leder
of stimuli within one CRT refresh cycle. A CMU ButtonBox registered the subject's
responses with a time measurement accuracy of 1 ms.
The experiment consisted of two phases, a familiarisation phase and a test phase.
In the familiarisation phase, all original pictures of the celebrities were presented upright
on the screen and the subjects were asked to name all faces. Each correctly named face
was then faded out, leaving only the unknown faces on the screen. Only highly familiar
pictures that were spontaneously named were included in the following statistical analysis.
After this initial familiarisation phase, the test phase began. Each trial started with the
question: ``Does the following picture show an original facial picture of hforename and
surname of one of the nine celebrities i?''All names belonged to the set of famous faces.
(2)
After this initial question (2000 ms), there was a 400 ms blank screen followed by
the target, which was the inverted picture of one of the nine celebrities, either in an
unmanipulated (original) or a thatcherised (Thatcher) version. The participants had
to answer as fast and accurately as possible whether the answer to the introductory
question was ``Yes'' or ``No''. The keys belonging to the answers were alternated over
the subjects. In 50% of the cases, the name in the question and the following face
were compatible, ie they belonged to the same person.
Two presentation times (PTs) were used, 26 ms (short PT) and 200 ms (long PT).
These values are consistent with the refresh rate of the CRT monitor used (possible
PTs were multiples of 1000/75 ms 13:33 ms). The face was then followed by a
200 ms random-dotted visual mask. After a response key was pushed, the next trial
started automatically. All subjects were tested individually. At the beginning, the
participants ran 3 practice trials which were not included in further analyses. Then
a total of 72 test-trials followed [26(Compatibility: same/different)62 (Class: original/
Thatcher)62 (PT)69 (Celebrities)].
It is important to note that the aim of the requested task was to recognise the
original face. The participants were explicitly instructed to answer only with ``Yes'' when
they were sure that it was not only the compatible face but also an unaltered face.
The specific kind of question used here enabled us to test whether Thatcher faces were
detected as unusual. However, the nature of the Thatcher manipulation (Thompson
1980) predicts that participants in most trials might recognise thatcherised faces as
normal. Thus, it was expected that participants would notice any oddness in the thatcher-
ised faces only rarely. The whole procedure, including instructions and a post-experimental
(a) (b)
Figure 1. Example of an original (a) and a Thatcher face (b) used as stimuli in experiment 1 and
experiment 3
ö
here Lady Diana. In experiment 2, upright versions of the same material were used.
(2)
The instructions and questions during the experiment were given in German.
Early processing of faces 1121
interview, lasted about 25 min. The interviewer asked participants whether they had
detected any anomalies in the stimuli.
2.2 Results and discussion
The participants reported that they did not notice any oddness for the presented stimuli.
For all the following analyses, only familiar faces were included. 93.9% of all faces
had been classified as familiar at the familiarisation phase at the beginning of the
experiment. The average reaction time was 1042.2 ms (SD 268:5ms).
Furthermore, for all analyses, only `same' pairs were used to which the participants
responded with ``Yes''. Yes ^same trials included responses to original faces as well as
to Thatcher faces, and were those where original faces had been correctly identified
as originals and Thatcher faces had been falsely identified as originals. Correct rejections
(responding with ``No'' to different trials) were not included because such responses are
rather problematic within this paradigm. These responses include correct rejections of
different trials as well as rejections of Thatcher faces, which were identified as thatcher-
ised. A rejection of a Thatcher face identified as thatcherised seems to be a rather
different cognitive task than a rejection of non-same identities. Therefore, it is problem-
atic to compute both measures for one single variable. However, this is not the case
with yes^ same trials, where Thatcher faces were not identified as being thatcherised but
as undistorted ones.
In order to test the ability to detect Thatcher faces within the given narrow time
span, the sensitivity measure A
0
was calculated for both classes and both PTs (see
table 1). The A
0
data were submitted to a two-way repeated-measures
ANOVA
with
Class (original versus Thatcher) and PT (short: 26 ms versus long: 200 ms) as within
factors. The factor Class (F
129
4:63,p50:05;Z
2
p
0:138) as well as the factor PT
(F
129
7:68,p50:01;Z
2
p
0:209) were significant. However, as table 1 reveals, the
overall A
0
for Thatcher faces is also very high (0.919); thus it can be concluded that
the participants hardly noticed anything odd in the Thatcher conditions. Moreover, none
of the subjects reported to have seen any odd qualities in the Thatcher faces when
queried in a post-experimental interview. In line with this finding, Lewis and Johnston
(1997) demonstrated that inverted Thatcher faces require a very long time to be identified
as Thatcher faces in a matching task.
The main aim of experiment 1 was to investigate the early time course of recognising
faces. In order to test the specific processing models, the RT of yes ^same trials had to
be analysed. Table 2 (section `experiment 1') shows the RTs for yes ^same targets and
the Thatcher advantage effect (TAE). The TAE is the difference between the RTs for
identifying original faces and Thatcher faces. Thus, as positive values, it shows an RT
advantage of identifying Thatcher faces compared with original ones. In order to
exclude RT outliers from the analyses, the RTs were limited in the following way. First,
the RTs were limited to a static criterion of being longer than 300 ms and shorter
,
,
Table 1. A
0
scores of experiment 1 for both face classes (original versus Thatcher) and both PTs
(long versus short).
PT A
0
Yes ± same rate
original Thatcher original Thatcher
Experiment 1: Inverted faces
Short (26 ms) 0.925 0.904 0.822 0.739
Long (200 ms) 0.960 0.934 0.905 0.769
Experiment 2: Upright faces
Short (26 ms) 0.970 0.866 0.927 0.528
Long (39 ms) 0.964 0.857 0.935 0.503
1122 C-C Carbon, H Leder
than 3000 ms. Second, the RTs were limited to a dynamic criterion of being within the
RT borders of 4SDs around the individual average of RTs (see Snodgrass et al 1985).
The time course of early face processing was tested by a repeated measures
ANOVA
with Class (original versus Thatcher) and PT (short: 26 ms versus long: 200 ms)
as within factors. The dependent variable was the RT for yes ^same trials.
There was no main effect of Class (F
128
51;ns)
(3)
and PT (F
128
2:66;ns).
This means that there was no general difference between original and Thatcher faces
or between short and long PTs. Nevertheless, an interaction between Class and PT
(F
128
8:83,p50:01;Z
2
p
0:240) revealed that the factor Class had differential influence
at different PTs.
As illustrated in figure 2, the RT advantage for identifying Thatcher faces under the
short PT condition was reversed for the long PT condition.
Moreover, the RT advantage for Thatcher faces under PT 26 ms was found to
be significant by a one-tailed t-test (t
29
1:87,p50:05). As shown in table 2, this
TAE was substantially large (45.7 ms). However, this RT advantage for the short PT
changed into a disadvantage for Thatcher faces as compared to original faces when the
stimuli were shown for a longer period of 200 ms (ÿ85:0ms). The negative TAE was
also found to be significant (t
28
2:08,p50:05).
, ,
,
Table 2. RTs of experiment 1 (inverted faces), experiment 2 (upright faces), and experiment 3
(
FULL
faces,
R45
faces) for both face classes (original versus Thatcher) and both PTs (long versus
short). The RTs were limited to the RT range of 4 SDs around the individual subject's RT average.
PT RT (yes ± same trials)=ms SD=ms Thatcher
original Thatcher original Thatcher advantage
effect (TAE)
Experiment 1: Inverted faces
Short (26 ms) 1097.4 1051.6 231.4 203.2 45.7
Long (200 ms) 967.5 1052.5 287.2 332.6 ÿ85.0
Experiment 2: Upright faces
Short (26 ms) 1045.8 1265.1 243.3 265.0 ÿ219.3
Long (39 ms) 1003.4 1189.6 279.6 485.9 ÿ186.2
Experiment 3:
FULL
faces
Short (26 ms) 1022.4 955.3 250.6 237.6 67.1
Long (200 ms) 949.6 967.8 215.8 242.9 ÿ18.1
Experiment 3:
R45
faces
Short (26 ms) 902.6 868.6 310.6 194.5 34.0
Long (200 ms) 803.5 817.7 186.6 233.6 ÿ14.2
(3)
Due to some missing data of ``Yes'' answers to same pairs, not all RT data cells were occupied,
so this analysis underwent a reduction of dfs from 29 to 28.
1150
1100
1050
1000
950
900
RT (yes ± same)=ms
Inverted original face
Inverted Thatcher face
26 ms 200 ms
Short PT Long PT
Figure 2. RTs (yes ^ same trials) of experiment 1.
Error bars show SDs; asterisks indicate signif-
icant differences between conditions.
Early processing of faces 1123
To ensure that this RT effect was not an artifact of using a specific RT-outlier
criterion (cf Judd and McClelland 1989; Snodgrass et al 1985), cross checks with two
alternative RT measures were run. With the same design as above, an ANOVA with
the median as average measure revealed the same results with the only significant
effect of the interaction of Class6PT (F
128
5:33,p50:05;Z
2
p
0:189) as well as an
ANOVA
with no RT-outlier criterion (F
128
6:96,p50:02;Z
2
p
0:199). Again, the RT
results show that the lack of a main effect of Class covers up the underlying change
of important face identification strategies when split up in different PTs.
