Parallel processing of the sex and familiarity of faces.

Abstract

H. Ellis (1986a, b) has suggested that identification of familiar faces is achieved as the end result of some kind of perceptual hierarchy, in which structural descriptions are elaborated to allow successively finer levels of discrimination. Specifically, he suggests that classification of the age, sex, and race of faces precedes their identification. Here we report two experiments which challenge a simple hierarchical relationship between judging the sex and knowing the identity of a face. In Experiment 1 it was shown that faces whose sex was relatively difficult to classify were no harder to judge as familiar than those whose sex was relatively easy to classify. In Experiment 2 this result was replicated and extended to a situation where the familiarity judgement was made contingent upon the sex judgement. The results are readily accounted for if we adopt the view that analyses of the face''s sex and its identity proceed in parallel. A cascade interpretation is also discussed.