title: Differences in the coding of spatial relations in face identification and basic-level object recognition.
abstract: The purpose of this investigation was to determine if the relations among the primitives used in face identification and in basic-level object recognition are represented using coordinate or categorical relations. In 2 experiments the authors used photographs of famous people's faces as stimuli in which each face had been altered to have either 1 of its eyes moved up from its normal position or both of its eyes moved up. Participants performed either a face identification task or a basic-level object recognition task with these stimuli. In the face identification task, 1-eye-moved faces were easier to recognize than 2-eyes-moved faces, whereas the basic-level object recognition task showed the opposite pattern of results. Results suggest that face identification involves a coordinate shape representation in which the precise locations of visual primitives are specified, whereas basic-level object recognition uses categorically coded relations.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, Iowa State University, Ames 50011, USA. ecooper@iastate.edu
authors.forename: E E
authors.initials: EE
authors.lastname: Cooper
authors.forename: T J
authors.initials: TJ
authors.lastname: Wojan
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D001288:Attention; D004193:Discrimination Learning; D005149:Facial Expression; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D011939:Mental Recall; D009949:Orientation; D010364:Pattern Recognition, Visual; D010469:Perceptual Distortion; D011601:Psychophysics