Mondloch Catherine J, Maurer Daphne
Department of Psychology, Brock University, 500 Glenridge Avenue, St Catharines, Ontario L2S 3A1, Canada.
Perception. 2008;37(8):1175-86. doi: 10.1068/p6048.
Holistic processing, a hallmark of face processing, can be measured by the composite face effect: adults have difficulty recognising the top half of a face when it is aligned with a new bottom half, unless holistic processing is disrupted by misaligning the two halves. Like the recognition of facial identity, holistic processing is impaired when faces are inverted. To obtain a more refined measure of the influence of orientation on holistic face processing, we administered the composite face task to adults at each of seven orientations. In both experiment 1 (in which orientations were randomly intermixed) and experiment 2 (in which orientations were blocked), the composite face effect decreased linearly with rotation. We conclude that holistic processing is tuned to upright faces, diminishes as faces deviate from upright, and becomes insignificant once faces reach a sideways orientation. We propose a hierarchical model of face perception in which linear decreases in holistic processing underlie qualitative shifts in other aspects of face perception.
整体加工是面部加工的一个标志，可通过合成面孔效应来衡量：成年人在将一张脸的上半部分与新的下半部分对齐时，很难识别上半部分，除非通过使两半部分不对齐来破坏整体加工。与面部身份识别一样，当面孔倒置时，整体加工会受到损害。为了更精确地测量方向对整体面孔加工的影响，我们在七个方向上分别对成年人进行了合成面孔任务测试。在实验1（方向随机混合）和实验2（方向分块）中，合成面孔效应均随旋转而线性下降。我们得出结论，整体加工是针对正立面孔进行调整的，随着面孔偏离正立而减弱，一旦面孔达到侧立方向就变得微不足道。我们提出了一个面部感知的层次模型，其中整体加工的线性下降是面部感知其他方面定性变化的基础。
