ERPs and chronometry of face recognition: following-up Seeck et al. and George et al.

SEECK et al. found that event-related potentials (ERPs) evoked by repeated and non-repeated face photographs differ as early as 50-70 ms post-onset. T hey thus suggested that faces are recognized at these latencies, in contras t with current opinions in ERP literature. However, the similar latencies o btained by George et al. for stimuli not perceived as faces suggest that Se eck et at's differences could index repetition rather than face recognition per se. To address this issue, we used matched faces of known and unknown persons. We found the earliest differences between the ERPs to these faces between 76 and 130 ms. These results, which are consistent with other data, suggest that the differentiation of faces takes similar to 100 ms of proce ssing time in humans. (C) 1998 Lippincott Williams & Wilkins.