The face-inversion effect as a deficit in the encoding of configural information: direct evidence

Attentional capture by change in direct gaze

In three experiments, we examined whether change in direct gaze was better at capturing visuospatial attention than non-direct gaze change. Also, change in direct gaze can be categorised into two types: 'look toward', which means gaze changing to look toward observers, and 'look away', which means gaze changing to look away from observers. Thus, we also investigated which type of change in direct gaze was more effective in capturing visuospatial attention. Each experiment employed a change-detection task, and we compared detection accuracy between 'look away', 'look toward', and non-direct gaze-change conditions. In experiment 1, we found detection advantage for change in direct gaze relative to non-direct gaze change, and for 'look toward' compared with 'look away'. In experiment 2, we conducted control experiments to exclude possibilities of simple motion detection and geometrical factors of eyes, and confirm detection advantage in experiment 1 only occurred when the stimuli were processed as faces and gazes. In experiment 3, we manipulated the head deviation, but the results in experiment 1 persisted despite changes in head orientation. The findings establish that individuals are sensitive to change in direct relative to non-direct gaze change, and 'look toward' compared with 'look away'.

Configural information is processed differently in human action

Recent evidence indicates that observers' sensitivity to configural information in dynamic human action is disrupted when action is inverted, whereas sensitivity to featural action information is not. The current research involved two experiments that expand upon this basic finding. Experiment 1 revealed that featural and configural action information are processed similarly in static representations of action as in dynamic action. Experiment 2 indicated that configural processing is uniquely sensitive to orientation only in human action as compared to a similar control stimulus. These findings further support the idea that the perception of action recruits specialized orientation-specific configural processing, and parallel similar findings in face perception and visual expertise.

Recognizing Degraded Faces: The Contribution of Configural and Featural Cues

Human face-recognition processes must maintain high levels of performance under different viewing conditions. An important dimension of variability is image resolution, which is affected by distance, refractive errors, and light levels. Here, we investigate how changes in resolution modulate the visual-system's ability to detect featural versus configural changes in face images. It has been suggested that at lower spatial frequencies the visual system relies predominantly on configural information, yet, to our knowledge, no experiments have systematically examined this idea. We determined subjects' relative sensitivities to configural and featural changes for systematically degraded images. We show that overall configuration and local features are processed equally well at the different resolution levels, supporting the idea of a holistic face-representation that encompasses both feature shape information and information about the distance between the features. These data have also enabled us to derive lower bounds for the resolution needed to effectively use each type of information. Our data are replicated with a completely different face stimulus set, but are not replicated when subjects were shown houses instead of faces. Overall, these results suggest that at lower spatial frequencies, facial representations embody both configural and featural attributes equally, and provide a platform for investigating the essence of holistic facial representations for low-resolution images.

Age-related changes in processing faces from detection to identification: ERP evidence

We examined the ability of people 70 to 90 years old to apply global, configural, and featural face-processing strategies. In addition we investigated age-related changes in the ability to categorize faces at basic, subordinate, and individual levels. Using the N170 potential as index of early face processing and the P300 component as index of categorical decision making and effort, we found significant age-related perceptual changes which slowed and somewhat impaired face processing. Specifically, older participants had problems integrating face features into global structures, demonstrating enhanced dependence on distal global information. They did not apply configural computations by default while processing faces which suggests that, unless identification is required, they process faces only at a basic level. These perceptual changes could be the cause for slower and less accurate subordinate categorization, particularly when it is based on details. At the neural levels face processing was not right-lateralized, reflecting excessive involvement of the left hemisphere in perception leading to a more general reduction of interhemispheric asymmetry. In addition we found excessive but nonselective activation of frontal regions adding support to the view that executive control and particularly inhibition of irrelevant input are reduced in the elderly.

The perception of two-tone Mooney faces in chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes)

Neurological experiments have revealed a complex network of areas in the human brain that respond more to faces than to other categories of objects and thus have been implemented in face categorization. The aim of this study was to investigate whether chimpanzees (n = 5), our closest living relatives, detect and categorize faces on the basis of first-order information, and whether this sensitivity is specific to faces or generalizes to other objects. In service to this aim, we created multiple categories of two-tone 'Mooney' objects (chimpanzee faces, shoes, human hands), because, by maximizing contrast, the Mooney transformation selectively degrades second-order information (the basis for individual discrimination in humans), leaving only first-order information intact. Two experiments used a 2AFC MTS procedure. The first experiment provided strong evidence that, like humans, chimpanzees categorize Mooney faces as faces. However, without second-order information, the chimpanzees could not match Mooney faces at the individual level. In Experiment 2, four of the five chimpanzees found it easier to categorize Mooney faces than Mooney shoes. Neurological evidence strongly indicates a dedicated neural mechanism for face categorization in the human brain, and our data suggest that chimpanzees share this level of specialization.