The only difference between Thatcher faces and original faces is the area around
the eyes and the mouth. Therefore, the reason for the change from a positive TAE
value to negative must be the specific alteration in the face. The experimental strength
of the Thatcher task is that variations of the stimuli are attained exclusively through
the rotation, by 1808, of the cardinal facial features of the eyes and the mouth. Nothing
else is changed. Moreover, even the recognition performance is nearly the same in all
conditions.What might be the reason for Thatcher faces being recognised faster at shorter
PTs than the originals?
The perceptual result of the Thatcher manipulation is a somewhat paradoxical
configuration. For an inverted Thatcher face, the rotated features (eyes and mouth) are
in an upright orientation. However, our face expertise is mainly limited to upright features
and faces (Schwaninger et al 2003). Through years of practice, the face-recognition
system becomes more specialised, but at the same time more constrained to process-
ing the upright orientation, probably because of the large amount of faces seen in upright
orientation. Specifically for Thatcher faces, this correct orientation comes with a result-
ing incoherence of the upright local features with the rest of inverted areas of the face.
Owing to a significant difference for Class under the short PT, this specific rotation
must be advantageous for the identification of (inverted) faces. Human face identifi-
cation is optimally suited for upright faces, but for inverted Thatcher faces only the
manipulated local features are recognised optimally. A TAE for briefly presented faces
indicates that, within a short PT, identification of local features is advantageous for
the recognition of the face. These results support the idea of early processing of local
features. The disadvantage of an incoherent facial outlook does not seem to be an
impediment, which indicates that for a very short PT, holistic processing is less impor-
tant than featural processing. Rather, the just-in-position local features need no further
rotation process
ö
and this saves time! For the longer PT, this relation is reversed.
The processing of original faces is faster than the processing of Thatcher faces. Thus,
if there is enough time to process holistic information of a coherent Gestalt, then this
kind of information is more efficient than featural information.
This logic is based on the findings on mental rotation. It has often been demon-
strated that RTs linearly increase with increasing rotation of objects from their familiar
viewpoint (Cooper 1976; Cooper and Shepard 1973; Jolicoeur 1985; Shepard and Metzler
1971; Tarr and Bu
«lthoff 1995). Interestingly, Tarr et al (1998), who studied the recog-
nition of single geons from Biederman and Gerhardstein's (1993) experiment 4 with
line drawings, found that rotation rates for such stimuli ranged from approximately
7508s
ÿ1
for a naming task to 36008s
ÿ1
for a match-to-sample task with a go/no-go
response. This corresponds to a total time of 50 ^240 ms for a full 1808rotation, which
is approximately within the range of the TAE demonstrated above (cf table 2). This
projection, of course, must not be taken literally. From a view-based perspective, a
rotation of 1808would be expected to produce enormous rotation costs relative to
slight rotation angles. Biederman et al (1999) found the opposite: mirror reflections
incur no cost in priming (cf Biederman and Cooper 1991), or less effort than angles
of about 908for some other tasks (Valentine and Bruce 1988, figure 5).
,
,
1124 C-C Carbon, H Leder
Nevertheless, the advantage of early local featural processing does not rule out
the possibility that at the same time contextual featural processes may already be in
progress, for instance the processing of the outline given by the hair and the chin.
Indications for the involvement of such processing were found in the post-experimental
interviews with many participants, who reported that they sometimes had only seen
outlines or contours of some faces. These results are in accordance with Phillips (1979),
who found that inversion affects recognition of the internal features of the face (eyes,
nose, mouth) more than recognition of the external features (hair, chin). Using a match-
ing task,Young et al (1985, experiment 2) found that external-feature matches were much
faster than internal-feature matches. Moreover, it was proposed that `global configura-
tions' are crucial in activating stored object representations (Boucart et al 1995).
Experiment 1 cannot rule out a contextual feature precedence, because only a further
reduction of PT could have the power to reveal the nature of this supposed outline
identification process. Another possibility would be to test the RT data for faces exclu-
sively with contextual information in comparison to both normal faces and faces
without any context information. This is done in experiment 3. Therefore, for experi-
ment 1, it remains unsolved whether contextual featural and local featural processes
occur simultaneously, or whether one of the processes precedes the other. Nevertheless,
it was shown that local feature identification processing is important at a very short
PT of only 26 ms. Furthermore, the benefit of early local feature analysis seems to
be greater than the cost of incoherence between the local parts and the disoriented
whole, presumably because the different processing levels (local and contextual) are
not yet bound together. This is an indication that holistic processing, in which it is not
details that are parsed but the whole (coherent) Gestalt, is not available within such
restricted time resources.
