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Updated: Nov 18, 2025

A Method to Study Adaptation to Left-Right Reversed Audition
Published on: October 29, 2018
Reversing the Luminance Polarity of Control Faces: Why Are Some Negative Faces Harder to Recognize, but Easier to
1Department of Psychology, University of Essex, Colchester, United Kingdom.
Abstract:
Control stimuli are key for understanding the extent to which face processing relies on holistic processing, and affective evaluation versus the encoding of low-level image properties. Luminance polarity (LP) reversal combined with face inversion is a popular tool for severely disrupting the recognition of face controls. However, recent findings demonstrate visibility-recognition trade-offs for LP-reversed faces, where these face controls sometimes appear more salient despite being harder to recognize. The present report brings together findings from image analysis, simple stimuli, and behavioral data for facial recognition and visibility, in an attempt to disentangle instances where LP-reversed control faces are associated with a performance bias in terms of their perceived salience. These findings have important implications for studies of subjective face appearance, and highlight that future research must be aware of behavioral artifacts due to the possibility of trade-off effects.
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