How Mood States Affect Information Processing During Facial Emotion Recognition: An Eye Tracking Study

Existing research shows that a sad mood hinders emotion recognition. More generally, it has been shown that mood affects information processing. A happy mood facilitates global processing and a sad mood boosts local processing. Global processing has been described as the Gestalt-like integration of details; local processing is understood as the detailed processing of the parts. The present study investigated how mood affects the use of information processing styles in an emotion recognition task. Thirty-three participants were primed with happy or sad moods in a within-subjects design. They performed an emotion recognition task during which eye movements were registered. Eye movements served to provide information about participants’ global or local information processing style. Our results suggest that when participants were in a happy mood, they processed information more globally compared to when they were in a sad mood. However, global processing was only positively and local processing only negatively related to emotion recognition when participants were in a sad mood. When they were in a happy mood, processing style was not related to emotion recognition performance. Our findings clarify the mechanism that underlies accurate emotion recognition, which is important when one is aiming to improve this ability (i.e., via training).

Featural versus configural face processing in a rare genetic disorder: Williams syndrome

BACKGROUND

Williams syndrome (WMS) is a rare genetic disorder with an estimated prevalence of 1 in 20 000 live births. Among other characteristics, WMS has a distinctive cognitive profile with spared face processing and language skills that contrasts with impairment in the cognitive domains of spatial cognition, problem solving and planning. It remains unclear whether individuals with WMS process faces using a featural strategy that focuses on features or a configural strategy that takes into consideration the contour of a face and spatial relations between features.

METHODS

To investigate face processing in WMS, the tasks specifically probe unfamiliar face matching by using a design that includes manipulations in face presentation (thatcherised and non-thatcherised), face orientation (upright and inverted) and face valence (happy and neutral expression) in a match-to-target face recognition design. The sample consisted of 20 participants with WMS, 10 participants with non-specific developmental delay (IQ-matched) and 10 normal control participants (chronological age-matched).

RESULTS

Similar to normal controls, WMS performed best when faces were presented upright. The results show while the WMS group did not perform as well as their typically developing counterparts, they did significantly better than the IQ-matched developmentally delayed group. WMS did not show an accuracy advantage for inverted faces commonly understood as an index for featural face processing, nor did they perform better on thatcherised inverted face conditions whereby featural processing is forced. Furthermore, no accuracy advantage was observed for positively valenced (happy) faces in the WMS group.

CONCLUSION

These results are consistent with previous work showing a configural face processing approach in WMS, a strategy that is also utilised by normal controls.

The inversion effect reveals species differences in face processing

Face recognition is a complex skill that requires the integration of facial features across the whole face, e.g., holistic processing. It is unclear whether, and to what extent, other species process faces in a manner that is similar to humans. Previous studies on the inversion effect, a marker of holistic processing, in nonhuman primates have revealed mixed results in part because many studies have failed to include alternative image categories necessary to understand whether the effects are truly face-specific. The present study re-examined the inversion effect in rhesus monkeys and chimpanzees using comparable testing methods and a variety of high quality stimuli including faces and nonfaces. The data support an inversion effect in chimpanzees only for conspecifics' faces (expert category), suggesting face-specific holistic processing similar to humans. Rhesus monkeys showed inversion effects for conspecifics, but also for heterospecifics' faces (chimpanzees), and nonfaces images (houses), supporting important species differences in this simple test of holistic face processing.

Sad people are more accurate at face recognition than happy people

Mood has varied effects on cognitive performance including the accuracy of face recognition (Lundh & Ost, 1996). Three experiments are presented here that explored face recognition abilities in mood-induced participants. Experiment 1 demonstrated that happy-induced participants are less accurate and have a more conservative response bias than sad-induced participants in a face recognition task. Using a remember/know/guess procedure, Experiment 2 showed that sad-induced participants had more conscious recollections of faces than happy-induced participants. Additionally, sad-induced participants could recognise all faces accurately, whereas, happy- and neutral-induced participants recognised happy faces more accurately than sad faces. In Experiment 3, these effects were not observed when participants intentionally learnt the faces, rather than incidentally learnt the faces. It is suggested that happy-induced participants do not process faces as elaborately as sad-induced participants.

The development of perceptual expertise for faces and objects in autism spectrum conditions

Previous research indicates that individuals with autism spectrum conditions (ASC) do not develop face expertise to the same extent as typical individuals. Yet it remains unclear whether this atypicality is specific to faces or related to more pervasive perceptual or cognitive deficits involved in the actual process of gaining expertise. To address this question, we examined the extent to which adults with ASC were capable of developing expertise with non-face objects. To become experts, all participants completed a 2-week training program with novel objects, known as Greebles. Level of expertise was assessed throughout training by measuring the ability to identify Greebles on an individual level. The perceptual strategies acquired as a result of expertise were measured through an inversion effect task completed before and after training, in which performance with upright Greebles and faces was compared to performance with inverted Greebles and faces. After expertise training, it was found that individuals in both the ASC and the typical group successfully achieved expertise and showed an enhanced Greeble inversion effect as a result of training. The development of an inversion effect with Greebles suggests that individuals with ASC may employ the same processing strategies as the typical group. Although exploratory, these findings have implications for understanding the nature of the face processing deficit in ASC as well as offering potential insights into face processing interventions for individuals with ASC.

Thatcherization impacts the processing of own-race faces more so than other-race faces: an ERP study

It has been suggested that differential use of configural processing strategies may underlie racially based recognition deficits (known as the "other-race effect"). By employing a well-known configural manipulation (Thatcherization, i.e., rotating the eyes and mouth by 180°), we aimed to demonstrate, electrophysiologically, that configural processing is used to a greater extent when viewing same-race faces than when viewing other-race faces. Face-related event-related potential (ERP) responses were measured for participants viewing normal and Thatcherized faces of their own race (Caucasian) and of another race (African-American). The P1 and N170 components were modulated to a greater extent by Thatcherization for same-race faces, suggesting that the processing of these faces is, in fact, more reliant on configural information than other-race faces. Thatcherization also affected the P250 component more so for same-race faces independently of orientation. The race-dependent effects of Thatcherization as early as P1 suggest that configural encoding may be occurring much earlier than the well-cited N170.

The importance of surface-based cues for face discrimination in non-human primates

Understanding how individual identity is processed from faces remains a complex problem. Contrast reversal, showing faces in photographic negative, impairs face recognition in humans and demonstrates the importance of surface-based information (shading and pigmentation) in face recognition. We tested the importance of contrast information for face encoding in chimpanzees and rhesus monkeys using a computerized face-matching task. Results showed that contrast reversal (positive to negative) selectively impaired face processing in these two species, although the impairment was greater for chimpanzees. Unlike chimpanzees, however, monkeys performed just as well matching negative to positive faces, suggesting that they retained some ability to extract identity information from negative faces. A control task showed that chimpanzees, but not rhesus monkeys, performed significantly better matching face parts compared with whole faces after a contrast reversal, suggesting that contrast reversal acts selectively on face processing, rather than general visual-processing mechanisms. These results confirm the importance of surface-based cues for face processing in chimpanzees and humans, while the results were less salient for rhesus monkeys. These findings make a significant contribution to understanding the evolution of cognitive specializations for face processing among primates, and suggest potential differences between monkeys and apes.

Impaired holistic processing in congenital prosopagnosia

It has long been argued that face processing requires disproportionate reliance on holistic or configural processing, relative to that required for non-face object recognition, and that a disruption of such holistic processing may be causally implicated in prosopagnosia. Previously, we demonstrated that individuals with congenital prosopagnosia (CP) did not show the normal face inversion effect (better performance for upright compared to inverted faces) and evinced a local (rather than the normal global) bias in a compound letter global/local (GL) task, supporting the claim of disrupted holistic processing in prosopagnosia. Here, we investigate further the nature of holistic processing impairments in CP, first by confirming, in a large sample of CP individuals, the absence of the normal face inversion effect and the presence of the local bias on the GL task, and, second, by employing the composite face paradigm, often regarded as the gold standard for measuring holistic face processing. In this last task, we show that, in contrast with controls, the CP group perform equivalently with aligned and misaligned faces and was impervious to (the normal) interference from the task-irrelevant bottom part of faces. Interestingly, the extent of the local bias evident in the composite task is correlated with the abnormality of performance on diagnostic face processing tasks. Furthermore, there is a significant correlation between the magnitude of the local bias in the GL and performance on the composite task. These results provide further evidence for impaired holistic processing in CP and, moreover, corroborate the critical role of this type of processing for intact face recognition.

