Neural correlates of facilitations in face learning by selective caricaturing of facial shape or reflectance

Spatially caricatured faces were recently shown to benefit face learning (Schulz et al., 2012a). Moreover, spatial information may be particularly important for encoding unfamiliar faces, but less so for recognizing familiar faces (Kaufmann et al., 2013). To directly test the possibility of a major role of reflectance information for the recognition of familiar faces, we compared effects of selective photorealistic caricaturing in either shape or reflectance on face learning and recognition. Participants learned 3D-photographed faces across different viewpoints, and different images were presented at learning and test. At test, performance benefits for both types of caricatures were modulated by familiarity: Benefits for learned faces were substantially larger for reflectance caricatures, whereas benefits for novel faces were numerically larger for shape caricatures. ERPs confirmed a consistent reduction of the occipitotemporal P200 (200–240ms) by shape caricaturing, whereas the most prominent effect of reflectance caricaturing was seen in an enhanced posterior N250 (240–400ms), a component that has been related to the activation of acquired face representations. Our results suggest that performance benefits for face learning caused by distinctive spatial versus reflectance information are mediated by different neural processes with different timing and support a prominent role of reflectance for the recognition of learned faces. •Selective caricaturing of shape or reflectance benefits face learning•Substantially larger recognition benefits of learned reflectance caricatures•Different neural mediation for processing of caricatured shape vs. reflectance•Earlier effects of shape (N170, P200) than reflectance (N250); different topographies•Larger role of shape for novel faces; larger role of reflectance for learned faces