The development of upright face perception depends on evolved orientation-specific mechanisms and experience.

ABSTRACT: Here we examine whether our impressive ability to perceive upright faces arises from evolved orientation-specific mechanisms, our extensive experience with upright faces, or both factors. To do so, we tested Claudio, a man with a congenital joint disorder causing his head to be rotated back so that it is positioned between his shoulder blades. As a result, Claudio has seen more faces reversed in orientation to his own face than matched to it. Controls exhibited large inversion effects on all tasks, but Claudio performed similarly with upright and inverted faces in both detection and identity-matching tasks, indicating these abilities are the product of evolved mechanisms and experience. In contrast, he showed clear upright superiority when detecting "Thatcherized" faces (faces with vertica

SUBMITTER: Duchaine B 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC10638473 | biostudies-literature | 2023 Oct

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature