The main message of the present paper is that
speed measures of emotion recognition fail to
show uniqueness compared to speed measures of
perceiving/recognising face identity. The factorial
equivalence of speed measures of emotion recognition
and of identity recognition has profound
theoretical implications. In the light of the
cognitive processes required by the administered
tasks (as discussed above)*that go beyond structural
encoding*the present results suggest that
the common basis of identity and expression
recognition not only include early perceptual
processes, but also later processing stages, like
encoding and retrieval. Results substantiate this
for speed data. Previous findings show factorial
equivalence for perception speed and recognition
speed but factorial dissociation for perception
accuracy versus recognition accuracy of faces
(Hildebrandt et al., 2010; Wilhelm et al., 2010).
Together with the present results, we conclude
that the speed and accuracy of performance are
reflecting different aspects of face processing and
are not two sides of the same coin (face cognition
constructs). This is essential because models of
face cognition were frequently only tested on the
basis of speed data. We recommend measuring
and interpreting the speed versus accuracy of face
cognition as different performance constructs.