Leder H, Candrian G, Huber O, Bruce V
Department of Psychology, Free University of Berlin, Habelschwerdter Allee 45, D 14195 Berlin, Germany.
Perception. 2001;30(1):73-83. doi: 10.1068/p2911.
When faces are turned upside down, recognition is known to be severely disrupted. This effect is thought to be due to disruption of configural processing. Recently, Leder and Bruce (2000, Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology A 53 513-536) argued that configural information in face processing consists at least partly of locally processed relations between facial elements. In three experiments we investigated whether a local relational feature (the interocular distance) is processed differently in upside-down versus upright faces. In experiment 1 participants decided in which of two sequentially presented photographic faces the interocular distance was larger. The decision was more difficult in upside-down presentation. Three different conditions were used in experiment 2 to investigate whether this deficit depends upon parts of the face beyond the eyes themselves; displays showed the eye region alone, the eyes and nose, or the eyes and nose and mouth. The availability of additional features did not interact with the inversion effect which was observed strongly even when the eyes were shown in isolation. In experiment 3 all eyes were turned upside down in the inverted face condition as in the Thatcher illusion (Thompson, 1980 Perception 9 483-484). In this case no inversion effect was found. These results are in accordance with an explanation of the face-inversion effect in which the disruption of configural facial information plays the critical role in memory for faces, and in which configural information corresponds to spatial information that is processed in a way which is sensitive to local properties of the facial features involved.
当面孔倒置时，人们已知识别会受到严重干扰。这种效应被认为是由于构型加工的中断。最近，莱德和布鲁斯（2000年，《实验心理学季刊A》第53卷，第513 - 536页）认为，面孔加工中的构型信息至少部分由面部元素之间的局部加工关系组成。在三个实验中，我们研究了局部关系特征（两眼间距离）在倒置面孔与正立面孔中是否有不同的加工方式。在实验1中，参与者要判断两张相继呈现的照片面孔中哪一张的两眼间距离更大。在倒置呈现时，判断更困难。实验2使用了三种不同条件来研究这种缺陷是否取决于眼睛本身之外的面部部分；展示分别为仅眼睛区域、眼睛和鼻子，或眼睛、鼻子和嘴巴。额外特征的存在并未与倒置效应相互作用，即使单独展示眼睛时，倒置效应也很明显。在实验3中，如同撒切尔错觉（汤普森，1980年，《知觉》第9卷，第483 - 484页）那样，在倒置面孔条件下所有眼睛都倒置了。在这种情况下未发现倒置效应。这些结果与对面孔倒置效应的一种解释相符，即面部构型信息的中断在面孔记忆中起关键作用，且构型信息对应于以一种对所涉及面部特征的局部属性敏感的方式进行加工的空间信息。