However, the RT results for the original faces indicate that the coherent Gestalt
of a face was beneficial for recognition when more time resources were available.
An expansion of PT from 26 ms to 200 ms reduced the RT of identifying original
faces apparently by 129.8 ms (one-tailed t-test with t
29
3:43,p50:001). Nevertheless,
Thatcher faces seem to be processed in a comparable way in the short PT and the
long PT condition, which is indicated by nearly identical RTs at both PTs (difference:
0.9 ms; t
28
51; ns). Thus, given more time resources the early identification of local
features still seems to be important, but holistic processes seem to be even more influ-
ential. Such holistic processes are most probably template-like matching routines that
compare the face with stored face representations that are organised holistically rather
than featurally.
For the Thatcher faces used in this experiment, it is, of course, not clear whether
the mouth and/or the eyes are responsible for the TAE, because both areas were always
changed concurrently. From the arguments presented above, the eyes region seems to
be the more prominent candidate, but also the upright mouth, with its high physical
distinctiveness and its high amount of meaningful social information (Parks et al 1985),
seems plausible. However, the goal of experiment 1 was not to analyse this in particular,
but to demonstrate the existence of early local processing in general.
Our object in experiment 2 was to investigate whether the early time course of
face processing is different when faces are presented upright and, therefore, to compare
the effects of upright and inverted faces.
3 Experiment 2
The aim of experiment 2 was to provide a direct comparison of the early processing
of inverted and upright faces. We investigated whether upright Thatcher faces are also
identified as odd faces, even in a very early stage of processing, or whether this identi-
fication performance is only mediated through later processes. This allows a better
Early processing of faces 1125
understanding of whether binding of internal (local featural) and external (contextual
featural) structures is possible within the first milliseconds of face processing.
In view of our expertise with upright faces, we predicted that upright Thatcher faces
will be easily recognised as distorted (Schwaninger et al 2003). This is tested by two
analyses. On the one hand, the discrimination performance (A
0
) of Thatcher faces
and original faces is investigated. According to Thompson (1980), upright Thatcher
faces should be detected very accurately as being odd, even after a very brief presenta-
tion. Moreover, upright Thatcher faces are more difficult to identify, owing to their
grotesqueness and the incoherence of the local features and the contextual information.
This should result in longer RTs compared with original faces.
3.1 Method
3.1.1 Subjects. Thirty undergraduate students (twenty female, ten male) of the Freie
Universita
«t Berlin participated. They were given a credit to fulfil course requirements.
Their mean age was 26.1 years (ranging from 19 to 39 years). None of the subjects had
taken part in experiment 1.
3.1.2 Apparatus and stimuli. The same stimuli as in experiment 1 were used, but were
presented in an upright orientation.
3.1.3 Procedure. Pre-studies revealed that even under short PTs, subjects were able to
notice the inconsistencies of upright Thatcher faces. Therefore, the long PT condition
of experiment 1 was reduced from 200 ms to 39 ms in order to prevent floor effects of
the yes ^ same rate of thatcherised faces. The other procedural parameters were the same
as in experiment 1.
3.2 Results and discussion
As in experiment 1, only familiar faces were included in the subsequent analyses. 91.8%
of all faces were recognised as being familiar. The average reaction time was 1124.3 ms
(SD 344:5 ms). The RT data of yes ^ same pairs were investigated in the following
tests (see table 2) with the same outlier criterion as in experiment 1. RT data were
submitted to a repeated-measures
ANOVA
with two within factors: Class (original versus
Thatcher) and PT (short: 26 ms versus long: 39 ms). The significant main effect of Class
(F
127
14:07,p50:005;Z
2
p
0:343) revealed a substantial difference between RTs of
Thatcher and original faces of 202.7 ms (1227.4 ms versus 1024.6 ms, respectively).
