Schwaninger A Yang J 2011 Most current psychological theories of face recognition suggest that faces are stored as multiple 2D views. This research aims to explore the application of 3D face representations by means of a new paradigm. Participants were required to match frontal views of faces to silhouettes of the same faces. The formats of the face stimuli were modified in different experiments to make 3D representations accessible (Experiments 1 and 2) or inaccessible (Experiment 3). Multiple 2D view-based algorithms were not applicable due to the singularity of the frontal-view faces. The results disclosed the application and adaptability of 3D face representations. Participants can readily solve the tasks when the face images retain the information essential for the formation of a 3D face representations. However, the performance substantially declined when the 3D information in faces was eliminated (Experiment 3). Performance also varied between different face orientations and different participant groups. https://sonar.ch/global/documents/292141 eng info:eu-repo/semantics/altIdentifier/doi/10.1016/j.visres.2011.02.006 info:eu-repo/semantics/altIdentifier/pmid/21324334 Vision research. - 2011 Adult Algorithms Analysis of Variance Depth Perception Face Female Humans Male Mental Recall Pattern Recognition, Visual Photic Stimulation Recognition, Psychology Task Performance and Analysis Young Adult The application of 3D representations in face recognition. http://purl.org/coar/resource_type/c_6501