Profiles on the Orientation Discrimination Processing of Human Faces

• Main Authors: Carmen Moret-Tatay, Inmaculada Baixauli-Fortea, M. Dolores Grau-Sevilla
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: MDPI AG 2020-08-01
• Series: International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health
• Subjects: face recognition; orientation discrimination; cluster analysis; orientation encoding of faces; Karolinska Directed Emotional Faces
• Online Access: https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/17/16/5772

Face recognition is a crucial subject for public health, as socialization is one of the main characteristics for full citizenship. However, good recognizers would be distinguished, not only by the number of faces they discriminate but also by the number of rejected stimuli as unfamiliar. When it comes to face recognition, it is important to remember that position, to some extent, would not entail a high cognitive cost, unlike other processes in similar areas of the brain. The aim of this paper was to examine participant’s recognition profiles according to face position. For this reason, a recognition task was carried out by employing the <i>Karolinska Directed Emotional Faces.</i> Reaction times and accuracy were employed as dependent variables and a cluster analysis was carried out. A total of two profiles were identified in participants’ performance, which differ in position in terms of reaction times but not accuracy. The results can be described as follows: first, it is possible to identify performance profiles in visual recognition of faces that differ in position in terms of reaction times, not accuracy; secondly, results suggest a bias towards the left. At the applied level, this could be of interest with a view to conducting training programs in face recognition.