The data sampled in the yes ^ same measure include cases in which original faces
were correctly identified as being of a famous person plus cases in which Thatcher
faces were misinterpreted as being normal originals. Consequently, the values cannot
simply be classified as being `correct' because of the specific interrogative form. It
is important to note that RT data for thatcherised yes^ same trials were the RTs of
undetected Thatcher faces. It seems that the participants were not just processing the
context of the faces which were the same in both versions. This can be ruled out
because in this case the identification speed would have been the same as the identi-
fication speed for original faces. Rather, there was an averaged difference of 202.7 ms
between Thatcher faces and original faces. Thus, even for the misclassified Thatcher
faces that were found not to be original faces, the coherence of the whole facial
Gestalt had been processed. Indication for such holistic processing was not found in
the RT data of the short PT condition of experiment 1, where inverted faces were
used. It seems that the recognition of briefly presented inverted faces is primarily
based on local featural processing. Moreover, a parallel ongoing identification of the
outline of the face had been assumed for experiment 1. For the short PT condition
there was no sign of an integration of these two different processes. For upright faces,
this seems to be quite different. Here, the inverted eyes and mouth region interfered
with the processing of the whole.
,
1126 C-C Carbon, H Leder
Thus, it has to be assumed that higher-order and more-integrative early processing
is involved in the face recognition of briefly presented upright faces. In contrast,
inverted faces are processed first and foremost locally. Similar results have been found
in several studies of orientation sensitive face-recognition effects (Leder et al 2001;
Mondloch et al 2002; Robbins and McKone 2003). In experiment 3, the role of con-
textual feature processing in relation to local-feature and holistic processing was further
analysed.
4 Experiment 3
Experiment 3 was concerned with three general questions. First, we aimed to replicate
the findings of experiment 1 with an alternative interrogative sentence at the beginning
of each trial, using the same material as in experiment 1 (condition:
FULL
). Second,
to further analyse the influence and importance of the processing of contextual
structures, two additional stimulus conditions (
IN
and
OUT
) were realised. Third, the
mental-rotation hypothesis, propagated as the cause of the TAE, was directly addressed
by an additional stimulus condition called
R45
, in which stimuli were presented in a
458orientation.
In the
IN
condition, the outline of the face was cut from the face, only the inner
parts of the faces were presented. This condition will reveal whether the processing of
local features can also be advantageous for face recognition without the processing
of contextual structures. In this case, the TAE should even be increased, because the
omission of outlines emphasises the distinctiveness and processing of the inner parts
of the face (Bruce et al 1994; Leder and Bruce 1998). Alternatively, if the separate
processing of local features is not possible without the recognition of contextual struc-
tures, any TAE effect should vanish and the identification rate of
IN
faces should
decrease.
In the
OUT
condition, only outlines of faces were presented. Contextual structures,
like the hair region, are coarse and possess a relatively low informational content.
Therefore, they sometimes have been predicted to be processed faster than more detailed
structures which contain more information (Hughes et al 1984; Paquet and Merikle 1984).
However, it has to be analysed whether the processing of exclusive contextual informa-
tion is also sufficient to recognise a face within the given time constraints.
Moreover, in experiment 3 we tested whether mental rotation was a valid explana-
tion for the TAE in experiment 1. In the discussion of experiment 1, we assumed that
the RT advantage for the thatcherised faces might be caused by beneficial early local-
feature analyses. If the TAE is based on the additional mental rotation of the cardinal
local features of original faces compared to those of Thatcher faces, then the RT
advantage of Thatcher faces should be decreased by rotating the stimulus material
by 458. In this case, according to the mental-rotation hypothesis (Shepard and Metzler
1971), not only the local features of original faces but also those of Thatcher faces
have to be rotated mentally. Therefore, we expect an overall decrease of TAE.
4.1 Method
4.1.1 Subjects. Participants were thirty undergraduate students (twenty-five female, five
male) of the Freie Universita
«t Berlin, who were given credit to fulfil course require-
ments. Mean age was 25.9 years (ranging from 19 to 42 years). None of the subjects had
taken part in experiment 1 or experiment 2.
4.1.2 Apparatus and stimuli. The material was based on the stimuli of experiment 1, in
which original faces as well Thatcher faces were used in an inverted orientation. There
were four different conditions used in experiment 3. Figure 3 and the following description
give an overview of this material.
Early processing of faces 1127
The four different face conditions were tested in four different succeeding test
phases. The basic material came from experiment 1 and was used in the first block as
the
FULL
condition. For the
IN
condition, only the inner parts of the faces were present.
This was achieved with a standardised oval, which overlays the
FULL
faces. The
advantage of using standardised ovals against the commonly used method of sharply
cutting the hair is that there is then no information available about the form and
Gestalt of the contours and the hairstyle (cf Liu and Chaudhuri 1998). In the
OUT
condition, just the opposite of the
IN
manipulation was realised. Here, only the parts
excluded by the
IN
condition were apparent. Additionally, in the
R45
condition the
basic faces of the
FULL
versions were presented in a 458-rotated fashion. Every block
consisted of 3 practice trials and of 72 test-trials as in experiment 1 and experiment 2
[26(Compatibility: same/different)62(Class)62 (PT)69 (Celebrities)].
