School of Psychology, University of East London (UEL), UK.
Department of Education, Psychology and Communication, University of Bari Aldo Moro, Italy.
Br J Psychol. 2018 May;109(2):232-243. doi: 10.1111/bjop.12271. Epub 2017 Sep 21.
Faces and bodies are more difficult to perceive when presented inverted than when presented upright (i.e., stimulus inversion effect), an effect that has been attributed to the disruption of holistic processing. The features that can trigger holistic processing in faces and bodies, however, still remain elusive. In this study, using a sequential matching task, we tested whether stimulus inversion affects various categories of visual stimuli: faces, faceless heads, faceless heads in body context, headless bodies naked, whole bodies naked, headless bodies clothed, and whole bodies clothed. Both accuracy and inversion efficiency score results show inversion effects for all categories but for clothed bodies (with and without heads). In addition, the magnitude of the inversion effect for face, naked body, and faceless heads was similar. Our findings demonstrate that the perception of faces, faceless heads, and naked bodies relies on holistic processing. Clothed bodies (with and without heads), on the other side, may trigger clothes-sensitive rather than body-sensitive perceptual mechanisms.
当呈现倒置的面孔和身体时，比呈现直立的面孔和身体时更难感知（即刺激倒置效应），这种效应归因于整体加工的中断。然而，能够触发面孔和身体整体加工的特征仍然难以捉摸。在这项研究中，我们使用连续匹配任务来测试刺激倒置是否会影响各种类别的视觉刺激：面孔、无头的头部、无头的头部在身体背景中、无头无身的裸体、裸体的全身、无头无身的穿衣、裸体的全身穿衣。准确性和反转效率得分结果均表明，除了穿衣的身体（有头或无头）之外，所有类别都存在反转效应。此外，面孔、裸体和无头头部的反转效应幅度相似。我们的研究结果表明，面孔、无头头部和裸体的感知依赖于整体加工。另一方面，穿衣的身体（有头或无头）可能会触发对衣服敏感而非对身体敏感的感知机制。