Developmental and individual differences on the P1 and N170 ERP components in children with and without autism

The P1 and N170 components, two event-related potentials sensitive to face processing, were examined in response to faces and vehicles for children with autism and typical development. P1 amplitude decreased, P1 latency decreased, and N170 amplitude became more negative with age. Children with typical development had larger P1 amplitudes for inverted faces than upright faces, but children with autism did not show this pattern. Children with autism had longer N170 latencies than children with typical development. Smaller P1 amplitudes and more negative N170 amplitudes for upright faces were associated with better social skills for children with typical development.

Visual adaptation and face perception

The appearance of faces can be strongly affected by the characteristics of faces viewed previously. These perceptual after-effects reflect processes of sensory adaptation that are found throughout the visual system, but which have been considered only relatively recently in the context of higher level perceptual judgements. In this review, we explore the consequences of adaptation for human face perception, and the implications of adaptation for understanding the neural-coding schemes underlying the visual representation of faces. The properties of face after-effects suggest that they, in part, reflect response changes at high and possibly face-specific levels of visual processing. Yet, the form of the after-effects and the norm-based codes that they point to show many parallels with the adaptations and functional organization that are thought to underlie the encoding of perceptual attributes like colour. The nature and basis for human colour vision have been studied extensively, and we draw on ideas and principles that have been developed to account for norms and normalization in colour vision to consider potential similarities and differences in the representation and adaptation of faces.

Seeing faces as objects: no face inversion effect with geometrical discrimination

Inversion dramatically impairs face perception, recognition, and discrimination. Yet it does not interfere with the ability to make precise estimates of facial feature distances. To investigate this discontinuity between facial feature distance estimation and general perception and recognition, we assessed the effect of inversion on the discrimination of differences in facial compression and elongation or expansion using geometrically distorted faces. The results clearly showed that geometrical face discrimination is not subject to the traditional face inversion effect and did not show a benefit for natural faces. Although discrimination thresholds were not affected by inversion, response times to the distance judgments were faster with inversion, especially when the inverted faces contained natural configurations. Based on these counterintuitive results, we suggest that participants used analytical processing to do the discrimination task. Moreover, we suggest that the depth with which a face is holistically encoded depends on the nature of the task, face orientation, and similarity between a face and the prototypical face template.

Automatic Aspects in Face Perception

We examined the perceptual dependency of local facial information on the whole facial context. In Experiment 1 participants matched a predetermined facial feature that appeared in two sequentially presented faces judging whether it is identical or not, while ignoring an irrelevant dimension in the faces. This irrelevant dimension was either (a) compatible or incompatible with the target’s response and (b) same or different in either featural characteristics or metric distance between facial features in the two faces. A compatibility effect was observed for upright but not inverted faces, regardless of the type of change that differentiated between the faces in the irrelevant dimension. Even when the target was presented upright in the inverted faces, to attenuate perceptual load, no compatibility effect was found (Experiment 2). Finally, no compatibility effects were found for either upright or inverted houses (Experiment 3). These findings suggest that holistic face perception is mandatory.

Face inversion reduces the persistence of global form and its neural correlates

Face inversion produces a detrimental effect on face recognition. The extent to which the inversion of faces and other kinds of objects influences the perceptual binding of visual information into global forms is not known. We used a behavioral method and functional MRI (fMRI) to measure the effect of face inversion on visual persistence, a type of perceptual memory that reflects sustained awareness of global form. We found that upright faces persisted longer than inverted versions of the same images; we observed a similar effect of inversion on the persistence of animal stimuli. This effect of inversion on persistence was evident in sustained fMRI activity throughout the ventral visual hierarchy, including the lateral occipital area (LO), two face-selective visual areas--the fusiform face area (FFA) and the occipital face area (OFA)--and several early visual areas. V1 showed the same initial fMRI activation to upright and inverted forms but this activation lasted longer for upright stimuli. The inversion effect on persistence-related fMRI activity in V1 and other retinotopic visual areas demonstrates that higher-tier visual areas influence early visual processing via feedback. This feedback effect on figure-ground processing is sensitive to the orientation of the figure.

