Vogelsang Macgregor D, Palmeri Thomas J, Busey Thomas A
Indiana University, Bloomington, IN USA.
Vanderbilt University, Nashville, TN USA.
Cogn Res Princ Implic. 2017;2(1):15. doi: 10.1186/s41235-017-0051-x. Epub 2017 Feb 20.
Holistic processing is often characterized as a process by which objects are perceived as a whole rather than a compilation of individual features. This mechanism may play an important role in the development of perceptual expertise because it allows for rapid integration across image regions. The present work explores whether holistic processing is present in latent fingerprint examiners, who compare fingerprints collected from crime scenes against a set of standards taken from a suspect. We adapted a composite task widely used in the face recognition and perceptual expertise literatures, in which participants were asked to match only a particular half of a fingerprint with a previous image while ignoring the other half. We tested both experts and novices, using both upright and inverted fingerprints. For upright fingerprints, we found weak evidence for holistic processing, but with no differences between experts and novices with respect to holistic processing. For inverted fingerprints, we found stronger evidence of holistic processing, with weak evidence for differences between experts and novices. These relatively weak holistic processing effects contrast with robust evidence for holistic processing with faces and with objects in other domains of perceptual expertise. The data constrain models of holistic processing by demonstrating that latent fingerprint experts and novices may not substantively differ in terms of the amount of holistic processing and that inverted stimuli actually produced more evidence for holistic processing than upright stimuli. Important differences between the present fingerprint stimuli and those in the literature include the lack of verbal labels for experts and the absence of strong vertical asymmetries, both of which might contribute to stronger holistic processing signatures in other stimulus domains.
整体加工通常被描述为一种将物体作为一个整体而非各个特征的集合来感知的过程。这种机制可能在感知专长的发展中发挥重要作用，因为它允许在图像区域之间进行快速整合。目前的研究探讨了潜在指纹鉴定人员是否存在整体加工，这些鉴定人员会将从犯罪现场收集的指纹与从嫌疑人处获取的一组标准指纹进行比对。我们改编了一个在人脸识别和感知专长文献中广泛使用的合成任务，在该任务中，参与者被要求只将指纹的特定一半与先前的图像进行匹配，而忽略另一半。我们对专家和新手都进行了测试，使用了正立和倒立的指纹。对于正立指纹，我们发现了整体加工的微弱证据，但在整体加工方面专家和新手之间没有差异。对于倒立指纹，我们发现了更强的整体加工证据，专家和新手之间存在差异的证据较弱。这些相对较弱的整体加工效应与在人脸识别和其他感知专长领域中物体的整体加工的有力证据形成对比。数据通过表明潜在指纹专家和新手在整体加工量方面可能没有实质性差异，以及倒立刺激实际上比正立刺激产生了更多的整体加工证据，从而限制了整体加工模型。当前指纹刺激与文献中的刺激之间的重要差异包括专家没有语言标签以及缺乏强烈的垂直不对称性，这两者都可能导致在其他刺激领域中出现更强的整体加工特征。
