title: The lady's not for turning: rotation of the Thatcher illusion.
abstract: Inversion is especially detrimental to the processing of faces. This is clearly demonstrated by the Thatcher illusion. It has been suggested that this detriment is due to a loss of holistic or configural processing for inverted faces (Bartlett and Searcy, 1993 Cognitive Psychology 25 281-316). Stürzel and Spillmann (2000 Perception 29 937-942) suggest that this loss of configural processing occurs suddenly as a face is rotated slowly from upright to inverted. This hypothesis is tested in a study of the reaction times taken to indicate that a face has been Thatcherised at various angles of orientation. The results suggest that there is a gradual loss of configural information rather than a rapid switch from one type of processing to another.
authors.affiliation: School of Psychology, Cardiff University, PO Box 901, Cardiff CF10 3YG, UK. LewisMB@Cardiff.ac.uk
authors.forename: M B
authors.initials: MB
authors.lastname: Lewis
mesh_terms: D000704:Analysis of Variance; D005145:Face; D005197:Famous Persons; D006801:Humans; D007091:Image Processing, Computer-Assisted; D008568:Memory / Q000502:physiology; D009903:Optical Illusions; D009949:Orientation / Q000502:physiology*; D011930:Reaction Time; D012044:Regression Analysis