Local and relational aspects of face distinctiveness

Distinctiveness contributes strongly to the recognition and rejection of faces in memory tasks. In four experiments we examine the role played by local and relational information in the distinctiveness of upright and inverted faces. In all experiments subjects saw one of three versions of a face: original faces, which had been rated as average in distinctiveness in a previous study (Hancock, Burton, & Bruce, 1996), a more distinctive version in which local features had been changed (D-local), and a more distinctive version in which relational features had been changed (D-rel). An increase in distinctiveness was found for D-local and D-rel faces in Experiment 1 (complete faces) and 3 and 4 (face internals only) when the faces had to be rated in upright presentation, but the distinctiveness of the D-rel faces was reduced much more than that of the D-local versions when the ratings were given to the faces presented upside-down (Experiments 1 and 3). Recognition performance showed a similar pattern: presented upright, both D-local and D-rel revealed higher performance compared to the originals, but in upside-down presentation the D-local versions showed a much stronger distinctiveness advantage. When only internal features of faces were used (Experiments 3 and 4), the D-rel faces lost their advantage over the Original versions in inverted presentation. The results suggest that at least two dimensions of facial information contribute to a face's apparent distinctiveness, but that these sources of information are differentially affected by turning the face upside-down. These findings are in accordance with a face processing model in which face inversion effects occur because a specific type of information processing is disrupted, rather than because of a general disruption of performance.