Holistic processing of static and moving faces.

Abstract

Humans’ face ability develops and matures with extensive experience in perceiving, recognizing, and interacting with faces that move most of the time. However, how facial movements affect 1 core aspect of face ability—holistic face processing—remains unclear. Here we investigated the influence of rigid facial motion on holistic and part-based face processing by manipulating the presence of facial motion during study and at test in a composite face task. The results showed that rigidly moving faces were processed as holistically as static faces (Experiment 1). Holistic processing of moving faces persisted whether facial motion was presented during study, at test, or both (Experiment 2). Moreover, when faces were inverted to eliminate the contributions of both an upright face template and observers’ expertise with upright faces, rigid facial motion facilitated holistic face processing (Experiment 3). Thus, holistic processing represents a general principle of face perception that applies to both static and dynamic faces, rather than being limited to static faces. These results support an emerging view that both perceiver-based and face-based factors contribute to holistic face processing, and they offer new insights on what underlies holistic face processing, how information supporting holistic face processing interacts with each other, and why facial motion may affect face recognition and holistic face processing differently.

Amplified inversion effects for moving biological stimuli remain largest for faces and bodies

“…However, results from the latter studies must be interpreted with caution, especially considering that the methodology adopted by Xiao and colleagues varies considerably from that typically used in the composite task. Zhao and Bülthoff's (2017) results instead suggest that for rigidly moving faces, the composite effect is similar to that for static faces, consistent with Favelle and colleagues results for familiar faces. The contradictory findings from studies using the composite task with moving faces emphasise a need for further research, particularly in relation to the perception of identity from moving and static unfamiliar faces.…”

The constancy of the holistic processing of unfamiliar faces: Evidence from the study-test consistency effect and the within-person motion and viewpoint invariance

“…These results suggest that rigid motion somehow disrupts a viewer's ability to process subsequently seen test faces holistically, whereas presenting the same images without coherent motion does not seem to interfere with holistic processing. In contrast, Zhao and Bülthoff (2017), using a complete composite task, found that dynamic faces were processed as holistically as static faces, regardless of whether the study and test faces were presented in motion (coherent motion rotating from 30°left to 30°right) or static form.…”

“…One may encounter another person's face in static (e.g., a photo) or dynamic (e.g., nodding, smiling) form, and configural information and facial features can relatively vary or remain invariant while faces are moving (Burton et al, 2015;Piepers & Robbins, 2012). Dynamic face stimuli can help clarify the nature of holistic face representations (Christie & Bruce, 1998;Piepers & Robbins, 2012;Zhao & Bülthoff, 2017) in the following ways (Christie & Bruce, 1998). First, a moving sequence may provide a more extensive set of exemplars to be stored for an individual face.…”

“…There are two types of dynamic faces (for reviews, see Bruce, 1994;Xiao, Quinn, Ge, & Lee, 2012, 2013, one containing only rigid motion (e.g., nodding), the other elastic motion (e.g., smiling). Only a few studies have investigated holistic processing for either rigidly moving faces (e.g., Xiao et al, 2012;Zhao & Bülthoff, 2017) or those containing elastic motion (e.g., Cook, Aichelburg, & Johnston, 2015;Favelle, Tobin, Piepers, Burke, & Robbins, 2015;Xiao et al, 2013), and their findings have led to inconsistent conclusions. Here, we focused only on rigidly moving faces.…”

The composite face effect is robust against perceptual misfit

“…There is ample evidence for a top-down route in face processing, since many studies have shown that the degree of holistic processing is modulated by cues to applying global or piecemeal strategies (Gao, Flevaris, Robertson, & Bentin, 2011 ; Meinhardt, Persike, & Meinhardt-Injac, 2014 ), by cues to grouping or segregating top and bottom parts (Curby, Goldstein, & Blacker, 2013 ), by target half certainty and feedback about correctness (Meinhardt et al, 2014 ; Meinhardt-Injac, Persike, & Meinhardt, 2014 ), by age-related loss of attentional control (Meinhardt-Injac et al, 2014 ; Meinhardt-Injac, Boutet, Persike, Meinhardt, & Imhof, 2017 ) and by the amount of learning experience with the stimulus material (Gauthier et al, 2003 ; Chua & Gauthier, 2019 ). Zhao and Bülthoff ( 2017 ) stressed that the interaction of factors driving holistic processing is highly nonlinear, which also concerns the interaction among top-down and bottom-up factors. Particularly, if holistic processing is already strong and not weakened by complex task constraints, adding additional cues does not necessarily augment the integration of face parts.…”