4.1.3 Procedure. The time course of each trial was the same as in experiment 1. The
experiment consisted of four different blocks (referred to henceforth as tasks) separated
by short breaks, during which specific instructions about the nature of the stimuli
were given. The first block (block 1:
FULL
) dealt with full faces, the same as in experi-
ment 1. Then followed a block with
IN
faces (block 2:
IN
), after that came a block with
OUT
faces (block 3:
OUT
), and last a block with
R45
faces was presented (block 4:
R45
). Only the
OUT
condition deviated from the common logic of the other blocks.
Because of the omission of the inner features in
OUT
faces, the stimuli could not
differbetween Thatcher and original faces. Thus,
OUT
faces did not belong to a special
face Class. Each block contained the same number of trials: three preceding practice
trials were followed by 72 test trials. The whole experiment consisted of 4672 288
total test trials and lasted about 45 min. Afterwards, the participants were interviewed
about their perceptual experiences during the experiment.
In experiment 1 and experiment 2 participants were instructed to react to original
faces and Thatcher faces in a different way, although the faces belong to the same person.
This might have led the participant to use an artificial response strategy. Rather than
recognising faces, participants might have focused on facial manipulations. In order
to test whether the TAE is also found with a more common instruction, an alternative
interrogative form was used in experiment 3. Subjects were asked whether the name
and the succeeding face were compatible (ie the same), while any detected oddity had
to be ignored. This instruction did not allow the determination whether the partici-
pants recognised any odd qualities in the faces. But, as this had already been checked
in experiment 1, the new interrogative form had the advantage of being much more
intuitive, because the percentage correct could be easily calculated. Thus, the results
are more comparable with most empirical work that uses similar interrogative forms.
FULL IN OUT R45
Figure 3. Stimulus material used in experiment 3 (only shown for original faces, not for
Thatcher faces). From left to right: the unmanipulated face from test block 1 (condition
FULL
),
the inner-face version (
IN
) from test block 2, the outer-part version (
OUT
) from test block 3,
and the 458-rotated version (
R45
) from test block 4.
1128 C-C Carbon, H Leder
4.2 Results and discussion
Again, only familiar faces (93.7% of all faces) were included in the subsequent analyses.
To test whether the participants fulfilled the different tasks in an adequate way, the
yes ^same rates were analysed (see table 3). After a PT of only 26 ms, the participants
performed the
FULL
and the
R45
tasks with correct identification rates of above 0.8.
This high performance was not found for the
OUT
task, and totally broke down for
the
IN
face task.
The weak performance of identifying
IN
faces at a very brief PT was found to be
not significantly different from the base rate of 0.5 (t
29
1:89; ns). Therefore, the RT
data of the
IN
face condition could not be evaluated in the following analyses. Never-
theless, this is strong evidence against pure local feature processing at an early stage.
The participants somehow seemed to need a reference to contextual facial structures
to successfully use local feature information within such brief presentation times. How-
ever, contextual information on its own at this time stage also seemed insufficient to
identify faces accurately. This can be seen in the yes^ same rate for
OUT
faces, which
was only medium high (72.7%). Nevertheless, the recognition of
OUT
faces was very
fast (at short PT: 961.3 ms; at long PT: 863.3 ms). In sum, the data for
OUT
faces
indicate that although contextual structures are successfully recognisable, even at such
an early time stage, the processing of pure contextual information is not very reliable.
To test specific processing hypotheses, the RT data of the single tasks were further
analysed (see table 2). However, these excluded the
IN
face condition owing to its
weak identification rates at the chance level. As in all preceding experiments, the RT
data were limited as already described for experiment 1.
One of the additional goals of experiment 3 was to test whether the TAE, demon-
strated in experiment 1, also occurred with a different instruction. A repeated-measures
two-way
ANOVA
was conducted with the within-subjects factors Class (original versus
Thatcher) and PT (short: 26 ms versus long: 200 ms), and with RT data of
FULL
faces
as dependent variables. The only significant effect was the interaction between Class
and PT (F
129
6:35,p50:02;Z
2
p
0:180), which showed the same pattern as in
experiment 1 (see figure 4).
A deeper analysis of the TAE indeed revealed a significant difference of 67.1 ms
between original condition and Thatcher condition under the short PT for
FULL
faces
(one-tailed t
29
2:54,p50:01).
