Relative tuning of holistic face processing towards the fovea

Cañas-Bajo, Teresa; Whitney, David

doi:10.1016/j.visres.2022.108049

Cited by 3 publications

(3 citation statements)

References 97 publications

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“…The inversion effects measured in our study fit with evidence from prior studies to show that face-selective mechanisms operate in the peripheral visual field [62–65]. However, these prior studies have only presented faces along the horizontal meridian.…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 86%

Radial bias in face identification

et al. 2023

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Human vision in the periphery is most accurate for stimuli that point towards the fovea. This so-called radial bias has been linked with the organization and spatial selectivity of neurons at the lowest levels of the visual system, from retinal ganglion cells onwards. Despite evidence that the human visual system is radially biased, it is not yet known whether this bias persists at higher levels of processing, or whether high-level representations are invariant to this low-level orientation bias. We used the case of face identity recognition to address this question. The specialized high-level mechanisms that support efficient face recognition are highly dependent on horizontally oriented information, which convey the most useful identity cues in the fovea. We show that face selective mechanisms are more sensitive on the horizontal meridian (to the left and right of fixation) compared to the vertical meridian (above and below fixation), suggesting that the horizontal cues in the face are better extracted on the horizontal meridian, where they align with the radial bias. The results demonstrate that the radial bias is maintained at high-level recognition stages and emphasize the importance of accounting for the radial bias in future investigation of visual recognition processes in peripheral vision.

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Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 86%

Radial bias in face identification

et al. 2023

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“…The Mooney faces that we used in this experiment require holistic processing to be recognized ( Canas-Bajo & Whitney, 2020 ; 2022 ; Farzin et al, 2009 ; Latinus & Taylor, 2005 ; McKone, 2004 ; Moore & Cavanagh, 1998 ). If recognition of Mooney faces is supported by holistic face templates, then classification images of Mooney faces should reflect an advantage for upright faces.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Individual differences in classification images of Mooney faces

Cañas-Bajo

Whitney

2022

Journal of Vision

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Human face recognition is robust even under conditions of extreme lighting and in situations where there is high noise and uncertainty. Mooney faces are a canonical example of this: Mooney faces are two-tone shadow-defined images that are readily and holistically recognized despite lacking easily segmented face features. Face perception in such impoverished situations—and Mooney face perception in particular—is often thought to be supported by comparing encountered faces to stored templates. Here, we used a classification image approach to measure the templates that observers use to recognize Mooney faces. Visualizing these templates reveals the regions and structures of the image that best predict individual observer recognition, and they reflect the underlying internal representation of faces. Using this approach, we tested whether there are classification images that are consistent from session to session, whether the classification images are observer-specific, and whether they allow for pattern completion of holistic representations even in the absence of an underlying signal. We found that classification images of Mooney faces were indeed non-random (i.e., consistent session from session) within each observer, but they were different between observers. This result is in line with previously proposed existence of face templates that support face recognition, and further suggests that these templates may be unique to each observer and could drive idiosyncratic individual differences in holistic face recognition. Moreover, we found classification images that reflected information within the blank regions of the original Mooney faces, suggesting that observers may fill in missing information using idiosyncratic internal information about faces.

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“…Although comparable degrees of misalignment disrupted holistic face processing (Rossion, 2013), it is possible that if we shifted the head so it was completely offset from the body, we might observe a misalignment effect. However, we were reluctant to test more extreme offsets because research has shown that holistic processing is optimum in the fovea (Canas-Bajo & Whitney, 2022). Therefore, in a more extreme misalignment manipulation, the absence of holistic processing might be due to the eccentricity of the to-be-ignored component in the periphery.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Faces and bodies in person perception

Forner,

Tanaka

2024

Preprint

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When we see a person approaching us on the street, can we attend to their face independently of the body and conversely, can we attend to their body, independently of their face? Or, is face and body information combined to form a whole person percept? To test these questions, we constructed a whole-person composite stimulus by aligning or misaligning the face from one person with the body from another. Pairs of aligned or misaligned face-body composites were presented sequentially to participants in a “same/different” task and discrimination difficulty was parametrically manipulated via a morphing procedure. In Experiment 1, participants were asked to judge the identity of the face and ignore the body. In Experiment 2, participants were asked to judge the identity of the body and ignore the face. In both experiments, we found a congruency effect where “same/different” discriminations to the cued portion (Experiment 1: face; Experiment 2: body) were influenced by information in the to-be-ignored uncued portion. The magnitude of the congruency effect increased as the discrimination decisions became more difficult. Critically, spatial alignment between the face and body did not affect the congruency effect; indicating that the integration of face and body information occurs at the decisional stage of processing rather than at the perceptual holistic encoding stage. Together, our results indicate that it is difficult to selectively attend to just the face or the body in person perception.

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Relative tuning of holistic face processing towards the fovea

Cited by 3 publications

References 97 publications

Radial bias in face identification

Radial bias in face identification

Individual differences in classification images of Mooney faces

Faces and bodies in person perception

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