The role of holistic processing in face perception: evidence from the face inversion effect

A large body of research supports the hypothesis that the human visual system does not process a face as a collection of separable facial features but as an integrated perceptual whole. One common assumption is that we quickly build holistic representations to extract useful second-order information provided by the variation between the faces of different individuals. An alternative account suggests holistic processing is a fast, early grouping process that first serves to distinguish faces from other competing objects. From this perspective, holistic processing is a quick initial response to the first-order information present in every face. To test this hypothesis we developed a novel paradigm for measuring the face inversion effect, a standard marker of holistic face processing, that measures the minimum exposure time required to discriminate between two stimuli. These new data demonstrate that holistic processing operates on whole upright faces, regardless of whether subjects are required to extract first- or second-level information. In light of this, we argue that holistic processing is a general mechanism that may occur at an earlier stage of face perception than individual discrimination to support the rapid detection of face stimuli in everyday visual scenes.

How Different is Different? Criterion and Sensitivity in Face-Space

Not all detectable differences between face images correspond to a change in identity. Here we measure both sensitivity to change and the criterion difference that is perceived as a change in identity. Both measures are used to test between possible similarity metrics. Using a same/different task and the method of constant stimuli criterion is specified as the 50% "different" point (P50) and sensitivity as the difference limen (DL). Stimuli and differences are defined within a "face-space" based on principal components analysis of measured differences in three-dimensional shape. In Experiment 1 we varied views available. Criterion (P50) was lowest for identical full-face view comparisons that can be based on image differences. When comparing across views P50, was the same for a static 45° change as for multiple animated views, although sensitivity (DL) was higher for the animated case, where it was as high as for identical views. Experiments 2 and 3 tested possible similarity metrics. Experiment 2 contrasted Euclidean and Mahalanobis distance by setting PC1 or PC2 to zero. DL did not differ between conditions consistent with Mahalanobis. P50 was lower when PC2 changed emphasizing that perceived changes in identity are not determined by the magnitude of Euclidean physical differences. Experiment 3 contrasted a distance with an angle based similarity measure. We varied the distinctiveness of the faces being compared by varying distance from the origin, a manipulation that affects distances but not angles between faces. Angular P50 and DL were both constant for faces from 1 to 2 SD from the mean, consistent with an angular measure. We conclude that both criterion and sensitivity need to be considered and that an angular similarity metric based on standardized PC values provides the best metric for specifying what physical differences will be perceived to change in identity.

Perceptual integrality of componential and configural information in faces

The relative contribution of componential and configural information to face perception is controversial. We addressed this issue in the present study by examining how componential information and configural information interact during face processing, using Garner's (1974) speeded classification paradigm. When classifying upright faces varying in components (eyes, nose, and mouth) and configural information (intereyes and nose-mouth spacing), observers could not selectively attend to components without being influenced by irrelevant variation in configural information, and vice versa, indicating that componential information and configural information are integral in upright face processing. Performance with inverted faces showed selective attention to components but not to configural information, implying dominance of componential information in processing inverted faces. When faces varied only in components, selective attention to different components was observed in upright and inverted faces, indicating that facial components are perceptually separable. These results provide strong evidence that integrality of componential and configural information, rather than the relative dominance of either, is the hallmark of upright face perception.

The nature of upright and inverted face representations: an adaptation-transfer study of configuration

It is considered that whole-face processing of spatial structure may only be possible in upright faces, with only local feature processing in inverted faces. We asked whether this was due to impoverished representations of inverted faces. We performed two experiments. In the first, we divided faces into segments to create 'exploded' faces with disrupted second-order structures, and 'scrambled' faces with altered first-order relations; in the second we shifted features within intact facial outlines to create equivalent disruptions of spatial structure. In both we assessed the transfer of adaptation between faces with altered structure and intact faces. Scrambled adaptors did not adapt upright or inverted intact faces, indicating that a whole-face configuration is required at either orientation. Both upright and inverted faces showed a similar decline in aftereffect magnitude when adapting faces had altered second-order structure, implying that this structure is present in both upright and inverted face representations. We conclude that inverted faces are not represented simply as a collection of features, but have a whole-face configuration with second-order structure, similar to upright faces. Thus the qualitative impairments induced by inversion are not due to degraded inverted facial representations, but may reflect limitations in perceptual mechanisms.

