Methodological Aspects of Studying the Perception of Familiar and Unfamiliar Faces

Abstract

Face perception, one of most important social abilities, can be defined as the ability to perceive the face as a gestalt, along with all its parts and the relations between them. This face specific strategy has been called “configural processing”. One of actual trends in face cognition research — using of unfamiliar faces without nonspecific features — leads to controversy, whether this kind of stimulus material demonstrate ecological validity. In present, we propose a verification option using the experimental paradigm “part-whole recogni- tion” (successful detection of face details when presented in the context of a whole face). This classic effect was demonstrated using unfamiliar faces, with nonspecific details, and after the learning phase. After some modifications of this paradigm — using of unfamiliar faces without nonspecific features and without a series of familiarization — the effect disappears. The question is, whether the familiarization phase, or nonspecific features predict configural processing. We have shown that the main parameter is the absence of nonspecific features. The results may be helpful for planning future research.