Lateral Reversal and Facial Recognition Memory: Are Right-Lookers Special?

Abstract

Although lateral reversal of photographs of faces between presentation and test has been shown to disrupt recognition memory, the effect has disappeared when the pictures were initially turned at presentation (making left-lookers into “right lookers”). To explore the possibility that faces looking to the observer’s right may be relatively impervious to the effect of reversal, two experiments were conducted. In Experiment 1, subjects viewed photographs of faces whose heads where naturally left-directed, straight or right-directed. With single-stimulus testing (n = 38), recognition accuracy was poorer for subsequently reversed left-directed and straight, but not right-directed faces; with forced-choice testing (n = 60),overall performance was superior on reversed photographs, although the effect was confined to the right-directed. In Experiment 2, half of the faces were initially presented in their natural left-looking pose, and half were initially reversed so that they became “right-lookers”. For three normal (n = 66), and two reversed (n = 50) conditons, recognition performance was poorer for left-lookers than for “right-lookers” and, for both poses, it was poorer for subsequently reversed than for unchanged pictures. In both experiments, identification accuracy for the transformation on hits was above chance, but higher on normal than on reversed faces. Implications for models of face processing are presented.