Patterns of visual attention to faces and objects in autism spectrum disorder

This study used eye-tracking to examine visual attention to faces and objects in adolescents with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and typical peers. Point of gaze was recorded during passive viewing of images of human faces, inverted human faces, monkey faces, three-dimensional curvilinear objects, and two-dimensional geometric patterns. Individuals with ASD obtained lower scores on measures of face recognition and social-emotional functioning but exhibited similar patterns of visual attention. In individuals with ASD, face recognition performance was associated with social adaptive function. Results highlight heterogeneity in manifestation of social deficits in ASD and suggest that naturalistic assessments are important for quantifying atypicalities in visual attention.

Deficits in early-stage face perception in excessive internet users

Excessive Internet use is associated with a limited ability to communicate effectively socially, which depends largely on the capacity for perception of the human face. We used a passive visual detection paradigm to compare the early stages of the processing of face-related information in young excessive Internet users (EIUs) and healthy normal subjects by analyzing event-related potentials (ERPs) elicited by faces and by nonface stimuli (tables), each presented in the upright and inverted position. The P1 and N170 components of the spectrum of ERPs elicited at occipital-temporal sites by the viewing of faces were larger and peaked sooner than the same ERP components elicited by tables, and inverted faces significantly enhanced and delayed the N170 component. EIUs had a generally smaller P1 component than did normal subjects, whether elicited by faces or by tables, and the N170 effect, or difference in amplitude of the N170 component for faces versus tables, was significantly smaller in the EIUs than in normal subjects. However, the N170 inversion effect, or difference in amplitude of the N170 component elicited by upright versus inverted faces, was similar in the EIUs and normal subjects. These data indicate that EIUs have deficits in the early stage of face-perception processing but may have intact holistic/configural processing of faces. Whether some deeper processes of face perception, such as face memory and face identification, are affected in EIUs needs to be investigated further with more specific procedures.

Face Viewpoint Effects about Three Axes: The Role of Configural and Featural Processing

We directly compared recognition for faces following 0° – 75° viewpoint rotation about the yaw, pitch, and roll axes. The aim was to determine the extent to which configural and featural information supported face recognition following rotations about each of these axes. Experiment 1 showed that performance on a sequential-matching task was viewpoint-dependent for all three types of rotation. The best face-recognition accuracy and shortest reaction time was found for roll rotations, then for yaw rotations, and finally the worst accuracy and slowest reaction time was found for pitch rotations. Directional differences in recognition were found for pitch rotations, but not for roll or yaw. Experiment 2 provided evidence that, in all three cases, viewpoint-dependent declines in recognition were primarily driven by the loss of configural information. However, it also appeared that significant featural information was lost following yaw and pitch (but not roll) rotations. Together, these findings show that unfamiliar-face recognition is viewpoint-dependent following rotation about each axis (and in each direction), and that performance is based on the availability of configural and, to a lesser extent, featural information.

Configural Face Processing: A Meta-Analytic Survey

In the field of face processing, the configural hypothesis is defended by many researchers. It is often claimed that this thesis is robustly supported by a large number of experiments exploring the face-inversion effect, the composite face effect, the face superiority effect, and the negative face effect. However, this claim is generally based on a rudimentary and approximate vote-counting approach. In this paper, I use meta-analyses to examine the relevant literature in more depth. The analysis supports the vote-counting argument.

Haptic Recognition of Emotions in Raised-Line Drawings by Congenitally Blind and Sighted Adults

15 sighted and 15 congenitally blind adults were to classify raised-line pictures of emotional faces through haptics. Whereas accuracy did not vary significantly between the two groups, the blind adults were faster at the task. These results suggest that raised-line pictures of emotional faces are intelligible to blind adults.

Processes underlying the cross-race effect: an investigation of holistic, featural, and relational processing of own-race versus other-race faces

Adults are often better at recognising own-race than other-race faces. Unlike previous studies that reported an own-race advantage after administering a single test of either holistic processing or of featural and relational processing, we used a cross-over design and multiple tasks to assess differential processing of faces from a familiar race versus a less familiar race. Caucasian and Chinese adults performed four tasks, each with Caucasian and Chinese faces. Two tasks measured holistic processing: the composite face task and the part/whole task. Both tasks indicated holistic processing of own-race and other-race faces that did not differ in degree. Two tasks measured featural and relational processing: the Jane/Ling task, in which same/ different judgments were made about face pairs that differed in features of their spacing, and the scrambled/blurred task, in which test faces were scrambled (isolates memory for components) or blurred (isolates memory for relations). Both tasks provided evidence of an own-race advantage in both featural and relational processing. We conclude that even when adults process other-race faces holistically, other manifestations of an own-race advantage remain.

