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Updated: Aug 24, 2026

Perceptual and Category Processing of the Uncanny Valley Hypothesis' Dimension of Human Likeness: Some Methodological Issues
Published on: June 3, 2013
Ethnic categorisation of faces is not independent of face identity
Raymond Bruyer1, Stéphanie Leclere, Pascal Quinet
1Cognitive Neuroscience Research Unit (NESC), Department of Psychology, University of Louvain-la-Neuve, Place du Cardinal Mercier 10, B-1348 Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium. raymond.bruyer@psp.ucl.ac.be
Abstract:
Is the extraction of a visually derived semantic code from faces (ethnicity) affected by face identity (familiarity) or not? The traditional view considers that this operation is made independently of face identity, and in parallel with the recognition of identity. However, some recent studies cast doubt on this parallel thesis regarding other visually derived semantic codes, namely: facial expression, facial speech, apparent age, and gender. Twenty-eight Caucasian participants were enrolled in an 'ethnic-decision' task on morphed faces made of an Asiatic source face and a Caucasian source face, in the proportion of 70%-30%. Half of the original faces were previously made familiar by a learning procedure (associating the face, surname, occupation, and city of residence of the person displayed), while the remaining half were unfamiliar. The results showed clearly that ethnic decision was affected by face familiarity. This adds support to the thesis according to which the identification of identity and the extraction of visually derived semantic codes are not made independently from each other and that the 'parallel-route' hypothesis becomes weakly supported.
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