Previous evidence is inconsistent as to whether face inversion attenuates emotion detection advantages in visual search, suggesting either that holistic processing is utilized (Fox & Damjanovic, 2006) or not (Lipp, Price, & Tellegen, 2009). Extending prior research, Experiments 1 and 2 employed search tasks with different posers and varying set size. Consistent with Fox and Damjanovic, both experiments demonstrated attenuation of faster detection of angry faces by inversion, regardless of array

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... size. However, replicating the methods of Lipp et al., Experiment 3 yielded no effect of inversion on emotion detection. These findings seem to suggest that emotional expression detection in visual search is mediated by holistic face processing under some conditions, e.g., when multiple posers are used. However, when task design permits, e.g., when only one poser is used, participants may engage simpler, feature based search strategies to detect an emotional target face.