The Vanderbilt holistic face processing test: a short and reliable measure of holistic face processing.

Abstract

Efforts to understand individual differences in high-level vision necessitate the development of measures that have sufficient reliability, which is generally not a concern in group studies. Holistic processing is central to research on face recognition and, more recently, to the study of individual differences in this area. However, recent work has shown that the most popular measure of holistic processing, the composite task, has low reliability. This is particularly problematic for the recent surge in interest in studying individual differences in face recognition. Here, we developed and validated a new measure of holistic face processing specifically for use in individual-differences studies. It avoids some of the pitfalls of the standard composite design and capitalizes on the idea that trial variability allows for better traction on reliability. Across four experiments, we refine this test and demonstrate its reliability.