Taubert Jessica, Aagten-Murphy David, Parr Lisa A
Yerkes National Primate Research Centre, Emory University, Atlanta, GA 30322, USA;
Perception. 2012;41(4):460-73. doi: 10.1068/p7151.
It is a widespread assumption that all primate species process faces in the same way because the species are closely related and they engage in similar social interactions. However, this approach ignores potentially interesting and informative differences that may exist between species. This paper describes a comparative study of holistic face processing. Twelve subjects (six chimpanzees Pan troglodytes and six rhesus monkeys Macaca mulatta) were trained to discriminate whole faces (faces with features in their canonical position) and feature-scrambled faces in two separate conditions. We found that both species tended to match the global configuration of features over local features, providing strong evidence of global precedence. In addition, we show that both species were better able to generalize from a learned configuration to an entirely novel configuration when they were first trained to match feature-scrambled faces compared to when they were trained with whole faces. This result implies that the subjects were able to access local information easier when facial features were presented in a scrambled configuration and is consistent with a holistic processing hypothesis. Interestingly, these data also suggest that, while holistic processing in chimpanzees is tuned to own-species faces, monkeys have a more general approach towards all faces. Thus, while these data confirm that both chimpanzees and rhesus monkeys process faces holistically, they also indicate that there are differences between the species that warrant further investigation.
人们普遍认为，所有灵长类物种处理面孔的方式相同，因为这些物种亲缘关系密切，且它们参与相似的社会互动。然而，这种方法忽略了物种之间可能存在的潜在有趣且信息丰富的差异。本文描述了一项关于整体面孔处理的比较研究。12只受试动物（6只黑猩猩黑猩猩属黑猩猩和6只恒河猴猕猴属猕猴）在两种不同条件下接受训练，以区分完整面孔（特征处于标准位置的面孔）和特征打乱的面孔。我们发现，两个物种都倾向于匹配特征的全局配置而非局部特征，这为全局优先提供了有力证据。此外，我们表明，与用完整面孔训练时相比，当两个物种首先被训练匹配特征打乱的面孔时，它们能够更好地从习得的配置推广到全新的配置。这一结果意味着，当面部特征以打乱的配置呈现时，受试动物能够更容易地获取局部信息，这与整体处理假说相一致。有趣的是，这些数据还表明，虽然黑猩猩的整体处理针对本物种的面孔进行了调整，但猴子对所有面孔都有更通用的处理方式。因此，虽然这些数据证实黑猩猩和恒河猴都能整体处理面孔，但它们也表明物种之间存在差异，值得进一步研究。
