Holistic Face Research Articles

Two faces of holistic face processing: Facilitation and interference underlying part-whole and composite effects.

Holistic processing, a strong tendency to process multiple features together, is regarded as a hallmark of face perception. Holistic effects can be revealed by several tasks, including the part-whole task, standard composite task, and complete composite task. Although holistic effects are readily observed using these tasks, the lack of correlations among these effects and the mixed findings across these tasks when examining the effects among various populations or manipulations pose questions about how these effects should be understood. We distinguished facilitation and interference effects within the holistic effects in the complete composite task and found that the holistic effect in the part-whole task appeared to be correlated with facilitation but not interference in the complete composite task, whereas the holistic effect in the standard composite task was correlated with interference but not facilitation in the complete composite task. These findings suggest that clarifying the roles of facilitation and interference is critical for understanding holistic face processing.

EXPRESS: Better face-name recall is associated with better face recognition ability.

Face recognition is a highly developed and specialized human ability, distinct from other cognitive abilities. Previous studies examining individual differences in face recognition have focused on face perception and specialized perceptual mechanisms such as holistic face processing. However, the contribution of specific face memory processes to face recognition ability remains unclear. In 99 neurotypical individuals, we administered validated face perception assessments, three face memory tasks (Old/New task, Face-Scene task, Face-Name/Occupation task), and the Cambridge Face Memory Test (CFMT) to assess face recognition ability. We found that after accounting for face perception ability (which significantly predicted face recognition ability), Face-Name recall and recollection of faces in the Face-Scene task predicted unique variance in face recognition ability, with Face-Name recall being the strongest predictor. This highlights that associative memory mechanisms contribute to face recognition abilities and suggest that the ability to learn and recall proper names is particularly important to face recognition.

An investigation on the face inversion effect in deaf children.

The face inversion effect is an important indicator of holistic face perception and reflects the developmental level of face processing. This study examined the face inversion effect in deaf or hard of hearing (DHH) children aged 7-17 using the face dimensions task. This task uses photographic images of a face, in which configural and featural information in the eye and mouth regions have been parametrically and independently manipulated. The study aimed to discuss the effect of face inversion on facial processing in DHH children, including two aspects of information processing types (configural versus featural) and processing regions (eyes versus mouth) and compared the results with hearing children. The results revealed that DHH children aged 7-17years exhibit significant face inversion effect, with disruptions observed in both the featural and configural processing of eyes and mouths when faces were inverted. Configural processing was more affected by inversion than featural processing in all children, with larger differences observed in DHH children than in hearing children. This supports the dual-mode hypothesis of holistic face processing. Age correlations were observed in the sensitivity of DHH children to face inversion effect but not among hearing children. The inversion effect of configural mouth processing decreases with age in DHH children.

Racial ambiguity impairs holistic face processing: Evidence from racially distinctive and racially ambiguous faces

ABSTRACT Humans possess a remarkable ability to efficiently process faces, a skill largely influenced by their experiences with individual faces. However, recent research has challenged the role of experience in holistic face processing. Our study examined the role of face-race experience in holistic face processing among Asian and White adults using Asian, White, and racially ambiguous faces. The findings showed that both Asians and Whites exhibited reliable holistic processing for their own-race faces but failed to exhibit this ability with racially ambiguous faces. Importantly, the failure was not solely due to the specific morphing procedure or response bias. These findings imply that face-race experience plays a crucial role in holistic processing. Notably, Asians maintained holistic processing for both own-race and other-race faces, whereas Whites only showed this for own-race faces, indicating differential impacts of face-race experience on holistic processing and highlight the need for further research across diverse cultural contexts. Highlights Asian adults showed equivalent holistic processing with Asian and Caucasian faces Caucasian adults showed holistic processing with Caucasian faces but not with Asian faces Both Asian and Caucasian adults did not show holistic processing with racially ambiguous faces

Working memory for gaze benefits from the face context.

