Is the Thatcher Illusion Modulated by Face Familiarity? Evidence from an Eye Tracking Study.

ABSTRACT: Thompson (1980) first detected and described the Thatcher Illusion, where participants instantly perceive an upright face with inverted eyes and mouth as grotesque, but fail to do so when the same face is inverted. One prominent but controversial explanation is that the processing of configural information is disrupted in inverted faces. Studies investigating the Thatcher Illusion either used famous faces or non-famous faces. Highly familiar faces were often thought to be processed in a pronounced configural mode, so they seem ideal candidates to be tested in one Thatcher study against unfamiliar faces-but this has never been addressed so far. In our study, participants evaluated 16 famous and 16 non-famous faces for their grotesqueness. We tested whether familiarity (famous/non-famous fac

SUBMITTER: Utz S 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5077119 | biostudies-literature | 2016

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature