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Differences in the coding of spatial relations in face identification and basic-level object recognition
1Department of Psychology, Iowa State University, Ames 50011, USA. ecooper@iastate.edu
Abstract:
The purpose of this investigation was to determine if the relations among the primitives used in face identification and in basic-level object recognition are represented using coordinate or categorical relations. In 2 experiments the authors used photographs of famous people's faces as stimuli in which each face had been altered to have either 1 of its eyes moved up from its normal position or both of its eyes moved up. Participants performed either a face identification task or a basic-level object recognition task with these stimuli. In the face identification task, 1-eye-moved faces were easier to recognize than 2-eyes-moved faces, whereas the basic-level object recognition task showed the opposite pattern of results. Results suggest that face identification involves a coordinate shape representation in which the precise locations of visual primitives are specified, whereas basic-level object recognition uses categorically coded relations.
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