Similarity modulates the face-capturing effect in change detection
Journal
Visual Cognition
Journal Volume
17
Journal Issue
4
Pages
484-499
Date Issued
2009
Author(s)
Abstract
Abstract We investigated whether similarity among faces could modulate the face-capturing effect in change detection. In Experiment 1, a singleton search task was used to demonstrate that a face stimulus captures attention and the odd-one-out hypothesis cannot account for the results. Searching for a face target was faster than searching for a nonface target no matter whether distractor–distractor similarity was low or high. The fast search, however, did not lead to a face-detection advantage in Experiment 2 when the pre- and postchange faces were highly similar. When participants in Experiment 3 had to divide their attention between two faces in stimulus displays for change detection, detection performance was worse than performance in detecting nonface changes. The face-capturing effect alone is insufficient to produce the face-detection advantage. Face processing is efficient but its effect on performance depends on the stimulus–task context. Acknowledgements This research was supported by a grant from National Science Council to Y.-Y. Yeh (NSC 95-2413-H-002-003). We thank R. Palermo, Y.-M. Huang, H.-F. Chao, and Y.-C. Chiu for their valuable comments on an earlier version of the manuscript. We also thank S.-H. Lin for his assistance on stimulus generation. Parts of the results were presented at the 13th annual meeting of OPAM, Toronto, Canada in 2005. Notes 1We thank Ro for providing us with the stimuli from his study. Only achromatic female faces were used in their experiments.
SDGs
Type
journal article