Three-Quarter Views of Depth-Rotated Faces Induce Face-Specific Capacity Limits in Visual Search induce face-specific capacity limits in visual search

Processing capacity for famous faces is impaired when target faces are presented in a small crowd of anonymous frontal faces. The present experiments tested whether this finding extends to three-quarter views of faces. Participants made speeded categorization decisions regarding a famous person (politician or film star) accompanied by a peripheral distracter face (either the same or from the opposite target category). The first experiment replicated the finding that processing of a peripheral distracter face is independent of load when the search set contains name strings. The search set in the second experiment consisted of faces. Interference effects between target face and distracter face were found under low load, but not under high load. This was true for both unfamiliar frontal and three-quarter view non-target faces. However, search performance was better for the three-quarter view load conditions. These results indicate that capacity limitations are face-specific and relatively independent of view changes.