Different spatial-relational information is used to recognise faces and emotional expressions

In a face photo in which the two eyes have been moved up into the forehead region, configural spatial relations are altered more than categorical relations; in a photo in which only one eye is moved up, categorical relations are altered more. Matching the identities of two faces was slower when an unaltered photo was paired with a two-eyes-moved photo than when paired with a one-eye-moved photo, implicating configural relations in face identification. But matching the emotional expressions of the same faces was slower when an unaltered photo was paired with a one-eye-moved photo than when paired with a two-eyes-moved photo, showing that expression recognition uses categorically coded relations. The findings also indicate that changing spatial-relational information affects the perceptual encoding of identities and expressions rather than their memory representations.