Technical Report #193

Spatial Frequencies in Memory for Faces: A Test of Three Frequency-Dependent Hypotheses

James T. Townsend and Michael J. Wenger

Abstract

It has been suggested that the roles of different types of information (e.g., featural, configural, etc. available in a facial stimulus might be useful examined by way of spatial frequency manipulations. Three experiments provide tests of three hypotheses regarding these different types of information: (a) the low frequency dominance hypothesis, which proposes that low frequency information should be superior (relative to high frequency information) as a cue to perception and memory; (b) the distinct informational roles hypothesis, which holds that high spatial frequencies, should carry featural information while low spatial frequencies should carry information about the configuration of those features; and the task-dependent information hypothesis, which suggests that high frequency information should be best suited to discrimination tasks while low frequency information should be best suited for recognition tasks. Results generally contradict the first two of these hypotheses, while providing support for the third. Implications with regard to the various issues related to the informational content of faces, as well as the need to consider important interactions among perceptual and memory processes, are discussed.