Gender-Based Prototype Formation in Face Recognition

The role of gender categories in prototype formation during face recognition was investigated in 2 experiments. The participants were asked to learn individual faces and then to recognize them. During recognition, individual faces were mixed with faces, which were blended faces of same or different genders. The results of the 2 experiments showed that blended faces made with learned individual faces were recognized, even though they had never been seen before. In Experiment 1, this effect was stronger when faces belonged to the same gender category (same-sex blended faces), but it also emerged across gender categories (cross-sex blended faces). Experiment 2 further showed that this prototype effect was not affected by the presentation order for same-sex blended faces: The effect was equally strong when the faces were presented one after the other during learning or alternated with faces of the opposite gender. By contrast, the prototype effect across gender categories was highly sensitive to the temporal proximity of the faces blended into the blended faces and almost disappeared when other faces were intermixed. These results indicate that distinct neural populations code for female and male faces. However, the formation of a facial representation can also be mediated by both neural populations. The implications for face-space properties and face-encoding processes are discussed.