Avatars and point-light faces: sometimes a face doesn't help recognition

Facial movement may provide cues to identity that can supplement or even supplant static facial information. We investigated whether participants could match dynamic familiar and unfamiliar faces when static cues were minimised, using facial point-light-displays (PLDs) or shape-averaged avatars. Experiment 1 tested the matching of famous and unfamiliar faces in a same/different task, using the same stimulus type within each pair. Experiment 2 replicated Experiment 1, except that participants attempted to match full-face video images to PLDs or avatars. Overall, performance was better for PLDs than avatars, and for familiar compared to unfamiliar faces. Moving images were matched better than static frames, and this effect was larger for unfamiliar than familiar faces. The results indicate that the benefit derived from viewing a face in motion can depend on the task and the stimuli. In general, it appears that movement can provide a useful cue to identity, particularly for unfamiliar faces.