Retaining gaze in working memory (WM) is essential for successfully navigating through the social world. In the current study, we investigated how WM stores gaze direction by focusing on the role of face context in gaze WM. To address this question, we propose two competing hypotheses. The independence hypothesis predicts that eye gaze is stored independently and is not susceptible to the influence of the surrounding face context. Conversely, the embedding hypothesis claims that gaze WM involves face context and that disruption of holistic face processing would also impair memory for embedded gaze. In three experiments, we adopted different manipulations to disrupt holistic face processing and compared WM performance for gaze within and without face context. In Experiments 1 and 2, we tested WM for gaze direction with schematic upright or inverted faces. We found better performance for gaze within upright faces (vs. inverted faces) by increasing the probability of being remembered. In Experiment 3, we replaced schematic faces with photographic faces, and disrupted holistic processing by using scrambled faces. Results replicated our previous findings, showing that photographic gaze within intact faces was better remembered than gaze presented alone or gaze within scrambled faces. These findings indicate that gaze memory is face-dependent and support the embedding hypothesis.

Rigid facial motion at study facilitates the holistic processing of own-race faces during the structural encoding stage

Holistic processing is a fundamental element of face-recognition studies. Some behavioral studies have investigated the impact of rigid facial motion on holistic face processing, yet it is still unclear how rigid motion affects the time course of holistic face processing for different face races. The current study investigated this issue, using the composite face effect (CFE) as a direct measure of holistic processing. Participants were asked to match the identity of the top half of a static composite face with the study face during the test stage, where the study face was either static or rigidly-moving. ERP results showed that rigidly-moving study faces elicited a larger CFE relative to static study faces in the N170 component when recognizing own-race faces. The amplitude of P1, N170 and P2 components indicated that rigid motion facilitated holistic face processing, with differences observed between the hemispheres over time. Specifically, the CFE was only observed after exposure to rigidly-moving faces in the P1 and P2 components of the right hemisphere. Additionally, a greater CFE was observed following exposure to rigidly-moving faces compared to static faces, particularly in the N170 component of the left hemisphere. This study suggests that holistic processing is a fundamental aspect of face perception that applies to both static and moving faces, not just static ones. Furthermore, rigid facial motion improves holistic processing of own-race faces during the structural encoding stage. These findings provide evidence of distinct neural mechanisms underlying the holistic processing of static and moving faces.

The heterogeneity of holistic processing profiles in developmental prosopagnosia: holistic processing is impaired but not absent

ABSTRACT Although it is generally assumed that face recognition relies on holistic processing, whether face recognition deficits observed in Developmental Prosopagnosics (DPs) can be explained by impaired holistic processing is currently under debate. The mixed findings from past studies could be the consequence of DP’s heterogeneous deficit nature and the use of different measures of holistic processing—the inversion, part-whole, and composite tasks—which showed a poor association among each other. The present study aimed to gain further insight into the role of holistic processing in DPs. Groups of DPs and neurotypicals completed three tests measuring holistic face processing and non-face objects (i.e., Navon task). At a group level, DPs showed (1) diminished, but not absent, inversion and part-whole effects, (2) comparable magnitudes of the composite face effect and (3) global precedence effect in the Navon task. However, single-case analyses showed that these holistic processing deficits in DPs are heterogeneous.

Binocular rivalry reveals differential face processing in congenital prosopagnosia

Congenital Prosopagnosia (CP) is an innate impairment in face perception with heterogeneous characteristics. It is still unclear if and to what degree holistic processing of faces is disrupted in CP. Such disruption would be expected to lead to a focus on local features of the face. In this study, we used binocular rivalry (BR) to implicitly measure face perception in conditions that favour holistic or local processing. The underlying assumption is that if stimulus saliency affects the perceptual dominance of a given stimulus in BR, one can deduce how salient a stimulus is for a given group (here: participants with and without CP) based on the measured perceptual dominance. A further open question is whether the deficit in face processing in CP extends to the processing of the facial display of emotions. In experiment 1, we compared predominance of upright and inverted faces displaying different emotions (fearful, happy, neutral) vs. houses between participants with CP (N = 21) and with normal face perception (N = 21). The results suggest that CP observers process emotions in faces automatically but rely more on local features than controls. The inversion of faces, which is supposed to disturb holistic processing, affected controls in a more pronounced way than participants with CP. In experiment 2, we introduced the Thatcher effect in BR by inverting the eye and mouth regions of the presented faces in the hope of further increasing the effect of face inversion. However, our expectations were not borne out by the results. Critically, both experiments showed that inversion effects were more pronounced in controls than in CP, suggesting that holistic face processing is less relevant in CP. We find BR to be a useful implicit test for assessing visual processing specificities in neurological participants.

