Differences in Attentional Involvement Underlying the Perception of Distinctive and Typical Faces

Differences in human faces can be evaluated along a continuum that ranges from ‘distinctive’ to ‘typical.’ We examined processing differences between distinctive and typical faces by two attentional tasks that induce attentional blink (AB). Given that AB is believed to reflect temporal or capacity limits of attention, stimuli that survive AB are believed to be associated with greater processing efficiency. In a change-detection task, participants were required to detect changes in the two pairs of faces that were presented in rapid succession. Changes involving the distinctive face of a pair were more likely to be detected than those involving a typical face. In a face-identification task, distinctive faces embedded in a rapid serial visual presentation (RSVP) stream were identified with a greater accuracy than typical faces. Together, our results suggest that distinctive faces are associated with greater processing efficiency and may be explained in terms of perceptual salience, a stimulus dimension known to attract attention.