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Discrimination and recognition of faces with changed configuration
Adam Sandford1, Markus Bindemann2
1Psychology Department, University of Guelph-Humber, 207 Humber College Blvd., Toronto, ON, M9W 5L7, Canada. adam.sandford@guelphhumber.ca.
Memory & Cognition
|January 16, 2020
Summary
Facial recognition doesn't rely on precise measurements like eye distance, especially for familiar faces. Familiarity, not configuration, drives accurate face recognition, challenging existing theories.
Area of Science:
- Cognitive Psychology
- Neuroscience
- Vision Science
Background:
- Configural theory in psychology posits that metric differences in facial features, like interocular distance, are key to face recognition.
- Previous research primarily used unfamiliar faces, limiting applicability to real-world recognition of familiar individuals.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate if face recognition relies on metric configuration information as suggested by configural theory.
- To examine the role of manipulating interocular distance in both familiar and unfamiliar face recognition.
Main Methods:
- Experiment 1: Observers discriminated between intact and altered facial configurations in pairs.
- Experiment 2: Discrimination and familiarity categorization tasks were performed on individual faces with manipulated configurations.
Main Results:
- Face familiarity influenced the detection of original configurations.
- Recognition accuracy remained high regardless of configuration changes.
- High sensitivity to configuration during discrimination did not correlate with reliance on it for familiar face recognition.
Conclusions:
- Configural theory has limited explanatory power for familiar face recognition.
- Familiarity, rather than precise metric configuration, is a more significant factor in recognizing known individuals.
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