Inverting line drawings of faces

Two conditions which both disrupt faces processing, inversion and the trans formation of the face an edge-based line drawing, have each been explained at least partially in terms of a disruption of configural information. Five experiments are reported in which the combined effects of the two manipula tions were investigated, to find out how the combination of both affects fa ce processing. Moreover, two different tasks were used: sequential matching of person identity and free identification. The general pattern of result revealed that in both tasks effects of both manipulations are rather additi ve and thus it is concluded that both manipulations are disruptive through different sort of information processing. It is discussed how at least two different kinds of configural information are involved in face processing. The comparisons of the two tasks, identification and sequential matching, i ndicates that information is the more critical condition as it cannot be ba sed on inferences that are probably due to short-term representations of cr itical features - although both tasks reveal similar results.