Facilitation and interference are asymmetric in holistic face processing.

A hallmark of face specificity is holistic processing. It is typically measured by paradigms such as the part-whole and composite tasks. However, these tasks show little evidence for common variance, so a comprehensive account of holistic processing remains elusive. One aspect that varies between tasks is whether they measure facilitation or interference from holistic processing. In this study, we examined facilitation and interference in a single paradigm to determine the way in which they manifest during a face perception task. Using congruent and incongruent trials in the complete composite face task, we found that these two aspects are asymmetrically influenced by the location and cueing probabilities of the target facial half, suggesting that they may operate somewhat independently. We argue that distinguishing facilitation and interference has the potential to disentangle mixed findings from different popular paradigms measuring holistic processing in one unified framework.

From Perugino to Picasso revisited: Electrophysiological responses to faces in paintings from different art styles

Behavioral research (Ventura, et al., 2023) suggested that pictorial representations of faces varying along a realism-distortion spectrum elicit holistic processing as natural faces. Whether holistic face neural responses are engaged similarly remains, however, underexplored. In the present study, we evaluated the neural correlates of naturalist and artistic face processing, by exploring electrophysiological responses to faces in photographs versus in four major painting styles. The N170 response to faces in photographs was indistinguishable from that elicited by faces in the renaissance art style (depicting the most realistic faces), whilst both categories elicited larger N170 than faces in other art styles (post-impressionism, expressionism, and cubism), with a gradation in brain activity. The present evidence suggest that visual processing may become finer grained the more the realistic nature of the face. Despite behavioral equivalence, the neural mechanisms for holistic processing of natural faces and faces in diverse art styles are not equivalent.

The impact of the use of masks on trait judgments and face recognition.

Although effective in reducing virus transmission, face masks might compromise face recognition and trait judgments. With this study, we aimed to observe the influence of masks on face recognition and trait judgments-more specifically, in trustworthiness, dominance, and distinctiveness judgments. Also, we wanted to observe the possible influence of trait judgments on facial recognition for masked and unmasked faces, which has never been done before. For that, we conducted an online study where 140 participants observed and made trait judgments of masked and unmasked faces in a within-subjects design. After a distractive task, participants performed a recognition memory test. As expected, we observed a better recognition of faces shown without a mask during the study phase, which allowed the holistic processing of the faces. The worst performance was found for faces encoded with a mask but tested without it, occurring simultaneity disruption in holistic face processing and the violation of the encoding specificity principle. Regarding the trait judgments, unmasked faces were considered more distinctive, and masked faces were considered more trustworthy. More interestingly, we can conclude that facial distinctiveness predicts face recognition, regardless of mask use. In contrast, dominance judgments only predicted face recognition when faces were presented without a mask. When faces were exposed with masks, trustworthiness overrides dominance, becoming more critical to recognizing faces. We can interpret these results from an evolutionary perspective.

Measuring the Contributions of Perceptual and Attentional Processes in the Complete Composite Face Paradigm.

Theories of holistic face processing vary widely with respect to conceptualizations, paradigms, and stimuli. These divergences have left several theoretical questions unresolved. Namely, the role of attention in face perception is understudied. To rectify this gap in the literature, we combined the complete composite face task (allowing for predictions of multiple theoretical conceptualizations and connecting with a large body of research) with a secondary auditory discrimination task at encoding (to avoid a visual perceptual bottleneck). Participants studied upright, intact faces within a continuous recognition paradigm, which intermixes study and test trials at multiple retention intervals. Within subjects, participants studied faces under full or divided attention. Test faces varied with respect to alignment, congruence, and retention intervals. Overall, we observed the predicted beneficial outcomes of holistic processing (e.g., higher discriminability for Congruent, Aligned faces relative to Congruent, Misaligned faces) that persisted across retention intervals and attention. However, we did not observe the predicted detrimental outcomes of holistic processing (e.g., higher discriminability for Incongruent, Misaligned faces relative to Incongruent, Aligned faces). Because the continuous recognition paradigm exerts particularly strong demands on attention, we interpret these findings through the lens of resource dependency and domain specificity.

