Which of the following best explains why people find it more difficult to recognize inverted faces than other inverted objects?

• A. Face recognition relies heavily on holistic processing, which is disrupted when faces are inverted.
• B. People have less experience viewing faces upside down compared to other objects.
• C. Inverted faces contain fewer visual details than other objects, making them harder to identify.
• D. The brain uses the same feature-based strategy for all objects, but faces have more features to process.

Answer: (A)

Verified step by step guidance

1. Understand the concept of face recognition in psychology, which often involves holistic processing—this means perceiving the face as a whole rather than just a collection of individual features.
2. Recognize that holistic processing is crucial for identifying faces because it allows the brain to integrate spatial relationships between facial features (like the eyes, nose, and mouth) effectively.
3. Consider what happens when a face is inverted (turned upside down): this disrupts holistic processing, making it harder for the brain to perceive the face as a unified whole.
4. Compare this to other objects, which are typically recognized using feature-based processing (analyzing individual parts rather than the whole), and this process is less affected by inversion.
5. Conclude that the difficulty in recognizing inverted faces arises because inversion interferes with holistic processing, which is specifically important for face recognition, unlike other objects.