Richler Jennifer J, Cheung Olivia S, Gauthier Isabel
Department of Psychology, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, TN, USA.
J Vis. 2011 Nov 18;11(13):17. doi: 10.1167/11.13.17.
The composite paradigm is widely used to quantify holistic processing (HP) of faces, but there is debate regarding the appropriate design (partial vs. complete) and measures in this task. Here, we argue that some operational definitions of HP are problematic because they are sensitive to top-down influences, even though the underlying concept is assumed to be cognitively impenetrable. In Experiment 1, we told one group of participants that the target face half would remain the same on 75% of trials and another group that it would change on 75% of trials. The true proportion of same/different trials was 50%-groups only differed in their beliefs about the target halves. In Experiment 2, we manipulated the actual proportion of same/different trials in the experiment (75% of trials were the same for one group; 75% of trials were different for another group) but did not give explicit instructions about proportions. In both experiments, these manipulations influenced response biases that altered partial design measures of HP while the complete design measure was unaffected. We argue that the partial design should be abandoned because it has poor construct validity.
复合范式被广泛用于量化面部的整体加工（HP），但在该任务的合适设计（部分与完整）及测量方法上存在争议。在此，我们认为，HP的一些操作定义存在问题，因为它们对自上而下的影响敏感，尽管其潜在概念被认为是认知上不可穿透的。在实验1中，我们告知一组参与者目标面部的一半在75%的试验中会保持不变，而告知另一组参与者目标面部的一半在75%的试验中会发生变化。相同/不同试验的真实比例为50%——两组仅在对目标面部一半的信念上存在差异。在实验2中，我们操纵了实验中相同/不同试验的实际比例（一组75%的试验是相同的；另一组75%的试验是不同的），但未给出关于比例的明确指示。在两个实验中，这些操纵都影响了反应偏差，改变了HP的部分设计测量指标，而完整设计测量指标未受影响。我们认为应摒弃部分设计，因为它的结构效度较差。
