Holistic processing of body stimuli: Evidence of body composite illusion in adults and children.

Abstract

There is inconsistent evidence that human bodies are processed through holistic processing as it has been widely reported for faces. To assess how configural and holistic processes may develop with age, we administered a visual body recognition task assessing the presence of body inversion and composite illusion effects to white adults (114 participants, 77 women, aged between 18 and 35 years) and children (138 participants, 74 girls, aged between 6 and 11 years). Furthermore, to verify the presence of an own-age bias in body processing, we presented either child or adult bodies to both age groups. Adults and children showed reliable and comparable body inversion and composite illusion effects, confirming the use of configural and holistic body processing. Cross-sectional analysis showed that these perceptual strategies were already reliable in children aged 6–7 years and did not encounter significant changes across childhood. Although we found reliable body inversion and composite illusion effects for both own- and different-age bodies, results pointed to greater composite illusion effects for own-age bodies. This may suggest that sharing similar body structures might facilitate the holistic processing of others’ bodies. These findings provide new insights into the development of body-specific perceptual processes and may have theoretical and clinical implications for the evaluation and treatment of body perception disorders in childhood.

Body Processing in Children and Adolescents with Traumatic Brain Injury: An Exploratory Study

“…Participants were placed in a silent room and they were administered by a researcher of the team the following experimental paradigms: (i) the Visual Body Recognition Paradigm, assessing the inversion effect (configural processing) and the composite illusion effect (holistic processing); this paradigm has been tested in a large sample of both adult and young subjects [ 40 ], showing reliability in detecting the body inversion and composite illusion effects in children as young as 6–7 years old; (ii) the Visuospatial Imaginary Paradigm, assessing motor imagery and mental imagery with bodily and letter stimuli, respectively. Both the paradigms have already been administered to healthy and clinical pediatric populations [ 54 , 58 , 60 ], demonstrating to be feasible in children with brain damage.…”

“…With respect to body processing in developmental age, configural and holistic processing have been documented in typically developing children aged 6–11 years, with no differences between younger and older children [ 40 ]. This suggests that the use of refined perceptual strategies to process body stimuli could appear early in life, in keeping with infant research on face perception [ 41 , 42 ].…”

“…This suggests that the use of refined perceptual strategies to process body stimuli could appear early in life, in keeping with infant research on face perception [ 41 , 42 ]. Further, as early as 6 years old children show adult-like configural and holistic processing of body stimuli, suggesting that higher-order cognitive abilities, such as attention and executive functions, do not directly affect body visual perception [ 40 ]. In contrast, corporeal self-recognition has been identified already starting from 4 years of age in typically developing children [ 43 ] and the development of the body schema has been suggested to change significantly in children from 6 to 11 years of age [ 35 ].…”

“…In keeping with the existence of specialized networks for body representation [ 44 , 45 ], neuropsychological studies have largely documented specific disorders in either visual [ 40 , 46 , 47 , 48 , 49 ] or sensorimotor aspects [ 50 , 51 ] of body processing after acquired brain damage in adulthood. Less is known about the neuropsychology of body processing in developmental age.…”

The Relative Contribution of Facial and Body Information to the Perception of Cuteness

“…In the natural environment, however, a face or a body is usually encountered not as an isolated object but in the context of a whole person. Just as both faces and bodies are holistically processed, e.g., [21][22][23][24][25], a whole person is represented as a perceptual gestalt, which is qualitatively different from representing a person as the sum of their parts [26]. Lorenz [2] originally viewed the baby schema as a gestalt of infantile physical features, but it has not been tested whether the craniofacial and bodily features of the baby schema are perceived as distinct components or as an integrated, gestalt-like unit in cuteness perception.…”