Elsevier

Vision Research

Volume 45, Issue 10, May 2005, Pages 1213-1223
Vision Research

The role of surface pigmentation for recognition revealed by contrast reversal in faces and Greebles

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.visres.2004.11.015Get rights and content
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Abstract

Faces are difficult to recognize when viewed as negatives [Galper (1970). Recognition of faces in photographic negative. Psychonomic Science, 19, 207]. Here we examined the contribution of surface properties to this contrast effect, and whether it is modulated by object category. We tested observers in a matching task using faces or Greebles, presented with or without pigmentation. When stimulus pairs were shown with mismatched contrast (e.g., positive–negative), there was a decrement in performance. This decrement was larger when the stimuli were shown with pigmentation, and this difference was more pronounced with faces than with Greebles. Overall, contrast reversal disrupts the recognition of both faces and objects to a greater degree in the presence of pigmentation, suggesting that surface properties are important components of the object representation.

Keywords

Object recognition
Face recognition
Shading
Texture

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1

The first two authors contributed equally.