The time course of face matching by internal and external features: Effects of context and inversion

Abstract

Effects of context and inversion were studied in face matching tasks by measuring proportion correct as a function of exposure duration. Subjects were instructed to attend either internal features (task A) or external features (task B) and matched two consecutive face stimuli, which included either congruent, incongruent, or no facial context features. In congruent contexts matching performance rose fast and took very similar courses for both types of facial features. With no contexts internal and external features were found to be matched at an equal speed, while incongruent contexts seriously delayed matching performance for internal, but not for external features. Analysing the effects of context and inversion showed strong interactions with time scale and the features to be attended. At brief timings effects of inversion and context were strong for both feature types. At longer exposure durations there were pronounced effects of inversion and context for internal features while for external features inversion effects were absent and context effects at just moderate degrees. Moreover, deteriorating effects of incongruent contexts, which were strong at brief timings, were attenuated at longer exposure durations, while facilitative effects of congruent contexts resided at high levels. These findings indicate that global and holistic processing modes dominate the early epoch of the face specific visual response, but can be replaced by modes that allow observers to regulate contextual influences and to access facial features more focused when the first 200 ms have passed.

Development of Visual Systems for Faces and Objects: Further Evidence for Prolonged Development of the Face System

“…Results from previous studies suggest that younger children (8–10 years) and adults differ in the microgenesis of holistic face perception [8], [9], [35]. While adults build holistic face representations almost immediately, children aged 8–10 need between 400–600 msec to do so.…”

“…By comparing different age groups, our aim was to tap into the improvement of the visual processing ability for faces and watches as common non-face visual objects that share complexity and structure with faces [13]. For all age groups, the context congruency paradigm was employed as the experimental task [8], [9], [13]. Participants were required to judge internal features of two faces/watches as same or different, while ignoring the identity of the external features.…”

“…In this paradigm, the effects of context congruency (for short referred to as “context effect” – see also Methods Section) and orientation were used as measures of holistic and configural face processing, respectively. Variation of exposure duration provided hints on the strength of holistic and configural viewing at different processing stages [8], [9].…”

“…If age-related differences exist in the time course of holistic processing, the context effect, as a measure of holistic face processing, is expected to be different compared to the adult group when processing at brief, but not longer, times. Hence, the test of whether holistic face processing is fast and instantaneous, as found for adults [8], [9], [35], adds to the current tests of age-related changes in face perception capabilities across development.…”

The complete design in the composite face paradigm: role of response bias, target certainty, and feedback

“…To make the perceptual account of the composite effect more explicit, one may conceive an ideal “holistic” observer who refers to a whole face as the smallest perceptual unit when exposed to natural and intact face stimuli. However, this notion is just an ideal, because human observers can take a part-based focus of facial stimuli (Meinhardt-Injac et al, 2010, 2011). As outlined above, this observer would yield a large congruency effect in the complete design.…”