State Key Laboratory of Cognitive Neuroscience and Learning, Beijing Normal University, USA.
Psychol Sci. 2012 Feb;23(2):169-77. doi: 10.1177/0956797611420575. Epub 2012 Jan 5.
Why do some people recognize faces easily and others frequently make mistakes in recognizing faces? Classic behavioral work has shown that faces are processed in a distinctive holistic manner that is unlike the processing of objects. In the study reported here, we investigated whether individual differences in holistic face processing have a significant influence on face recognition. We found that the magnitude of face-specific recognition accuracy correlated with the extent to which participants processed faces holistically, as indexed by the composite-face effect and the whole-part effect. This association is due to face-specific processing in particular, not to a more general aspect of cognitive processing, such as general intelligence or global attention. This finding provides constraints on computational models of face recognition and may elucidate mechanisms underlying cognitive disorders, such as prosopagnosia and autism, that are associated with deficits in face recognition.
为什么有些人很容易识别面孔，而有些人则经常在识别面孔时出错？经典的行为研究表明，面孔是以独特的整体方式处理的，与物体的处理方式不同。在本报告的研究中，我们调查了整体面孔处理的个体差异是否对面孔识别有重大影响。我们发现，特定于面孔的识别准确性的大小与参与者以组合面孔效应和整体-部分效应为指标整体处理面孔的程度相关。这种关联是由于特定于面孔的处理，而不是更一般的认知处理方面，例如一般智力或全局注意力。这一发现为面孔识别的计算模型提供了限制，并可能阐明与面孔识别缺陷相关的认知障碍（如面孔失认症和自闭症）的机制。
