Behavioral and electrophysiological evidence for configural processing in fingerprint experts

Abstract

Visual expertise in fingerprint examiners was addressed in one behavioral and one electrophysiological experiment. In an X-AB matching task with fingerprint fragments, experts demonstrated better overall performance, immunity to longer delays, and evidence of configural processing when fragments were presented in noise. Novices were affected by longer delays and showed no evidence of configural processing. In Experiment 2, upright and inverted faces and fingerprints were shown to experts and novices. The N170 EEG component was reliably delayed over the right parietal/temporal regions when faces were inverted, replicating an effect that in the literature has been interpreted as a signature of configural processing. The inverted fingerprints showed a similar delay of the N170 over the right parietal/temporal region, but only in experts, providing converging evidence for configural processing when experts view fingerprints. Together the results of both experiments point to the role configural processing in the development of visual expertise, possibly supported by idiosyncratic relational information among fingerprint features.

The fusiform face area: a cortical region specialized for the perception of faces

“…However, there have been no published replications of this result since it was published 30 years ago, and one careful and extensive recent effort completely failed to replicate the original result (Robbins 2005). Another recent study also failed to find a significant inversion effect for objects of expertise (fingerprints in fingerprint experts), although this study argues for holistic processing of these stimuli by experts based on superadditive contributions to performance accuracy from the two halves of the stimulus (Busey & Vanderkolk 2005). Other studies have investigated much shorter term cases of visual expertise, claiming that a mere 10 h of laboratory training can produce 'face-like' processing of non-face stimuli (Gauthier et al 1998).…”

“…Showing the selectivity of the N170 for faces in each experiment is important because the N170 is not face selective at all electrode locations (and not even necessarily at the canonical face-selective locations of T5 and T6), so this face selectivity must be demonstrated in each study. One study did show a delay of the N170 for inverted compared with upright fingerprints in fingerprint experts, resembling the similar delay seen in the N170 to inverted versus upright faces (Busey & Vanderkolk 2005). However, in the same study, the behavioural inversion effect for these stimuli was not significant, and as the authors of this study note, the delay of the N170 for inverted stimuli has been found for cars (in non-experts; Rossion et al 2003b), and it is therefore not a specific marker of face-like processing.…”

An early electrophysiological response associated with expertise in letter perception

“…For expertise with faces and many other categories of objects, however, people usually gain experience in discriminating among very similar objects of a homogeneous class (e.g., telling one face from another or distinguishing between two different bird species), and it is thought that the resulting expertise relies on holistic and configural processes (Diamond & Carey, 1986). The N170 component has recently been associated with holistic processing in car experts (Gauthier et al, 2003) and fingerprint experts (Busey & Vanderkolk, 2005). The differences in task demands between objects and letters suggest that different neural and behavioral phenomena may be found for these two types of expertise.…”

“…Past research has shown that the earliest potential to reflect high-level visual differences among object categories appears as a posterior negative component peaking at about 170 msec after stimulus presentation (Bentin, Allison, Puce, Perez, & McCarthy, 1996;Curran, Tanaka, & Weiskopf, 2002;Tanaka & Curran, 2001). This N1/N170 potential is associated with expertise with a visual category (Busey & Vanderkolk, 2005;Gauthier, Curran, Curby, & Collins, 2003;Tanaka & Curran, 2001). Therefore, we expected a larger N170 (relative to a pseudofont control) at posterior channels for letters with which subjects have expertise-that is, for Roman letters with non-Chinese readers and for both Roman letters and Chinese characters with bilinguals.…”

Complexity as a guide to understanding decision bias: A contribution to the favorite‐longshot bias debate

“…These arguments alone cannot be used to dismiss the support theory explanation because the literature offers numerous demonstrations of cognitive bias in experts (e.g., Dror & Charlton, 2006;Dror & Rosenthal, 2008;Fox, Brett, Rogers, & Tversky, 1996). However, experts have been shown to possess superior skills and specialized cognitive mechanisms in a number of domains (e.g., Fingerprint experts: Busey & Vanderkolk, 2005; Airforce pilots: Dror, Kosslyn, & Waag, 1993). Importantly, Bolger and Wright (1994), in their exploration of 40 studies of expertise, found that only six groups of experts demonstrated good judgment, and racetrack tipsters were amongst these; suggesting that the conditions which facilitate calibration between subjective and objective probabilities may exist in horserace betting markets (e.g., Johnson and Bruce, 2001).…”