Behavioural separation of face memory and face perception

A long-standing debate in neuropsychology concerns whether perception and memory function as independent systems or interact to support cognition. To investigate this, we develop the Face Memory and Perception task, a paradigm designed to systematically disentangle whether and how these processes interact under different conditions. Across five independent datasets with over 900 participants in total, we observe consistent evidence that face perception and working memory operate independently when task demands are low, but in more complex conditions, these processes appear to interact. Notably, this interaction emerges only when the interfering task during maintenance directly involves face-processing mechanisms, and does not arise from a general increase in cognitive load. Rather than the use of shared resources by overlapping cognitive processes, this interaction is driven by a shift in behavioural strategy from holistic to feature-based face processing as a result of maintenance-disrupting interference. These results underscore the fundamental independence of perception and working memory while also explaining some of the conditions under which interactions might be observed.