The Use of Pigmentation and Shading Information in Recognising the Sex and Identities of Faces

Abstract

An investigation of what can be learned about representational processes in face recognition from the independent and combined effects of inverting and negating facial images is reported. In experiment 1, independent effects of inversion and negation were observed in a task of identifying famous faces. In experiments 2 through 4 the question of whether effects of negation were still obtained when effects due to the reversal of pigmentation in negative images were eliminated was examined. By the use of images of the 3-D surfaces of faces measured by laser, and displays as smooth surfaces devoid of pigmentation, only effects of inversion were obtained reliably, suggesting that the effects observed in experiment 1 arose largely through the inversion of pigmentation values in normal images of faces. The results of experiment 5 suggested that the difference was not due to the different task demands of experiments 2–4 compared with those of experiment 1. When normally pigmented face images were used in a task making similar demands to that of experiment 4, independent effects of inversion and negation were again observed. When a task of sex classification was used in experiments 6 and 7, clear effects of negation as well as inversion were observed on latencies, though not accuracies, of responding. The results are interpreted in terms of the information content of pigmentation relative to shape from shading in different face-classification tasks. The results also reinforce other recent evidence demonstrating the importance of image intensity as well as spatial layout of face ‘features’.