Sustained effects of adaptation on the perception of familiar faces

Figural aftereffects are commonly believed to be transient and to fade away in the course of milliseconds. We tested face aftereffects using familiar faces and found sustained effects lasting up to 1 week. In 3 experiments, participants were first exposed to distorted pictures of famous persons and then had to select the veridical face in a 2-alternative forced choice task. Veridicality aftereffects were found in a direction opposite to the adapting distortion; these effects generalized to other pictures of the same individual and also to pictures of celebrities that had not been shown during adaptation. The findings support hierarchical theories of norm-based face coding and suggest that face adaptation effects have a representational basis. They also point toward multiple timescales in the operation of adaptation mechanisms, thereby providing a link between high-level adaptation and more general aspects of neuro-cognitive plasticity, that is, learning and memory.