The Composite-Face Effect Survives Asymmetric Face Distortions
@article{deHeering2012TheCE,
title={The Composite-Face Effect Survives Asymmetric Face Distortions},
author={Ad{\'e}la{\"i}de de Heering and Jess Wallis and Daphne Maurer},
journal={Perception},
year={2012},
volume={41},
pages={707 - 716}
}In two experiments, we investigated whether adults use holistic processing even for faces that are grossly distorted because their eyes have been moved asymmetrically to violate the common layout of a face (distorting its first-order relations). To this end we used a compelling demonstration that faces are processed as wholes, the composite-face effect. Specifically, adults judged the similarity of sequentially presented top halves of normal (original condition) and distorted faces with one eye…
13 Citations
The composite face illusion: A whole window into our understanding of holistic face perception
- Psychology
- 2013
Two identical top halves of a face are perceived as being different when their bottom halves belong to different faces, showing that the parts of a face cannot be perceived independently from the…
Perceived Race Affects Configural Processing but Not Holistic Processing in the Composite-Face Task
- PsychologyFront. Psychol.
- 2018
One explanation for the own-race bias in face recognition is the loss of holistic processing for other-race faces, which is interpreted in of terms of the perceived race affecting the processing of second-order relational information rather than holistic processing.
A shape-based account for holistic face processing.
- PsychologyJournal of experimental psychology. Learning, memory, and cognition
- 2016
A shape-based account not only offers a consistent explanation for previous studies of holistic face processing, but also suggests a new ground-in addition to expertise-for the generalization of holistic processing to different types of faces and to nonface objects.
Holistic face perception: Mind the gap!
- Psychology
- 2015
The most widely used measurement of holistic face perception, the composite face effect (CFE), is challenged by two apparently contradictory goals: having a defined face part (i.e., the top half),…
Holistic processing of human body postures: evidence from the composite effect
- PsychologyFront. Psychol.
- 2014
Results of both experiments indicate the existence of a body posture composite effect, providing evidence for the hypothesis that body postures, as faces, are processed holistically.
Global Shape Information Increases but Color Information Decreases the Composite Face Effect
- PsychologyPerception
- 2015
It is indicated that grayscale stimuli maintaining natural global face shape information provide the most adept measure of holistic face perception in the behavioral composite face paradigm, and shows that reducing different types of information diagnostic for individual face perception can have opposite effects on the CFE, illustrating the functional dissociation between shape and surface information in face perception.
Adjusting the Focus of Attention: Helping Witnesses to Evolve a More Identifiable Composite
- Psychology
- 2017
When perceiving faces under normal circumstances, the focus of attention is likely to be on the upper (e.g., hair, eyes) than lower (e.g., mouth, chin) facial half [1]. If such a bias were to extend…
Exploring Body Holistic Processing Investigated with Composite Illusion
- PsychologyEAPCogSci
- 2015
The aim of the present study was to explore the holistic processing of the human body shape using composite effect and participants performed superiorly for inverted misaligned bodies compared with inverted aligned bodies.
Individual Differences in Adaptive Norm-Based Coding and Holistic Coding Are Associated Yet Each Contributes Uniquely to Unfamiliar Face Recognition Ability
- PsychologyJournal of experimental psychology. Human perception and performance
- 2017
It is shown for the first time that adaptive norm-based coding of identity and holistic coding are positively and moderately associated and that each makes significant unique contributions to unfamiliar face recognition ability (Cambridge Face Memory Test [CMFT]).
References
SHOWING 1-10 OF 57 REFERENCES
The composite illusion requires composite face stimuli to be biologically plausible
- PsychologyVision Research
- 2009
Identity Aftereffects, but Not Composite Effects, are Contingent on Contrast Polarity
- PsychologyPerception
- 2011
The results suggest that two popular theoretical frame-works in the face-recognition literature can be integrated, with holistic processing occurring at an earlier stage than face discrimination.
Configurational Information in Face Perception
- PsychologyPerception
- 1987
The findings demonstrate the importance of configurational information in face perception, and that configurations are only properly perceived in upright faces.
Impairment in Holistic Face Processing Following Early Visual Deprivation
- PsychologyPsychological science
- 2004
It is suggested that early visual experience is necessary to set up or maintain the neural substrate that leads to holistic processing of faces, which is a measure of holistic processing.
Holistic face processing can be independent of gaze behaviour: evidence from the composite face illusion.
- PsychologyJournal of neuropsychology
- 2008
Eye-movements during the composite face illusion are recorded in a delayed matching task of top halves of faces to reinforce the view that holistic representations of individual faces can be extracted early on from information at a relatively coarse scale, independently of overt attention.
Evidence for Holistic Processing of Faces Viewed as Photographic Negatives
- PsychologyPerception
- 1999
It is argued that there may be more than one kind of relationalprocessing involved in face recognition: the ‘chimeric-face effect’ may reflect an initial ‘holistic’ processing which binds facial features into a ‘Gestalt’, rather than being a demonstration of the configurational processing involved in individual recognition.
Picture-plane inversion leads to qualitative changes of face perception.
- PsychologyActa psychologica
- 2008
Holistic Processing Is Finely Tuned for Faces of One's Own Race
- PsychologyPsychological science
- 2006
This work tested whether the integration of facial features into a whole representation—holistic processing—was larger for SR than OR faces in Caucasians and Asians without life experience with OR faces, and found that SR faces are processed more holistically than Or faces.
Nonlinear relationship between holistic processing of individual faces and picture-plane rotation: evidence from the face composite illusion.
- PsychologyJournal of vision
- 2008
The non-linear relationship between orientation and holistic processing supports the view that inversion affects face processing qualitatively and rules out the hypothesis that misoriented faces are perceptually realigned by means of linear rotation mechanisms independent of internal representations derived from experience.
Mechanisms of face perception.
- PsychologyAnnual review of neuroscience
- 2008
It is proposed that what makes face processing special is that it is gated by an obligatory detection process, and this idea is clarified in concrete algorithmic terms and shown how it can explain a variety of phenomena associated with face processing.


