Discriminating Grotesque from Typical Faces: Evidence from the Thatcher Illusion

Donnelly, Nick and Zürcher, Nicole R and Cornes, Katherine and Snyder, Josh and Naik, Paulami and Hadwin, Julie and Hadjikhani, Nouchine (2011) Discriminating Grotesque from Typical Faces: Evidence from the Thatcher Illusion. PLOS ONE, 6 (8). ISSN 1932-6203

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Abstract

The discrimination of thatcherized faces from typical faces was explored in two simultaneous alternative forced choice tasks. Reaction times (RTs) and errors were measured in a behavioural task. Brain activation was measured in an equivalent fMRI task. In both tasks, participants were tested with upright and inverted faces. Participants were also tested on churches in the behavioural task. The behavioural task confirmed the face specificity of the illusion (by comparing inversion effects for faces against churches) but also demonstrated that the discrimination was primarily, although not exclusively, driven by attending to eyes. The fMRI task showed that, relative to inverted faces, upright grotesque faces are discriminated via activation of a network of emotion/social evaluation processing areas. On the other hand, discrimination of inverted thatcherized faces was associated with increased activation of brain areas that are typically involved in perceptual processing of faces.

Item Type:	Article
Additional Information and Comments:	Copyright: © 2011 Donnelly et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
Keywords:	5202 Biological Psychology
Faculty / Department:	Faculty of Human and Digital Sciences > School of Psychology
SWORD Depositor:	eprints api
Depositing User:	eprints api
Date Deposited:	20 Jan 2025 11:56
Last Modified:	20 Jan 2025 11:56
URI:	https://hira.hope.ac.uk/id/eprint/4551

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