Yan Luowei, Colombatto Clara, Ristic Jelena
Department of Psychology, McGill University, 2001 Avenue McGill College, Montreal, QC, H3A 1G1, Canada.
Department of Psychology, University of Waterloo, 200 University Avenue West, Waterloo, ON, N2L 3G1, Canada.
Atten Percept Psychophys. 2025 Jun 19. doi: 10.3758/s13414-025-03119-1.
Human life is built around the need for group membership and social connections. Recent research shows that small interactive groups of two and three individuals (i.e., dyads and triads) are found faster in visual search tasks when group members are facing toward versus away from one another. This 'facing advantage' may reflect the involvement of perceptual grouping processes, with facing groups perceived as a unified whole. Here, we tested this grouping hypothesis by measuring search performance for individuals who were positioned within facing or non-facing groups of three. If facing triads were perceptually grouped, individuation of group members in those triads should be hindered. Participants searched for a target individual, a person raising a fist or a person raising a pointing finger, who was positioned in one of four or eight facing or non-facing triads. The data indicated that while the search for target individuals pointing a finger was overall facilitated, it was specifically hindered when this person was positioned within a facing compared to a non-facing group. These results suggest that the perception of social groups may be attuned to the overall configuration of the group, but also to more sophisticated social communicative signals of individual group members.
人类生活围绕着群体归属感和社会联系的需求构建。最近的研究表明，在视觉搜索任务中，当两三人的小互动群体（即二元组和三元组）成员彼此面对面而非背对背时，目标被更快找到。这种“面对面优势”可能反映了知觉分组过程的参与，面对面的群体被视为一个统一的整体。在此，我们通过测量处于面对面或非面对面三元组中的个体的搜索表现，来检验这一分组假设。如果面对面的三元组在知觉上被分组，那么这些三元组中成员的个体化应该会受到阻碍。参与者在由四个或八个面对面或非面对面三元组组成的场景中搜索一个目标个体，即一个举起拳头的人或一个伸出手指的人。数据表明，虽然搜索伸出手指的目标个体总体上更容易，但当该个体处于面对面组而非非面对面组中时，搜索会受到特别阻碍。这些结果表明，对社会群体的感知可能既适应群体的整体结构，也适应个体成员更复杂的社会交流信号。
