Face recognition by hand.

Full Abstract

We investigated participants' ability to identify and represent faces by hand. In Experiment 1, participants proved surprisingly capable of identifying unfamiliar live human faces using only their sense of touch. To evaluate the contribution of geometric and material information more directly, we biased participants toward encoding faces more in terms of geometric than material properties, by varying the exploration condition. When participants explored the faces both visually and tactually, identification accuracy did not improve relative to touch alone. When participants explored masks of the faces, thereby eliminating material cues, matching accuracy declined substantially relative to tactual identification of live faces. In Experiment 2, we explored intersensory transfer of face information between vision and touch. The findings are discussed in terms of their relevance to haptic object processing and to the face-processing literature in general.

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Author information

Author/s: Kilgour, Andrea R (AR); Lederman, Susan J (SJ);

Affiliation: Queen's University, Kingston, Ontario, Canada.

Journal and publication information

Publication Type: Comparative Study; Journal Article; Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

Journal: Perception & psychophysics (Percept Psychophys), published in United States. (Language: eng)

Reference: 2002-Apr; vol 64 (issue 3) : pp 339-52

Dates: Created 2002/06/06; Completed 2002/06/28; Revised 2006/11/15;

PMID: 12049276, status: MEDLINE (last retrieval date: 11/6/2008)

Sourced from the National Library of Medicine. Abstract text and other information may be subject to copyright.

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MeSH headings (categories)

This article was linked to the MESH Headings shown below.

Adolescent
Adult
Discrimination Learning
Face
Female
Humans
Male

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