875
Views
11
CrossRef citations to date
0
Altmetric
Articles

The effect of face inversion on the detection of emotional faces in visual search

&
Pages 972-991 | Received 17 Dec 2013, Accepted 24 Aug 2014, Published online: 17 Sep 2014
 

Abstract

Past literature has indicated that face inversion either attenuates emotion detection advantages in visual search, implying that detection of emotional expressions requires holistic face processing, or has no effect, implying that expression detection is feature based. Across six experiments that utilised different task designs, ranging from simple (single poser, single set size) to complex (multiple posers, multiple set sizes), and stimuli drawn from different databases, significant emotion detection advantages were found for both upright and inverted faces. Consistent with past research, the nature of the expression detection advantage, anger superiority (Experiments 1, 2 and 6) or happiness superiority (Experiments 3, 4 and 5), differed across stimulus sets. However both patterns were evident for upright and inverted faces. These results indicate that face inversion does not interfere with visual search for emotional expressions, and suggest that expression detection in visual search may rely on feature-based mechanisms.

We thank Drs Fox and Damjanovic for providing us with information as to the posers used in their study.

This work was supported by Grant DP110100460 from the Australian Research Council and by an Australian Postgraduate Award to RAS.

We thank Drs Fox and Damjanovic for providing us with information as to the posers used in their study.

This work was supported by Grant DP110100460 from the Australian Research Council and by an Australian Postgraduate Award to RAS.

Reprints and Corporate Permissions

Please note: Selecting permissions does not provide access to the full text of the article, please see our help page How do I view content?

To request a reprint or corporate permissions for this article, please click on the relevant link below:

Academic Permissions

Please note: Selecting permissions does not provide access to the full text of the article, please see our help page How do I view content?

Obtain permissions instantly via Rightslink by clicking on the button below:

If you are unable to obtain permissions via Rightslink, please complete and submit this Permissions form. For more information, please visit our Permissions help page.