Imagining Fictional Faces

Fictional characters loom large in cultural traditions throughout recorded history, and are commonly portrayed in literature and visual arts. The persistence of these traditions demonstrates that information concerning the appearance of fictional characters - including facial appearance - can be preserved and shared among individuals. The current thesis is an attempt to understand the cognitive processes underlying mental imagery for fictional faces.
It was already established that mental representations of real faces undergo qualitative change as visual exposure leads to familiarity. Fictional faces are never seen directly, though they may be represented in various ways. If fictional faces can acquire the psychological hallmarks of familiar faces, this would suggest alternative routes to face learning, besides natural visual exposure. To date however, this possibility has been largely ignored. The experiments in this thesis addressed learning of fictional faces by examining familiarity effects for fictional faces, and by assessing the consequences of reading descriptions on mental imagery for fictional characters. The main findings indicate that face representations and face learning may be more adaptable than previously assumed, accommodating photographic images, different types of drawings, and written descriptions. All of these representations can be quantified and compared using the common currency of social inference ratings. Written descriptions of physical and character attributes both contribute to mental imagery for faces, and these complementary types of information can converge on specific facial identities. As well as enriching our psychological understanding of face processing, the current thesis forms a bridge between the scientific study of faces, and portrayals of faces in the arts.