Document Type
Article
Publication Date
2006
Department 1
Psychology
Abstract
It is extraordinarily difficult to recognize a face in an image with negated contrast, as in a photographic negative. The variation among faces can be partitioned into two general sources: (a) shape and (b) surface reflectance, here termed 'pigmentation'. To determine whether negation differentially affects the processing of shape or pigmentation, we made two sets of faces where the individual faces differed only in shape in one set and only in pigmentation in the other. Surprisingly, matching performance was significantly impaired by contrast negation only when the faces varied in pigmentation. This provides evidence that the perception of pigmentation, not shape, is selectively disrupted by negation and, by extension, that pigmentation contributes to the neural representation of face identity.
Copyright Note
This is the publisher's version of the work. This publication appears in Gettysburg College's institutional repository by permission of the copyright owner for personal use, not for redistribution.
Recommended Citation
Russell R; Sinha P; Biederman I; Nederhouser, M. (2006). Is pigmentation important for face recognition? Evidence from contrast negation. Perception,35(6), 749-759. http://dx.doi.org/10.1068/p5490
Required Publisher's Statement
R. Russell, P. Sinha, I. Biederman, & M. Nederhouser, 2006. The definitive, peer-reviewed and edited version of this article is published in Perception, 35, 6, 749-59, 2006, doi:10.1068/p5490.