Initial microgenetic steps in single-glance face recognition

Abstract Single-glance recognition of a familiar face cannot be explained as perception of a mediating image and subsequent reasoning processes to identify the image. This recognition is too fast for a normal reasoning process, neither can it be verbalized as such a process. But that does not simply mean that the face is perceived “directly”. This pre-verbal high-speed identification seems only possible by means of tacit “micro-genetic” steps, which successively “actualize” the relevant information. When we present photographs of different familiar persons with film-speed on the same place, it seems possible to demonstrate this. It was hypothesized that the first portrait “triggers” directing “schemata”, capable of actualizing relevant information. This “processing” of the first portrait provides general information, which specifies the presence of a face in a particular position, and perhaps even possible sets of familiar faces. However, when a second portrait is presented after a critical interval, final identification steps, which originate from the previous phases, still have to be made. When both faces are in similar positions, these final tests are continued on the second portrait, in much the same way as must be the case with the next frame in a continuing shot of a movie picture. Especially when portraits also share common set reducing features, this interactive microgenesis initially produces a decreasing recognition function of stimulus onset asynchrony for the first portrait and simultaneously an increasing function for the second portrait. These results are also discussed in terms of backward and forward visual masking.