Inverted face processing in body dysmorphic disorder

Individuals with body dysmorphic disorder (BDD) are preoccupied with perceived defects in appearance. Preliminary evidence suggests abnormalities in global and local visual information processing. The objective of this study was to compare global and local processing in BDD subjects and healthy controls by testing the face inversion effect, in which inverted (upside-down) faces are recognized more slowly and less accurately relative to upright faces. Eighteen medication-free subjects with BDD and 17 matched, healthy controls performed a recognition task with sets of upright and inverted faces on a computer screen that were either presented for short duration (500 ms) or long duration (5000 ms). Response time and accuracy rates were analyzed using linear and logistic mixed effects models, respectively. Results indicated that the inversion effect for response time was smaller in BDD subjects than controls during the long duration stimuli, but was not significantly different during the short duration stimuli. Inversion effect on accuracy rates did not differ significantly between groups during either of the two durations. Lesser inversion effect in BDD subjects may be due to greater detail-oriented and piecemeal processing for long duration stimuli. Similar results between groups for short duration stimuli suggest that they may be normally engaging configural and holistic processing for brief presentations. Abnormal visual information processing in BDD may contribute to distorted perception of appearance; this may not be limited to their own faces, but to others' faces as well.

Interattribute Distances do not Represent the Identity of Real World Faces

According to an influential view, based on studies of development and of the face inversion effect, human face recognition relies mainly on the treatment of the distances among internal facial features. However, there is surprisingly little evidence supporting this claim. Here, we first use a sample of 515 face photographs to estimate the face recognition information available in interattribute distances. We demonstrate that previous studies of interattribute distances generated faces that exaggerated by 376% this information compared to real-world faces. When human observers are required to recognize faces solely on the basis of real-world interattribute distances, they perform poorly across a broad range of viewing distances (equivalent to 2 to more than 16 m in the real-world). In contrast, recognition is almost perfect when observers recognize faces on the basis of real-world information other than interattribute distances such as attribute shapes and skin properties. We conclude that facial cues other than interattribute distances such as attribute shapes and skin properties are the dominant information of face recognition mechanisms.

Horizontal information drives the behavioral signatures of face processing

Recent psychophysical evidence indicates that the vertical arrangement of horizontal information is particularly important for encoding facial identity. In this paper we extend this notion to examine the role that information at different (particularly cardinal) orientations might play in a number of established phenomena each a behavioral “signature” of face processing. In particular we consider (a) the face inversion effect (FIE), (b) the facial identity after-effect, (c) face-matching across viewpoint, and (d) interactive, so-called holistic, processing of face parts. We report that filtering faces to remove all but the horizontal information largely preserves these effects but conversely, retaining vertical information generally diminishes or abolishes them. We conclude that preferential processing of horizontal information is a central feature of human face processing that supports many of the behavioral signatures of this critical visual operation.

Face Inversion Effect Emerges Under Critical Configural Discrepancy

Configural processing has been considered the major contributor to the face inversion effect (FIE) in face recognition. However, most researchers have only obtained the FIE with one specific ratio of configural alteration. It remains unclear whether the ratio of configural alteration itself can mediate the occurrence of the FIE. We aimed to clarify this issue by manipulating the configural information parametrically using six different ratios, ranging from 4% to 24%. Participants were asked to judge whether a pair of faces were entirely identical or different. The paired faces that were to be compared were presented either simultaneously (Experiment 1) or sequentially (Experiment 2). Both experiments revealed that the FIE was observed only when the ratio of configural alteration was in the intermediate range. These results indicate that even though the FIE has been frequently adopted as an index to examine the underlying mechanism of face processing, the emergence of the FIE is not robust with any configural alteration but dependent on the ratio of configural alteration.

