Abstract
People are highly skilled at recognizing familiar faces due to the development of identity representations that are invariant to viewpoint and low-level features. However, how such view-invariant representations emerge for unfamiliar faces remains debated. This EEG study examined the neurophysiological basis of face learning, and how viewpoint generalization is shaped by experience (i.e., increasing familiarity) and stimulus realism. Adult participants performed an identity-matching task with novel faces varying along a realism continuum, from photographs to less and more abstract artistic styles (Renaissance vs. Cubism). Identity (same vs. different) and viewpoint (repeated vs. changed) were orthogonally manipulated within face pairs. Early face structural encoding (N170; 150-190 ms) was modulated by face realism and by viewpoint-related perceptual demands. The subsequent N250r (220-270 ms) was sensitive to the formation of viewpoint-invariant identity representations in memory, with different temporal dynamics across face types: viewpoint tolerance increased gradually for photographs with repeated exposure, whereas it emerged earlier for stylized faces. After repeated exposure, a reliable N250r was also observed for unseen, novel views, suggesting that learning supports progressively more stable and potentially more abstract identity representations. These findings are discussed in light of stimulus structure and the role of top-down processes in the formation of view-invariant representations.
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Francisco Cruz
Invited Assistant Professor
Francisco Cruz is an invited assistant professor in psychology, statistics, and methods at the Faculdade de Psicologia, Universidade de Lisboa, and Faculdade de Ciências da Saúde, Universidade Europeia. Junior Consulting Editor at the Journal of European Social Psychology, 2025-present. Social Psychology Ph.D. on lay beliefs about science, supervised by Prof. André Mata (Universidade de Lisboa) and Prof. Tania Lombrozo (Princeton University), 2022-2025. Visiting Student Research Collaborator at Princeton University, 2023-2024. Society for General Psychology and Interdisciplinary Inquiry, Fulbright Portugal, and Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia awardee. His research interests include lay beliefs about science (i.e., what people believe that science can or cannot explain and why), motivated beliefs in science (i.e., the contexts in which people are more prone to accepting scientific explanations), representation of social groups (i.e., how people integrate information to provide judgments on shared homogeneity vs. heterogeneity across group members), epistemic trespassing (i.e., when people provide judgments on domains beyond those in which they are experts), intuitive mind-body dualism (i.e., a natural tendency to see the world as split in material and immaterial portions), and face perception (i.e., features driving the advantage in recall for own- vs. other-race faces).