Face features and face configurations both contribute to visual crowding

Sun, Hsin-Mei; Balas, Benjamin

doi:10.3758/s13414-014-0786-0

Cited by 21 publications

(23 citation statements)

References 44 publications

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“…their first-order relations) are matched between target and flankers, and weak when they differ, regardless of individual feature orientations. This effect of spatial structure is broadly consistent with findings 53 that schematic faces and electrical-plug flankers crowd photographic faces more than Chinese characters (although these stimuli did not produce an effect of flanker orientation, likely due to the differences in texture, contrast, and spatial frequency content between target and flanker elements). The spatial order of facial features is a key aspect of holistic processes in face perception [21][22][23] , perhaps driven by the top-heavy 42,43 vertical ordering of horizontal structure [54][55][56] .…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 88%

Crowding for faces is determined by visual (not holistic) similarity: Evidence from judgements of eye position

Kalpadakis-Smith¹,

Goffaux²,

Greenwood³

2017

Preprint

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Crowding (the disruption of object recognition in clutter) presents the fundamental limitation on peripheral vision. For simple objects, crowding is strong when target/flanker elements are similar and weak when they differ – a selectivity for target-flanker similarity. In contrast, the identification of upright holistically-processed face stimuli is more strongly impaired by upright than inverted flankers, whereas inverted face-targets are impaired by both – a pattern attributed to an additional stage of crowding selective for “holistic similarity” between faces. We propose instead that crowding is selective for target-flanker similarity in all stimuli, but that this selectivity is obscured by task difficulty with inverted face-targets. Using judgements of horizontal eye-position that are minimally affected by inversion, we find that crowding is strong when target-flanker orientations match and weak when they differ for both upright and inverted face-targets. By increasing task difficulty, we show that this selectivity for target-flanker similarity is obscured even for upright face-targets. We further demonstrate that this selectivity follows differences in the spatial order of facial features, rather than “holistic similarity” per se. There is consequently no need to invoke a distinct stage of holistic crowding for faces – crowding is selective for target-flanker similarity, even with complex stimuli such as faces.

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Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 88%

Crowding for faces is determined by visual (not holistic) similarity: Evidence from judgements of eye position

Kalpadakis-Smith¹,

Goffaux²,

Greenwood³

2017

Preprint

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“…Crowding occurs for simple stimuli, such as lines, verniers, letters, and Gabors, 36 but it has also been reported for more complex stimuli, such as faces, due to ''inner'' crowding by facial features 37,38 and complex shapes. 39 Increasing the spacing between facial features 37 or the size of faces 40 reduces crowding and improves performance in normal peripheral vision.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Glaucoma Affects Viewing Distance for Recognition of Sex and Facial Expression

Schafer

Rouland

Peyrin

et al. 2018

Invest. Ophthalmol. Vis. Sci.

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Citation: Schafer A, Rouland JF, Peyrin C, Szaffarczyk S, Boucart M. Glaucoma affects viewing distance for recognition of sex and facial expression. Invest Ophthalmol Vis Sci. 2018;59:4921-4928. https://doi.org/ 10.1167/iovs.18-24875 PURPOSE. To measure the distance for sex and facial expression recognition in patients with glaucoma. METHODS.Sixteen patients with open-angle glaucoma, 16 age-matched controls, and 12 young controls participated. During each trial, a face covering 0.368 3 0.58, simulating the angular size of a face viewed at 20 m, was presented centrally. The angular size increased automatically by steps of 5 cm, simulating the face moving progressively closer. The participants were asked to stop the progression with a keypress, first, when they were able to recognize the sex, and second, when they were able to recognize the facial expression (angry, happy, neutral). We measured the threshold equivalent viewing distance to recognize the sex and the facial expression. RESULTS.Participants with glaucoma, both those with and without reduced central acuity, required a shorter viewing distance (i.e., a larger face) than did controls to recognize both the sex (by 2.59 m, F 1,30 ¼ 8.7, P < 0.006) and the facial expression (by 3.64 m, F 1,30 ¼ 14, P < 0.001). No significant difference was found between younger and older controls.CONCLUSIONS. Face perception is a skill that is reliant on central vision. Our behavioral results are consistent with the hypothesis of reduced central sensitivity in glaucoma. We suggest that the necessity to view larger faces in patients might result from a higher sensitivity to crowding that increases the difficulty to perceive the relevant features for recognition of both sex and facial expressions, akin to normal peripheral vision.

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“…Crowding has been found in a wide variety of stimuli (for a review, see Manassi and Whitney 5 ), ranging from low-level features such as orientation 6 , 7 , size and hue 8 , to object parts 9 , 10 and multiple-feature objects such as letters 4 , 11 – 13 , faces 14 , 15 and biological motion 16 . For instance, a stronger crowding effect has been shown when an upright face is surrounded by upright faces than inverted ones 15 .…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The extraction of natural scene gist in visual crowding

Gong

Xuan

Smart

et al. 2018

Sci Rep

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The gist of natural scenes can be extracted very rapidly and even without focal attention. However, it is unclear whether and to what extent the gist of natural scenes can break through the bottleneck of crowding, a phenomenon in which object recognition will be immensely impaired. In the first two experiments, a target scene, either presented alone or surrounded by four flankers, was categorized at basic (Experiment 1) or global levels (Experiment 2). It was showed that the elimination of high-level semantic information of flankers greatly alleviated the crowding effect, demonstrating that high-level information played an important role in crowding of scene gist. More importantly, participants were able to categorize the scenes in crowding at rather high accuracies, suggesting that the extraction of scene gist might be a prioritized process. To test this hypothesis, in Experiment 3 we compared the crowding effect of three types of stimuli, namely, scenes, facial expressions and letter “E”s. The results showed that scenes could be better categorized than the other two types of stimuli in the crowding condition. This scene gist advantage thus supported our hypothesis. Together, the present studies suggest that scene gist is highly recognizable in crowding, probably due to its prioritization in visual processing.

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Face features and face configurations both contribute to visual crowding

Cited by 21 publications

References 44 publications

Crowding for faces is determined by visual (not holistic) similarity: Evidence from judgements of eye position

Crowding for faces is determined by visual (not holistic) similarity: Evidence from judgements of eye position

Glaucoma Affects Viewing Distance for Recognition of Sex and Facial Expression

The extraction of natural scene gist in visual crowding

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