Mass-univariate analysis of scalp ERPs reveals large effects of gaze fixation location during face processing that only weakly interact with face emotional expression

Decoding others’ facial expressions is critical for social functioning. To clarify the neural correlates of expression perception depending on where we look on the face, three combined gaze-contingent ERP experiments were analyzed using robust mass-univariate statistics. Regardless of task, fixation location impacted face processing from 50 to 350 ms, maximally around 120 ms, reflecting retinotopic mapping around C2 and P1 components. Fixation location also impacted majorly the N170-P2 interval while weak effects were seen at the face-sensitive N170 peak. Results question the widespread assumption that faces are processed holistically into an indecomposable perceptual whole around the N170. Rather, face processing is a complex and view-dependent process that continues well beyond the N170. Expression and fixation location interacted weakly during the P1-N170 interval, supporting a role for the mouth and left eye in fearful and happy expression decoding. Expression effects were weakest at the N170 peak but strongest around P2, especially for fear, reflecting task-independent affective processing. Results suggest N170 reflects a transition between processes rather than the maximum of a holistic face processing stage. Focus on this peak should be replaced by data-driven analyses of the epoch using robust statistics to fully unravel the early visual processing of faces and their affective content.

Effects of age on face perception: Reduced eye region discrimination ability but intact holistic processing.

While age-related decline in face recognition memory is well-established, the degree of decline in face perceptual abilities across the lifespan and the underlying mechanisms are incompletely characterized. In the present study, we used the part-whole task to examine lifespan changes in holistic and featural processing. After studying an intact face, participants are tested for memory of a face part (eyes, nose, mouth) with the target and foil part presented either in isolation or in the context of the whole face. To the extent that parts are encoded into a holistic face representation, an advantage is expected for part recognition when tested in the whole face condition. The task therefore provides measures of holistic processing (whole-over-isolated-part trial advantage) and featural processing for each part when tested in isolation. Using a large sample of 3,341 online participants aged 18-69 years, we found that while discrimination of the eye region decreased beginning in the 50s, both mouth discrimination accuracy and the holistic advantage of whole versus part trial discrimination were stable with age. In separate analyses by gender, we found that age-related declines in eye region accuracy were more pronounced in males than females. We discuss potential mechanistic explanations for this eye region-specific decline with age, including age-related hearing loss directing attention toward the mouth. Further, we discuss how this could be related to the age-related positivity effect, which is associated with reduced sensitivity to eye-related emotions (e.g., anger) but preserved mouth-related emotion sensitivity (e.g., happiness). (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).

Association of idiosyncratic eye-movement patterns with holistic processing of faces as measured by the composite face effect and the face inversion effect

ABSTRACT Faces are said to be processed holistically, with the composite face paradigm and the face inversion paradigm being two widely used tasks to demonstrate this mode of processing. However, recent studies have found that individuals differ in their eye movements to faces, and little is known about whether these differences in eye movements are associated with holistic processing. Here, participants were asked to complete the inversion task and the top-cued (or bottom-cued) composite task. Using a Hidden Markov Model approach to analyze eye movements, participants were clustered into two groups on the basis of their eye movements in identifying upright faces, with an upper-focused group who preferred to look at the eye region, and a lower-focused group who preferred to look at the centre of faces. These two groups did not show any differences in the size of the inversion effect. But in the composite task, the upper-focused group showed a stronger composite effect for matching upper halves of faces than lower halves, whereas the composite effect shown by the lower-focused group had a similar magnitude no matter which half was being matched. Thus, holistic face processing as measured by the composite effect is associated with one’s preferred face-scanning pattern.

Two faces of holistic face processing: Facilitation and interference underlying holistic processing paradigms

Two faces of holistic face processing: Facilitation and interference underlying holistic processing paradigms

Holistic processing is modulated by the probability that parts contain task-congruent information.

