Effect of depth of processing on recognition memory for normal and inverted photographs of faces

40 undergraduates categorized photographs of faces on the basis of sex or liking and then attempted to recognize them in normal or inverted orientations. For photographs which were normally oriented, accuracy and confidence were greater for pictures initially categorized for liking than for pictures initially categorized for sex. However, for inverted photographs, accuracy and confidence scores did not differ as a function of initial judgement, although they were generally poorer for the inverted than normal faces. Finally, subjects more often correctly recalled the initial category for normal than for inverted photographs, although both levels were close to chance. These findings are interpreted as being more consistent with a semantic than a feature model of facial representation.