Golan Tal, Bentin Shlomo, DeGutis Joseph M, Robertson Lynn C, Harel Assaf
Interdisciplinary Center for Neural Computation, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Jerusalem, 91905, Israel,
Atten Percept Psychophys. 2014 Feb;76(2):391-406. doi: 10.3758/s13414-013-0562-6.
Expertise in face recognition is characterized by high proficiency in distinguishing between individual faces. However, faces also enjoy an advantage at the early stage of basic-level detection, as demonstrated by efficient visual search for faces among nonface objects. In the present study, we asked (1) whether the face advantage in detection is a unique signature of face expertise, or whether it generalizes to other objects of expertise, and (2) whether expertise in face detection is intrinsically linked to expertise in face individuation. We compared how groups with varying degrees of object and face expertise (typical adults, developmental prosopagnosics [DP], and car experts) search for objects within and outside their domains of expertise (faces, cars, airplanes, and butterflies) among a variable set of object distractors. Across all three groups, search efficiency (indexed by reaction time slopes) was higher for faces and airplanes than for cars and butterflies. Notably, the search slope for car targets was considerably shallower in the car experts than in nonexperts. Although the mean face slope was slightly steeper among the DPs than in the other two groups, most of the DPs' search slopes were well within the normative range. This pattern of results suggests that expertise in object detection is indeed associated with expertise at the subordinate level, that it is not specific to faces, and that the two types of expertise are distinct facilities. We discuss the potential role of experience in bridging between low-level discriminative features and high-level naturalistic categories.
人脸识别方面的专业技能表现为能够高度熟练地区分不同个体的面孔。然而，面孔在基础水平检测的早期阶段也具有优势，这一点在非面孔物体中对面孔进行高效视觉搜索的过程中得到了体现。在本研究中，我们探讨了以下两个问题：（1）检测中面孔优势是面孔专业技能的独特标志，还是能推广到其他专业领域的物体上；（2）面孔检测方面的专业技能是否与面孔个体化方面的专业技能存在内在联系。我们比较了具有不同程度物体和面孔专业技能的几组人（典型成年人、发展性面孔失认症患者[DP]和汽车专家）在一组可变的物体干扰物中搜索其专业领域内和领域外物体（面孔、汽车、飞机和蝴蝶）的情况。在所有三组中，对面孔和飞机的搜索效率（以反应时间斜率为指标）高于对汽车和蝴蝶的搜索效率。值得注意的是，汽车专家对汽车目标的搜索斜率比非专家的要浅得多。虽然DP组的平均面孔斜率比其他两组略陡，但大多数DP组的搜索斜率仍处于正常范围内。这种结果模式表明，物体检测方面的专业技能确实与下属水平的专业技能相关，并非面孔所特有，且这两种专业技能是不同的能力。我们讨论了经验在连接低级辨别特征和高级自然类别方面可能发挥的作用。
