1. My face through the looking-glass: The effect of mirror reversal on reflection size estimation
- Author
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Olaf Blanke, Sebastian Dieguez, and Jakob Scherer
- Subjects
Adult ,Male ,Windows ,Face perception ,Me ,media_common.quotation_subject ,Experimental and Cognitive Psychology ,Own Face ,Self ,Functional Laterality ,Young Adult ,Arts and Humanities (miscellaneous) ,Visual cognition ,Perception ,Orientation ,Developmental and Educational Psychology ,Humans ,Size Perception ,media_common ,Orientation (computer vision) ,Mirror reflection ,Size estimation ,Familiarity ,Self-recognition ,Mirrors ,Reflection (mathematics) ,Face (geometry) ,Face ,Images ,Female ,Psychology ,Social psychology ,Photic Stimulation ,Cognitive psychology - Abstract
People tend to grossly overestimate the size of their mirror-reflected face. Although this overestimation bias is robust, not much is known about its relationships to self-face perception. In two experiments, we investigated the overestimation bias as a function of the presentation of the own face (left-right reversed - as in a mirror - or nonreversed - as in a photograph), the identity of the seen face, and prior exposure to a real mirror. For this we developed a computerized task requiring size estimations of displayed faces. We replicated the observation that people overestimate the size of their mirror-reflected face and showed that the overestimation can be reduced following a brief mirror exposure. We also found that left-right reversal modulates the overestimation bias, depending on the perceived face's identity. These data underline the enhanced familiarity of left-right reversed self-faces and the importance of size perception for understanding mirror reflection processing.