Three-dimensional caricatures of human heads: distinctiveness and the perception of facial age.

A standard facial-caricaturing algorithm was applied to a three-dimensional representation of human heads. This algorithm sometimes produced heads that appeared 'caricatured'. More commonly, however, exaggerating the distinctive three-dimensional information in a face seemed to produce an increase in the apparent age of the face--both at a local level, by exaggerating small facial creases into wrinkles, and at a more global level via changes that seemed to make the underlying structure of the skull more evident. Concomitantly, de-emphasis of the distinctive three-dimensional information in a face made it appear relatively younger than the veridical and caricatured faces. More formally, face-age judgments made by human observers were ordered according to the level of caricature, with anticaricatures judged younger than veridical faces, and veridical faces judged younger than caricatured faces. These results are discussed in terms of the importance of the nature of the features made more distinct by a caricaturing algorithm and the nature of human representation(s) of faces.