Does drawing faces make you a super-expert of faces? An investigation of face perception and recognition abilities in visual artists.

Face recognition abilities might constitute a continuum with developmental prosopagnosia and outstanding face recognition capacity at each extreme. 'Super-recognizers' display better face processing abilities than controls and show a larger face inversion effect (FIE) [Russell et al, 2009, Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 16 (2), 252-257]. Hence, FIE could reflect a specific visual experience/expertise with faces compared to other objects rather than a qualitatively different kind of processing. In this experiment we tested face processing abilities of visual artists who practice portraiture, as well as more general visual perception and recognition skills, in order to contribute to the long-lasting debate about a possible special status of faces. If some special processing faces benefit from is due to expertise, artists' practice might lead to better perceptual and possibly recognition performance with upright faces compared to controls, while increasing the FIE. Because they need to take both configural and featural information into account to reach a satisfactory likeness, artists might also make a differential use of these facial cues compared to controls. Preliminary data indicate that face processing performance might indeed be linked to perceptual expertise with faces.