Recent evidence shows performance benefits and modulation of face-sensitive event-related potentials (ERPs) for learning and subsequent recognition of faces caricatured in shape or texture (Itz et al., 2014), but there is little evidence on whether this caricature learning advantage generalizes to recognition of veridical faces. Here we investigated whether learning faces as photorealistic caricatures improves subsequent recognition of their veridical counterparts compared to when faces had been learned as veridicals, the so-called reverse caricature effect (Deffenbacher et al., 2000). Facial images derived from a 3D camera system were caricatured selectively in either shape or texture by 50%. Participants learned faces across different viewing angles either as veridicals, shape caricatures, or texture caricatures. At test, all faces (learned and novel) were presented as previously unseen frontal veridical images. Participants performed a speeded oldew task, and we assessed accuracies, reaction times, as well as face-sensitive ERPs. In the performance data, faces learned as caricatures were recognized more accurately than faces learned as veridicals. In the ERP data at learning, N250 and a late-positive component (LPC) were largest for shape caricatures. At test, LPC was largest for faces that had been learned as texture caricatures. Overall, our findings indicate that initial encoding of distinctive facial shape or texture generalizes to and, importantly, facilitates recognition of veridicals.
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