Information-processing alternatives to holistic perception: identifying the mechanisms of secondary-level holism within a categorization paradigm

Failure to selectively attend to a facial feature, in the part-to-whole paradigm, has been taken as evidence of holistic perception in a large body of face perception literature. In this article, we demonstrate that although failure of selective attention is a necessary property of holistic perception, its presence alone is not sufficient to conclude holistic processing has occurred. One must also consider the cognitive properties that are a natural part of information-processing systems, namely, mental architecture (serial, parallel), a stopping rule (self-terminating, exhaustive), and process dependency. We demonstrate that an analytic model (nonholistic) based on a parallel mental architecture and a self-terminating stopping rule can predict failure of selective attention. The new insights in our approach are based on the systems factorial technology, which provides a rigorous means of identifying the holistic-analytic distinction. Our main goal in the study was to compare potential changes in architecture when 2 second-order relational facial features are manipulated across different face contexts. Supported by simulation data, we suggest that the critical concept for modeling holistic perception is the interactive dependency between features. We argue that without conducting tests for architecture, stopping rule, and dependency, apparent holism could be confounded with analytic perception. This research adds to the list of converging operations for distinguishing between analytic forms and holistic forms of face perception.

Eye gaze during face processing in children and adolescents with 22q11.2 deletion syndrome

OBJECTIVE

The 22q11.2 deletion syndrome (22q11DS) is a neurogenetic syndrome with high risk for the development of psychiatric disorder. There is interest in identifying reliable markers for measuring and monitoring socio-emotional impairments in 22q11DS during development. The current study investigated eye gaze as a potential marker during a face-processing task in children and young adolescents with 22q11DS.

METHOD

Eye gaze and behavioral correlates were investigated in 26 subjects (aged 8 to 15 years) with 22q11DS during the Jane Task, which targets featural and configural face processing. Individuals with 22q11DS were compared with chronologically age-matched healthy controls and individuals with idiopathic developmental delay (DD).

RESULTS

Few differences in accuracy were observed between patients with 22q11DS and DD controls; however individuals with 22q11DS spent less time on the eyes and more time on the mouths than both comparison groups. IQ predicted time on the eyes in subjects with 22q11DS, and anxiety predicted time on the eyes in DD and 22q11DS subjects.

CONCLUSIONS

These results provide evidence for abnormal exploration of faces in the syndrome and suggest that time spent on the eyes may contribute to face processing difficulties and interact with anxiety levels to exacerbate socio-emotional dysfunction in affected individuals.

No global processing deficit in the Navon task in 14 developmental prosopagnosics

Faces are represented in a more configural or holistic manner than other objects. Substantial evidence indicates that this representation results from face-specific mechanisms, but some have argued that it is produced by configural mechanisms that can be applied to many objects including words. The face-specific hypothesis predicts that non-face configural processes will often be normal in prosopagnosic subjects, whereas the domain-general configural hypothesis predicts they will be deficient on all configural tasks. Although the weight of the evidence favors the face-specific hypothesis, a recent study reopened this issue when it was found that three out of five developmental prosopagnosics showed a larger local processing bias than controls in a global-local task (i.e. a Navon task). To examine this issue more thoroughly we tested a significantly larger sample of prosopagnosics (14 participants) who had severe face memory and face perception deficits. In contrast to the previous report, the developmental prosopagnosics performed normally in the global-local task. Like controls, they showed a typical global advantage and typical global-to-local consistency effects. The results demonstrate that the configural processing required by the Navon task is dissociable from face configural processing.

Discrimination of facial features by adults, 10-year-olds, and cataract-reversal patients

In previous studies we created 8 new versions of a single face: 4 differed only in the spacing among features and 4 differed in the shape of the eyes and mouth. Compared to the spacing set, results for this feature set indicated little impairment by inversion, earlier adult-like accuracy (Mondloch et al, 2002 Perception 31 553-566), and normal performance after a history of early visual deprivation from bilateral congenital cataract (Le Grand et al, 2001 Nature 410 890, 412 786). Here we addressed the possibility that this pattern might have resulted from our having inadvertently selected easily discriminated features or including some faces with make-up. We created 20 featural versions of a single female face and asked adults, 10-year-old children, and patients treated for bilateral congenital cataract to make same/different judgments for 120 pairings (half different). The results confirm that adults easily discriminate facial features, even after early visual deprivation from cataract, and that inversion has only a small effect. By the age of 10 years, children are close to, but not quite at, adult levels of accuracy. The previous findings cannot be attributed to our having inadvertently created a feature set that was unusually easy to discriminate.