In experiments 1 and 2, with the specific interrogative form used, only yes ^ same
trials were analysed. With the question used in experiment 3, it was plausible to analyse
RTs for correct trials. A two-way repeated-measures
ANOVA
with Class and PT as
within-subjects factors revealed a pattern of results similar to the
ANOVA
with RTs
of yes^ same trials. Again, the only significant effect was the interaction between Class
and PT (F
129
6:32,p50:02;Z
2
p
0:179). Beside this interaction, the TAE was again
significant (t
29
1:96,p50:05), with a value of 39.0 ms. Thus, with an alternative
instruction, experiment 3 replicated a TAE.
,
,
Table 3. Yes ^ same rates of experiment 3 for each face-stimulus task. The distinction between
Thatcher and original versions was only available for
FULL
,
IN
, and
R45
faces owing to the
omission of the inner facial region in the
OUT
version.
PT
FULL IN R45 OUT
original Thatcher original Thatcher original Thatcher
Short (26 ms) 0.805 0.772 0.587 0.528 0.862 0.846 0.727
Long (200 ms) 0.947 0.906 0.869 0.746 0.978 0.924 0.933
Early processing of faces 1129
TheRTdatafor
R45
faces were analysed in order to test the mental-rotation
hypothesis as an explanation for the TAE. For inverted Thatcher faces, the local fea-
tures
ö
eyes and mouth
ö
do not have to be rotated mentally because they are already
in an upright orientation. Therefore, a reduction in TAE was predicted when faces
deviated by 458from full inversion in condition
R45
. To probe this hypothesis, the
TAE for short PTs was calculated for
FULL
as well as for
R45
faces by subtracting
the RT data of thatcherised faces from those for original faces. The TAE was indeed
reduced and turned out to be numerically negative. This is in accordance with the
mental-rotation hypothesis. Although this decrease of TAE does not constitute direct
evidence for the early local-feature-analysis hypothesis, it indicates, in combination
with the RT data discussed above, that local features are processed advantageously, yet
at a very early processing stage.
However, the fast identification of local features during brief presentation seems to
need contextual facial structures, probably as a perceptual anchor. In the experimental
situation with a simple yes/no task as used here, it was even possible that participants
sometimes recognised faces relatively accurately and quickly solely on the basis of the
recognition of the outer parts. This is revealed by the data for
OUT
faces.
We interpret these findings in the following way. On the one hand, contextual
structures seem to be important and effective for simple face-recognition tasks. On the
other hand, local feature analysis is also available very early on in face processing.
Using inverted faces for which feature processing was thought to be particularly impor-
tant (Leder and Bruce 2000; Rakover 2002), we found that feature processing provides
a processing advantage in terms of RTs. This was found to be especially true when
time resources were very limited. However, identification of local features presumably
requires the presence of contextual cues.
5 General discussion
Three experiments with thatcherised faces (in inverted and upright orientation) revealed
that the processing of local facial features can precede the processing of holistic face
structures. As perceivers did not notice that the local features in inverted versions
were in the usual upright position, it was shown how the use of thatcherised faces can
dissociate featural and holistic processing.
1050
1000
950
900
850
800
750
RT (yes ± same)=ms
Original
Thatcher
FULL faces R45 faces
26 ms 200 ms 26 ms 200 ms
Short PT Long PT Short PT Long PT
(a) (b)
Figure 4. RTs (yes ^same trials) of experiment 3 for (a)
FULL
faces and (b)
R45
faces. Error bars
show SEs; asterisks indicate significant differences between conditions.
1130 C-C Carbon, H Leder
Experiment 1 revealed that inverted thatcherised faces (Thatcher faces) presented
for only 26 ms were recognised faster than inverted normal faces (original faces). This
TAE is due to beneficial early processing of local features. Experiment 1 also demon-
strated that holistic face processes seem to be dominant when more time resources
are available (realised by a presentation time of 200 ms).
In experiment 2, thatcherisation in upright orientation was detected after a presen-
tation of only 26 ms. Early holistic face processing was assumed to be the cause of this
high performance.
In experiment 3, the results of early local feature processing found in experiment 1
were further investigated. In the
FULL
condition, the findings of experiment 1 were
replicated with an alternative interrogative form but with identical procedure and
material to experiment 1. Again, a significant TAE was found. Moreover, by presenting
gross outer features (hair, chin, etc) only (
OUT
condition), a strong influence of con-
textual information for the early processing of faces was revealed. The recognition of
these features was found to be very fast and still accurate.
(4)
Thus, for simple recogni-
tion tasks the contextual features seem to be sufficient to recognise famous faces.
