Is Face Processing Special?

Are faces processed differently from other complex visual stimuli? For this to be the case, three main criteria would have to be fulfilled: (1) face recognition would exhibit functional characteristics not found in the recognition of other visual stimuli, (2) the neural machinery that mediates face recognition would be anatomically separate from the neurons mediating general object recognition, and (3) faces would be represented differently from other visual stimuli at the neural level. This paper assesses the data bearing on these criteria and discusses whether they do indeed constitute evidence for a special face processing system.

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