Abstract
The effects of task demands on the visual comparison of facial patterns and of comparable nonfacial patterns were explored in two studies. The studies yielded two primary findings. First, faces, despite their holistic properties, are not rotated faster than comparable non-face-like patterns, although subjects’ judgments of them were uniformly more rapid than judgments for nonfaces. Second, the nature of the same-different judgment task required of subjects had a large effect on the pattern of results obtained: When stimuli were compared to their mirror images, results indicative of mental “rotation” were obtained. When stimuli were compared on the basis of similarity of individual features, the pattern of results was very different. This one manipulation produced effects that exceeded those of all of the other manipulations, including that of rotation.
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Cochran, E.L., Pick, A.D. & Pick, H.L. Task-specific strategies of mental “rotation” of facial representations. Memory & Cognition 11, 41–48 (1983). https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03197660
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03197660