A Study of Face Identification: Are People Looking Beyond Disguises?

Object recognition is often quite good even under conditions of incomplete visual information (e.g., when portions of the objects are deleted or occluded from view). Nonetheless, people are confused about the way they actually saw objects, often reporting that incom;)lete objects were seen as complete. In this chapter, we focus on the basis of this confusion, using new research on face identification as a case in point. This line of research points to the activation of imaginal fillingin processes, a form of closure, as a mediating mechanism for object recognition under conditions of partial viewing. Implications of this line of research for theories about developmental differences in face identification and for approaches to the assessment of eyewitness identification are considered.