The aim of this study was to separately analyze the role of featural and configural face representations. Stimuli containing only featural information were created by cutting the faces into their parts and scrambling them. Stimuli only containing configural information were created by blurring the faces. Employing an old‐new recognition task, the aim of Experiments 1 and 2 was to investigate whether unfamiliar faces (Exp. 1) or familiar faces (Exp. 2) can be recognized if only featural or configural information is provided. (...) Both scrambled and blurred faces could be recognized above chance level. A further aim of Experiments 1 and 2 was to investigate whether our method of creating configural and featural stimuli is valid. Pre‐activation of one form of representation did not facilitate recognition of the other, neither for unfamiliar faces (Exp. 1) nor for familiar faces (Exp. 2). This indicates a high internal validity of our method for creating configural and featural face stimuli. Experiment 3 examined whether features placed in their correct categorical relational position but with distorted metrical distances facilitated recognition of unfamiliar faces. These faces were recognized no better than the scrambled faces in Experiment 1, providing further evidence that facial features are stored independently of configural information. From these results we conclude that both featural and configural information are important to recognize a face and argue for a dual‐mode hypothesis of face processing. Using the psychophysical results as motivation, we propose a computational framework that implements featural and configural processing routes using an appearance‐based representation based on local features and their spatial relations. In three computational experiments (Experiments 4–6) using the same sets of stimuli, we show how this framework is able to model the psychophysical data. (shrink)

What are the underlying processes that enable human beings to recognize a happy face? Clearly, featural and configural cues will help to identify the distinctive smile. In addition, the motivational state of the observer will influence the interpretation of emotional expressions. Therefore, a model accounting for emotion recognition is only complete if bottom-up and top-down aspects are integrated.

Recent research put forward the hypothesis that eye movements are integrated in memory representations and are reactivated when later recalled. However, “looking back to nothing” during recall might be a consequence of spatial memory retrieval. Here, we aimed at distinguishing between the effect of spatial and oculomotor information on perceptual memory. Participants’ task was to judge whether a morph looked rather like the first or second previously presented face. Crucially, faces and morphs were presented in a way that the morph (...) reactivated oculomotor and/or spatial information associated with one of the previously encoded faces. Perceptual face memory was largely influenced by these manipulations. We considered a simple computational model with an excellent match that expresses these biases as a linear combination of recency, saccade, and location. Surprisingly, saccades did not play a role. The results suggest that spatial and temporal rather than oculomotor information biases perceptual face memory. (shrink)