Pure contextual structures were sufficient for simple face recognition. However,
additional local feature analyses were needed for further recognition processing. This
was the case in the
FULL
condition. Therefore, the assumption of a general contextual
precedence was not supported, but was refined by a non-holistic processing mode in
which contextual and local features presumably were processed separately. Thus, the
results support an interaction between task and type of stimuli in respect of precedence
of type of processing. These data are also compatible with the concept of Rakover's
(2002) ``task-information approach''. However, as we only varied the length of presenta-
tion time here, we favour an explanation on the grounds of microgenetic processing
with differential meaning of facial information over time.
Furthermore, the results of the 458rotation conditions provided evidence that mental
rotation is a valid explanation for the TAE.
The finding that local feature analyses were beneficial under very restricted presen-
tation times are in accordance with the findings of Cooper and Biederman (1993). In a
yes ^ same decision task they found that feature changing had a greater salience over
metric, ie configural, properties (see also Biederman et al 1999). Moreover, in our
study there was not only evidence of a general precedence of featural-to-holistic or
holistic-to-featural information, but also a time-dependent importance of both classes
of information. While featural information was effective at an early stage, this advant-
age decreased at a later processing stage. Furthermore, featural information without
surrounding contextual features was not sufficient, as indicated by recognition rates at
chance level in the
IN
conditions of experiment 3.
In the present study, we showed a processing advantage for inverted Thatcher faces.
Inversion is thought to reduce configural processing (Bartlett and Searcy 1993; Leder
and Bruce 2000). Therefore, it might be argued that local feature analyses would be
advantageous a priori in the processing of inverted faces, because recognition had to
be based on the quality of the remaining information. This might be the case to some
degree. However, we were not interested whether local feature analyses are available
in early face processing for the further face recognition, but whether their processing
can be beneficial. This was confirmed in experiment 1 and experiment 3, where Thatcher
faces were recognised faster than original faces. When
IN
and
OUT
conditions were
compared, local feature analysis was indeed an important component of early face pro-
cessing, but not when local information was presented without contextual structures.
(4)
We think that contextual information (hair and chin area) as used here also belong to the class
of facial features (cf Rakover 2002).
Early processing of faces 1131
However, this need for global or contextual information does not imply that the ongoing
processing is holistic in the sense that several kinds of information are integrated into
a coherent representation. Because Thatcher faces were recognised faster than original
faces at short PTs, a holistic or template-like processing mode seems not to be available
at such an early time stage. When the PT was extended to 200 ms, the local-feature
advantage vanished. For experiment 1 and experiment 3, it was argued that under these
circumstances holistic processing would emerge. Although local feature analyses might
still be present, a holistic recognition mode of original faces is even more advanta-
geous. This concept of holistic processing differs from the original formulation by
Tanaka and Farah (1993). In the original view, holistic processing meant that parts are
not represented explicitly. The present studies indicate that in a first stage, contextual
and local feature information are processed separately and later are combined into a
holistic representation.
The supposition that the integration of several information qualities is established
rather late is not new. In Marr's theory of vision (Marr 1982) or the cascade processing
model of Humphreys et al (1988) similar ideas are proposed. Interestingly, Humphreys
and Riddoch (1987) have also demonstrated that clinical cases of visual object agnosia
were unable to combine visual information to complete objects. For these cases, the
essential step for binding several information qualities was apparently not achievable at
all. Furthermore, Brooks et al (1997) have assumed that local as well as holistic types
of processing are each specialised for different face-recognition strategies. According
to Brooks et al, holistic processing is well suited for face-matching tasks, whereas local
processing might be optimal for recognising face details.
The present results revealed different face-processing strategies and their differential
temporal importance depending on the orientation of the faces. Exploiting a specific
property of inverted Thatcher faces to investigate early processes in face recognition,
we have shown how the temporal analysis of the microgenesis of a cognitive process
allows us to identify the different components that are involved. The differential benefit
of recognition processes from featural and holistic information for different time stages
in the recognition of faces might be the basis of the finding that holistic information
is impeded by inversion. Although we showed that holistic information is also benefi-
cially processed for inverted faces, the high importance of local features at an early
time stage seems to be dominant for the further recognition process.
Acknowledgments. This research was supported by a grant to Helmut Leder from the Deutsche
Forschungsgemeinschaft (DGF, Le-1286). The experiments reported here are part of Claus-Christian
Carbon's PhD thesis.We thank all the students for their assistance in collecting the data. Moreover,
we thank two anonymous reviewers for their valuable comments on an earlier version of the
manuscript.
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