Configural and featural processing during face perception: A new stimulus set

• DOI: 10.3758/brm.41.2.279
• Publication Date: 2009-04-10T15:57:47Z
• Authors: Goedele Van Belle; Michael De Smet; Peter De Graef; Luc Van Gool; Karl Verfaillie
• Keywords: Stimulus (psychology); Fusiform face area

A new stimulus set of 60 male-face stimuli in seven in-depth orientations was developed. The set can be used in research on configural versus featural mechanisms of face processing. Configural, or holistic, changes are produced by changing the global form of the face, whereas featural, or part-based, changes are attained by altering the local form of internal facial features. For each face in the set, there is one other face that differs only by its global form and one other face that differs only by its internal features. In all faces, extrafacial cues have been eliminated or standardized. The stimulus set also contains a color-coded division of each face in areas of interest, which is useful for eye movement research on face scanning strategies. We report a matching experiment with upright and inverted face pairs that demonstrates that the face stimulus set is indeed useful for research on configural and featural face perception. The stimulus set may be downloaded from the Psychonomic Society's archive (brm.psychonomic-journals.org/content/supplemental) or from our Web site (http://ppw.kuleuven.be/labexppsy/newSite/resources).