Seeing an unfamiliar face in rotational motion does not aid identity discrimination across viewpoints

Abstract

Discriminating the identity of static face views is viewpoint-dependent (Lee, Matsumiya, & Wilson, 2006), yet the benefit of facial motion on improving cross-view discrimination remains unclear. We investigate here, whether seeing a face rotating in a single direction reduces the viewpoint dependence of neighboring views, in particular, along the trajectory of that motion direction. Results indicate that seeing an unfamiliar face rotating in a given direction does not aid identity discrimination of neighboring views regardless of the direction of rotation. These findings suggest that unfamiliar faces are represented in a view-specific manner.