Differences in the coding of spatial relations in face identification and basic-level object recognition

The purpose of this investigation was to determine if the relations among t he primitives used in face identification and in basic-level object recogni tion are represented using coordinate or categorical relations. In 2 experi ments the authors used photographs of famous people's faces as stimuli in w hich each face had been altered to have either 1 of its eyes moved up from its normal position or both of its eyes moved up. Participants performed ei ther a face identification task or a basic-level object recognition task wi th these stimuli. In the face identification task, I-eye-moved faces were e asier to recognize than 2-eyes-moved faces, whereas the basic-level object recognition task showed the opposite pattern of results. Results suggest th at face identification involves a coordinate shape representation in which the precise locations of visual primitives are specified, whereas basic-lev el object recognition uses categorically coded relations.