WHY ARE INVERTED FACES HARD TO RECOGNIZE - A TEST OF THE RELATIONAL FEATURE HYPOTHESIS

Inverted faces are very hard to recognize. One explanation for this di fficulty is that spatial relations within a face are difficult to enco de when a face is upside-down. This account predicts that faces with d istinctive isolated features (e.g., glasses, mustache, baldness) shoul d be easier to recognize when inverted than faces that must be recogni zed using distinctive relational features. We tested this prediction b y examining the effect of inversion on recognition of famous faces wit h distinctive isolated features and those without such features (for w hich recognition depends on relational features). As predicted, invert ed faces were easier to recognize if they had a distinctive isolated f eature than if they did not.