Featural vs. configurational information in faces: a conceptual and empirical analysis.

Full Abstract

The perception and memory of faces have been accounted for by the processing of two kinds of facial information:
featural and configurational. The starting point of this article is the definition and accepted usage of these two concepts of facial information. I discuss these definitions and their various ramifications from three aspects:
methodological, theoretical and empirical. In the section on methodology, I review several of the basic manipulations for changing facial information. In the theoretical section, I consider four fundamental hypotheses associated with these two kinds of facial information:
the featural, configurational, holistic and norm hypotheses (the norm-based hypothesis and the 'hierarchy of schemas' hypothesis). In the section on empirical evidence, I survey relevant studies on the topic and consider these hypotheses through a description of various empirical phenomena that carry clear implications for the subject of the study. In conclusion, I propose two alternative directions for future research:
first, a 'task-information' approach, which involves specifying what information is used for different tasks; and secondly, taking a different approach to the definition of the visual features for face processing, for example by using principal components analysis (PCA).

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Author information

Author/s: Rakover, Sam S (SS);

Affiliation: Department of Psychology, University of Haifa, Israel. rakover(-atsign-)psy.haifa.ac.il

Journal and publication information

Publication Type: Journal Article; Review

Journal: British journal of psychology (London, England : 1953) (Br J Psychol), published in England. (Language: eng)

Reference: 2002-Feb; vol 93 (issue Pt 1) : pp 1-30

Dates: Created 2002/02/12; Completed 2002/04/02; Revised 2005/11/16;

PMID: 11839099, status: MEDLINE (last retrieval date: 11/6/2008)

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