Beyond the retina: Evidence for a face inversion effect in the environmental frame of reference
Year: 2011
Type: article
Abstract: Across a wide range of face perception tasks, observers show drastically worse performance when faces are oriented upside-down versus upright.However, the meaning of orientation must be established in relation to a particular frame of reference.In relation to which reference frame(s) does the face inversion effect occur?Here we describe a simple, novel method for investigating potentially independent effects of retinal and environmental reference frames on face processing.Participants performed one of two face-processing tasks (emotional expression classification and recognition memory) as they lay horizontally, which served to disassociate the retinal and environmental reference frames.In both experiments we found a large effect of retinal orientation on performance and a small but reliable effect of environmental orientation.In a follow-up control study, we consider an alternative explanation based on our experimental setup.We argue that environmental orientation influences face processing, which is revealed when retinal orientation is kept constant.
Authors: Nicolas Davidenko, Stephen J. Flusberg
Institution: Stanford University
Language: English
Subfield: Cognitive Neuroscience
Field: Neuroscience
Domain: Life Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W2575495879