Gaze behavior in analytical and holistic face processing

Abstract

Humans are experts at recognizing faces. We identify faces quickly and exactly without any effort. Small wonder, then, that extensive research has been carried out to understand the stages of information processing that underlie face-recognition performance. The two relevant stages of information processing are perceptual encoding and information processing. In the area of face processing, most studies have focused on the latter and have shown that people often use the configural processing mode-processing the relations among the facial features (e.g., Diamond & Carey, 1986;Farah, Tanaka, & Drain, 1995;Farah, Wilson, Drain, & Tanaka, 1998;Freire, Lee, & Symons, 2000;Tanaka & Farah, 1993). Analytical face processing has been emphasized as being relevant, too (e.g., Bruyer & Coget, 1987;Macho & Leder, 1998;Schwarzer & Massaro, 2001), and most recent studies concern the question of whether and how both configural and analytical information processing play a role in face recognition (e.g., Collishaw & Hole, 2000;Leder & Bruce, 2000;Schwaninger, Lobmaier, & Collishaw, 2002;Searcy & Bartlett, 1996;Tanaka & Sengco, 1997). However, very few studies address the visual encoding stage in face processing directly and analyze what kind of facial information is extracted during face processing. According to Viviani (1990), the analysis of gaze behavior can be understood as a method to study the stage of visual encoding. Therefore, to understand the visual encoding stage of face processing, the present study investigated participants' gaze behavior when they processed faces analytically or configurally. Research on the Different Modes of Face ProcessingAs mentioned above, the information processing modes people use to recognize faces is of both configural and analytical character. According to Maurer, Le Grand, and Mondloch (2002), configural processing can be divided into three types: (1) processing of first-order relationsthat is, seeing that a stimulus is a face because the features are arranged with two eyes above a nose, which is above a mouth; (2) holistic processing-that is, gluing together the features into a gestalt; and (3) processing second-order relations-that is, processing the specific distances among the features. Previous research has shown that adults use all of these three types of configural processing: They have a remarkable ability to detect faces among a sample of other visual stimuli on the basis of first-order relations (Moscovitch, Winocur, & Behrmann, 1997). When adults detect the first-order relations of a face, they tend to process the face as a gestalt (holistic processing), which makes it harder to process individual features. This effect was demonstrated by the "composite face effect" (e.g., Young, Hellaway, & Hay, 1987), in which the top half of a face can be recognized correctly when it is presented in isolation, but that recognition is significantly slower when the top half is combined with the bottom half of a different face. Holistic processing of faces has also been demonstrated by the "par...

Gaze behaviour in hereditary prosopagnosia

“…Since the hereditary prosopagnosics of the present study also included information on the external parts of the faces in their gaze behaviour this fact can be understood as a parallel between children's and hereditary prosopagnosics' way to process faces. Another parallel refers to the observation that children's gaze behaviour is less focused than that of adults when they were viewing faces (Schwarzer, Huber & Dü mmler, 2005). Thus, there seem to be slight parallels between children's and hereditary prosopagnosics' way to examine a face visually.…”

Gaze behavior in face comparison: The roles of sex, task, and symmetry

“…We are not the first to assume that the difference between a same-different and a 2AFC task using the same stimuli is a more holistic processing of the face stimuli in the latter: Beale and Keil (1995) developed their "better-likeness" task (i.e., participants must judge which of two images is the better likeness of a particular person) specifically to bias observers, in contrast with discrimination tasks, to more holistic processing. Furthermore, in a study of face perception in children and adults, Schwarzer, Huber, and Dümmler (2005) found that participants' RTs were significantly faster when a holistic strategy was used, rather than a feature-based strategy for the same task, indicating that the processing of facial features is time consuming. Faster RTs were also found in the feminine task of our present experiment than were found in the sex task using the same face stimuli.…”

Attention misplaced: The role of diagnostic features in the face-inversion effect.

“…Furthermore, participants encouraged to engage in analytical processing tend to fixate on each feature individually, whereas participants engaging in holistic processing tend to fixated in a central position between the eyes (Schwarzer et al, 2005).…”

“…That is, that the ideal fixation point for accurate encoding is weighted according to the diagnostic value of the nearby features. The region that provides the most amount of holistic information is between the eyes (e.g., Schwarzer et al, 2005) because the eyes are of more diagnostic value (e.g., Haig, 1986a, b). 7 By implication, the assumption is configural processing is at least related to holistic processing.…”