ArticleCognitive research: principles and implications2016
Iconic faces are not real faces: enhanced emotion detection and altered neural processing as faces become more iconic.
Article in Cognitive research: principles and implications, 2016. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 14 papers.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
14 citing papers in PubMed.
- An event-related potential comparison of facial expression processing between cartoon and real faces.PloS one · 2019Trial
- A Peer-Led, Narrative-Based, and Mobile-Supported Intervention in Opioid Use Disorder: Multiphase Qualitative and Longitudinal Observational Study.JMIR formative research · 2026Observational
- Beyond race: social group labels and reward motivation override racial features in children's face recognition.Psychological research · 2025Article
- Representation of Pain and Injury in Children's Picture Books-A Content Analysis.European journal of pain (London, England) · 2025Article
- No effect of autistic traits on social attention: evidence based on single-cue and conflicting-cues scenarios.BMC psychology · 2024Article
- Facial icons as indexes of emotions and intentions.Frontiers in psychology · 2024Article
- Meaning above (and in) the head: Combinatorial visual morphology from comics and emoji.Memory & cognition · 2022Article
- Electrophysiological Correlates of Processing Warning Signs With Different Background Colors: An Event-Related Potentials Investigation.Frontiers in psychology · 2021Article
- The Influence of Key Facial Features on Recognition of Emotion in Cartoon Faces.Frontiers in psychology · 2021Article
- The eyes do not have it after all? Attention is not automatically biased towards faces and eyes.Psychological research · 2020Article
- Editors' Introduction and Review: Visual Narrative Research: An Emerging Field in Cognitive Science.Topics in cognitive science · 2020Article
- Contextually-Based Social Attention Diverges across Covert and Overt Measures.Vision (Basel, Switzerland) · 2019Article
- Influence of Attention Control on Implicit and Explicit Emotion Processing of Face and Body: Evidence From Flanker and Same-or-Different Paradigms.Frontiers in psychology · 2019Article
- Artificial Faces Predict Gaze Allocation in Complex Dynamic Scenes.Frontiers in psychology · 2019Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
4 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Iconic representations are ubiquitous; they fill children's cartoons, add humor to newspapers, and bring emotional tone to online communication. Yet, the communicative function they serve remains unaddressed by cognitive psychology. Here, we examined the hypothesis that iconic representations communicate emotional information more efficiently than their realistic counterparts. In Experiment 1, we manipulated low-level features of emotional faces to create five sets of stimuli that ranged from photorealistic to fully iconic. Participants identified emotions on briefly presented faces. Results showed that, at short presentation times, accuracy for identifying emotion on more "cartoonized" images was enhanced. In addition, increasing contrast and decreasing featural complexity benefited accuracy. In Experiment 2, we examined an event-related potential component, the P1, which is sensitive to low-level visual stimulus features. Lower levels of contrast and complexity within schematic stimuli were also associated with lower P1 amplitudes. These findings support the hypothesis that iconic representations differ from realistic images in their ability to communicate specific information, including emotion, quickly and efficiently, and that this effect is driven by changes in low-level visual features in the stimuli.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.