Revisiting the Processing of Internal and External Features of Unfamiliar Faces: The Headscarf Effect

Five experiments are reported in which the relative importance of internal and external features for unfamiliar face identification are examined by a matching task. In experiments 1–3, Egyptian adults showed a robust internal-feature advantage for matching photographs of Egyptian faces. In experiment 4, a cross-cultural comparison between the ability of Egyptian and British adults to match the internal and external features of unfamiliar Egyptian and British faces was made. Once again, Egyptians showed an internal-feature advantage, for all faces. In contrast, British observers—and also Egyptian children in experiment 5—showed external-feature advantages consistent with previous research. We attribute this contrast to the long-term experience of Egyptians in perceiving and recognising faces with headscarves, which might develop more expertise in processing the internal than the external features of unfamiliar faces.

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