Face and word superiority effects: Parallel effects of visual expertise

There are several studies that compare perception for written words and faces. However, many draw conclusions from different experimental paradigms, complicating direct comparison between these stimuli. Such comparisons are of interest because of hypotheses based on neuroimaging and neuropsychological data that face and word processing may have common underlying mechanisms and neural substrates. To facilitate such comparisons, we created a novel paradigm studying face recognition that closely resembles the word-superiority test, in which a letter is more easily identified when it is embedded in a whole word than when seen in isolation or in an unpronounceable random string of letters. Forty subjects each completed both of our tests. In the traditional word-superiority test, they briefly saw a word, a pseudoword, or a nonword, then a single test letter, and were asked if the letter had been part of the initial stimulus. In the face-superiority test, they briefly saw a learned, new, or scrambled face initially, then a test facial feature in isolation, and were asked to respond whether the feature had been part of the initial stimulus. For both categories of stimuli, there were similar differences between real, pseudo-, and non-stimuli. Accuracy was lower for non-stimuli compared to pseudo- and real stimuli, which in turn did not differ from each other. Response latency was greater for non-stimuli compared to pseudo-stimuli, which in turn was greater than real stimuli. Bivariate analyses revealed significant correlations between interstimulus trials for reaction times. Our study replicated a face superiority effect utilizing a similar methodology to the word-superiority test. Additionally, response latencies follows similar patterns in the recognition of written words and faces.