ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the utility of borrowing theoretical concepts from the huge literature on verbal memory and reading in an attempt to account for interpretation and memory for faces. When applied to verbal memory, the main weakness of the levels of processing theory was its proposal of a simple hierarchy of levels from the sensory to the semantic. The chapter argues that useful comparisons can be made between the access of identity-specific semantics from faces and words. Visually derived semantic codes thus potentially include the information that this configuration is a face, the apparent sex of the face, the apparent age of the face, its apparent honesty or attractiveness, and the fact that it resembles certain other known faces. The chapter reviews effects of contextual manipulations on the recognition of highly familiar faces—a face such as that of Princess Diana is more readily recognised as familiar if the preceding face is that of Prince Charles.