Holistic processing of face and non-face stimuli has been framed as a perceptual strategy, with classic hallmarks of holistic processing, such as the composite effect, reflecting a failure of selective attention, which is a consequence of this strategy. Further, evidence that holistic processing is impacted by training different patterns of attentional prioritization suggest that it may be a result of learned attention to the whole, which renders it difficult to attend to only part of a stimulus. If so, holistic processing should be modulated by the same factors that shape attentional selection, such as the probability that distracting or task-relevant information will be present. In contrast, other accounts suggest that it is the match to an internal face template that triggers specialized holistic processing mechanisms. Here we probed these accounts by manipulating the probability, across different testing sessions, that the task-irrelevant face part in the composite face task will contain task-congruent or -incongruent information. Attentional accounts of holistic processing predict that when the probability that the task-irrelevant part contains congruent information is low (25%), holistic processing should be attenuated compared to when this probability is high (75%). In contrast, template-based accounts of holistic face processing predict that it will be unaffected by manipulation given the integrity of the faces remains intact. Experiment 1 found evidence consistent with attentional accounts of holistic face processing and Experiment 2 extends these findings to holistic processing of non-face stimuli. These findings are broadly consistent with learned attention accounts of holistic processing.

Ventral-temporal\\parietal neural circuitry for holistic face- and object- perception: evidence from a case of prosopagnosia

Ventral-temporal\\parietal neural circuitry for holistic face- and object- perception: evidence from a case of prosopagnosia

DisguisOR: holistic face anonymization for the operating room

PurposeRecent advances in Surgical Data Science (SDS) have contributed to an increase in video recordings from hospital environments. While methods such as surgical workflow recognition show potential in increasing the quality of patient care, the quantity of video data has surpassed the scale at which images can be manually anonymized. Existing automated 2D anonymization methods under-perform in Operating Rooms (OR), due to occlusions and obstructions. We propose to anonymize multi-view OR recordings using 3D data from multiple camera streams.MethodsRGB and depth images from multiple cameras are fused into a 3D point cloud representation of the scene. We then detect each individual’s face in 3D by regressing a parametric human mesh model onto detected 3D human keypoints and aligning the face mesh with the fused 3D point cloud. The mesh model is rendered into every acquired camera view, replacing each individual’s face.ResultsOur method shows promise in locating faces at a higher rate than existing approaches. DisguisOR produces geometrically consistent anonymizations for each camera view, enabling more realistic anonymization that is less detrimental to downstream tasks.ConclusionFrequent obstructions and crowding in operating rooms leaves significant room for improvement for off-the-shelf anonymization methods. DisguisOR addresses privacy on a scene level and has the potential to facilitate further research in SDS.

The development of processing second-order spatial relations of faces in Chinese preschoolers

Second-order relational information processing is the perception of the relative distance between facial features. Previous studies ignored the effect of different spatial manipulations on second-order sensitivity in face processing, and little is known about its developmental trajectory in East Asian populations, who have stronger holistic face processing than Western populations. We addressed these gaps in the literature through an experiment with four groups of Chinese preschool children (aged 3–6 years; n = 157) and a group of adults (n = 25). The participants were presented with face pairs displaying features with various spatial distance manipulations (Change 1: changes in the spacing between eyes; Change 2: nose–mouth spacing changes; Change 3: a combination of Changes 1 and 2) using a simultaneous two-alternative forced-choice task. Second-order sensitivity was already present in 3-year-old children across all manipulations and became more pronounced in 4-year-old children. Second-order sensitivity to the spatial distance between the eyes (i.e., Changes 1 and 3) among 4-year-olds was higher than that of 3-year-olds and was similar to that of adults, suggesting a key increase of this sensitivity from 3 to 4 years of age. Regarding the Change 2 condition, preschoolers aged 5 and 6 years had higher sensitivity than 3-year-olds; however, all preschoolers’ sensitivity was inferior to that of adults. These findings show that the development of Chinese preschoolers’ sensitivity for detecting spatial relations between the eyes might be faster than that for detecting nose–mouth spacing, supporting the importance of eyes in face processing.