The reverse-caricature effect revisited: Familiarization with frontal facial caricatures improves veridical face recognition

Prior research suggests that recognition of a person's face can be facilitated by exaggerating the distinctive features of the face during training. We tested if this ‘reverse‐caricature effect’ would be robust to procedural variations that created more difficult learning environments. Specifically, we examined whether the effect would emerge with frontal rather than three‐quarter views, after very brief exposure to caricatures during the learning phase and after modest rotations of faces during the recognition phase. Results indicate that, even under these difficult training conditions, people are more accurate at recognizing unaltered faces if they are first familiarized with caricatures of the faces, rather than with the unaltered faces. These findings support the development of new training methods to improve face recognition. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.