Holistic processing of human body postures: evidence from the composite effect

Willems, Sam; Vrancken, Leia; Germeys, Filip; Verfaillie, Karl

doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2014.00618

Cited by 26 publications

(30 citation statements)

References 50 publications

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“…Adults exhibited an inversion effect with whole bodies, but not with parts or scrambled images. These results are consistent with the part–whole difference found by Tanaka and Farah (1993) and by Seitz (2002; see also Robbins & Coltheart, 2012; Willems, Vrancken, Germeys, & Verfaillie, 2014). Thus, body processing is holistic in adulthood and childhood.…”

Section: Holistic Processingsupporting

confidence: 90%

The whole picture: Holistic body posture recognition in infancy

et al. 2015

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Holistic processing is tied to expertise and is characteristic of face and body perception by adults. Infants process faces holistically, but it is unknown whether they process body information holistically. In the present study, infants were tested for discrimination between body postures that differed in limb orientations in three conditions: in the context of the whole body, with just the isolated limbs that changed orientation, or with the limbs in the context of scrambled body parts. Five- and 9-month-olds discriminated between whole-body postures, but failed in the isolated-part and scrambled-body conditions, demonstrating holistic processing of information from bodies. These results indicate that at least some level of expertise in body processing develops quite early in life.

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Section: Holistic Processingsupporting

confidence: 90%

The whole picture: Holistic body posture recognition in infancy

et al. 2015

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“…The illusion is diminished in the misaligned (middle) and inverted (right) conditions composite effects measured using the original matching design (S. G. Young, Slepian, Wilson, & Hugenberg, 2014). We also note that a study employing the original matching procedure recently found composite effects with expressive body postures (Willems et al, 2014), suggestive of holistic coding of body posture. In contrast, authors have failed to observe composite effects with neutral bodies (e.g., Soria Bauser, Suchan, & Daum, 2011).…”

Section: Not All Facial Composites Are Created Equalmentioning

confidence: 85%

“…Similarly, Greeble experts failed to show composite effects for Greebles (Gauthier & Tarr, 2002;Gauthier et al, 1998). Recently, however, a study found evidence of composite effects for body postures using the original procedure (Willems, Vrancken, Germeys, & Verfaillie, 2014), possibly reflecting similarities in the way that faces and bodies are processed (Minnebusch & Daum, 2009; see section: Not all facial composites are created equal).…”

Section: Domain Specific Vs Domain General Processingmentioning

confidence: 99%

The composite face illusion

2016

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Few findings in cognitive science have proved as influential as the composite face effect. When the top half of one face is aligned with the bottom half of another, and presented upright, the resulting composite arrangement induces a compelling percept of a novel facial configuration. Findings obtained using composite face procedures have contributed significantly to our understanding of holistic face processing, the detrimental effects of face inversion, the development of face perception, and aberrant face perception in clinical populations. Composite paradigms continue to advance our knowledge of face perception, as exemplified by their recent use for investigating the perceptual mechanisms underlying dynamic face processing. However, the paradigm has been the subject of intense scrutiny, particularly over the last decade, and there is a growing sense that the composite face illusion, whilst easy to illustrate, is deceptively difficult to measure and interpret. In this review, we provide a focussed overview of the existing composite face literature, and identify six priorities for future research. Addressing these gaps in our knowledge will aid the evaluation and refinement of theoretical accounts of the illusion.

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“…When the task is posture recognition, Bcomposite^stimuli made by combining halves of two body postures along the horizontal axis produce a standard Bcomposite effect^: identifying the posture of one half, participants show impaired performance when the halves are aligned versus misaligned (Willems, Vrancken, Germeys, & Verfaillie, 2014). However, when the task is person identity, the composite effect was found for bodies divided along the vertical axis, but was substantially reduced when the body was divided along its horizontal axis (Bauser, Suchan, & Daum, 2011;Robbins & Coltheart, 2012).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Holistic processing for bodies and body parts: New evidence from stereoscopic depth manipulations

2016

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Although holistic processing has been documented extensively for upright faces, it is unclear whether it occurs for other visual categories with more extensive substructure, such as body postures. Like faces, body postures have high social relevance, but they differ in having fine-grain organization not only of basic parts (e.g., arm) but also subparts (e.g., elbow, wrist, hand). To compare holistic processing for whole bodies and body parts, we employed a novel stereoscopic depth manipulation that creates either the percept of a whole body occluded by a set of bars, or of segments of a body floating in front of a background. Despite sharing low-level visual properties, only the stimulus perceived as being behind bars should be holistically Bfilled in^via amodal completion. In two experiments, we tested for better identification of individual body parts within the context of a body versus in isolation. Consistent with previous findings, recognition of body parts was better in the context of a whole body when the body was amodally completed behind occluders. However, when the same bodies were perceived as floating in strips, performance was significantly worse, and not significantly different, from that for amodally completed parts, supporting holistic processing of body postures. Intriguingly, performance was worst for parts in the frontal depth condition, suggesting that these effects may extend from gross body organization to a more local level. These results provide suggestive evidence that holistic representations may not be Ball-or-none,^but rather also operate on body regions of more limited spatial extent.

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Holistic processing of human body postures: evidence from the composite effect

Cited by 26 publications

References 50 publications

The whole picture: Holistic body posture recognition in infancy

The whole picture: Holistic body posture recognition in infancy

The composite face illusion

Holistic processing for bodies and body parts: New evidence from stereoscopic depth manipulations

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