The effects of delay and exposure duration in a face recognition task

Face recognition was investigated in a successive comparison task. Subjects were required to makesame/different judgments about pairs of Photo-fit faces that were either identical or differed by a single feature. Picture information extraction and retention were examined by manipulating stimulus delay and exposure duration. Results indicated that overall performance was better for the top of the face. The eyes and mouth were more vulnerable than the rest of the face to recognition decrement after a delay, possibly due to their role in facial expression. When features were ranked in order of processing difficulty for each subject, it appeared that features were processed serially and delay affected a retrieval stage, while short exposure affected a visual comparison stage of processing. For the feature ranks, a single dimension of “salience” appeared to be both perceptual and mnemonic.