The Role of Eyes and Mouth in the Memory of a Face

Subjects were presented 27 photographs of faces for inspection with or without transformation (the faces' eyes or mouths masked) and tested for recognition with or without the same transformation. Subjects were just as confident, just as quick to respond, but made more errors when the eyes were masked than when the mouths were. Masking the eyes caused significantly more difficulty on 13 faces than masking the mouths; the converse never did. Subjects performed better by all three measures when inspection and test were in the same mode (transformed or untransformed) than in different modes. It is concluded that the eyes are more important than the mouth in the representation in memory of a face.