Holistic processing is inferred from a number of effects, many of which suggest that people generally find it difficult to process face parts independently. The study of holistic processing using faces has revealed many failures of convergence across different measures, as well as very poor reliability. New tasks designed for individual-differences measurement of holistic processing are more reliable. But other challenges to the study of individual differences in holistic processing require a different approach, in particular the use of nonface objects. Observers’ experiences with faces may be so extensive that it cannot be quantified. In addition, it is difficult to manipulate experience with faces to study causes and mechanisms underlying holistic effects. Recent work has combined an individual-differences approach with a parametric manipulation of experience to reveal that holistic processing arises from domain-specific experience. Other work has revealed that learned attention to parts is sufficient to result in holistic processing, consistent with a mechanism rooted in category-specific learned attention.
AhissarM.HochsteinS. (2000). The spread of attention and learning in feature search: Effects of target distribution and task difficulty. Vision Research, 40, 1349–1364.
2.
BuggJ. M.JacobyL. L.ChananiS. (2011). Why it is too early to lose control in accounts of item-specific proportion congruency effects. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 37, 844–859.
3.
BurnsB.SheppB. E. (1988). Dimensional interactions and the structure of psychological space: The representation of hue, saturation, and brightness. Perception & Psychophysics, 43, 494–507.
4.
ChengX. J.McCarthyC. J.WangT. S.PalmeriT. J.LittleD. R. (2018). Composite faces are not (necessarily) processed coactively: A test using systems factorial technology and logical-rule models. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 44, 833–862.
5.
ChuaK.-W.GauthierI. (2020a). Domain-specific experience determines individual differences in holistic processing. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 149, 31–41.
6.
ChuaK.-W.GauthierI. (2020b). The Vanderbilt Holistic Processing Tests for novel objects: Validation in novice participants. Journal of Expertise, 3, 20–31.
7.
ChuaK.-W.RichlerJ. J.GauthierI. (2014). Becoming a Lunari or Taiyo expert: Learned attention to parts drives holistic processing of faces. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 40, 1174–1182.
8.
ChuaK.-W.RichlerJ. J.GauthierI. (2015). Holistic processing from learned attention to parts. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 144, 723–729.
9.
CronbachL. J. (1957). The two disciplines of scientific psychology. American Psychologist, 12, 671–684.
10.
DeGutisJ.WilmerJ.MercadoR. J.CohanS. (2013). Using regression to measure holistic face processing reveals a strong link with face recognition ability. Cognition, 126, 87–100.
11.
DiamondR.CareyS. (1986). Why faces are and are not special: An effect of expertise. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 115, 107–117.
12.
FarahM. J.WilsonK. D.DrainM.TanakaJ. N. (1998). What is “special” about face perception?Psychological Review, 105, 482–498.
13.
FitousiD. (2016). Comparing the role of selective and divided attention in the composite face effect: Insights from Attention Operating Characteristic (AOC) plots and cross-contingency correlations. Cognition, 148, 34–46.
14.
GauthierI.ChuaK.-W.RichlerJ. J. (2018). How holistic processing of faces relates to cognitive control and intelligence. Attention, Perception & Psychophysics, 80, 1449–1460.
15.
GauthierI.TarrM. J. (2002). Unraveling mechanisms for expert object recognition: Bridging brain activity and behavior. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 28, 431–446.
16.
GermineL. T.DuchaineB.NakayamaK. (2011). Where cognitive development and aging meet: Face learning ability peaks after age 30. Cognition, 118, 201–210.
17.
GoldstoneR. L. (1994). Influences of categorization on perceptual discrimination. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 123, 178–200.
18.
GrayK. L. H.GuilleminY.CenacZ.GibbonsS.VestnerT.CookR. (2020). Are the facial gender and facial age variants of the composite face illusion products of a common mechanism?Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 27, 62–69.
19.
HarrisonS. A.GauthierI.HaywardW. G.RichlerJ. J. (2014). Other-race effects manifest in overall performance, not qualitative processing style. Visual Cognition, 22, 843–864.
20.
HedgeC.PowellG.SumnerP. (2018). The reliability paradox: Why robust cognitive tasks do not produce reliable individual differences. Behavior Research Methods, 50, 1166–1186.
21.
HoleG. J. (1994). Configurational factors in the perception of unfamiliar faces. Perception, 23, 65–74.
22.
HorryR.CheongW.BrewerN. (2015). The other-race effect in perception and recognition: Insights from the complete composite task. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 41, 508–524.
23.
KlargaardS. K.StarrfeltR.GerlachC. (2018). Inversion effects for faces and objects in developmental prosopagnosia: A case series analysis. Neuropsychologia, 113, 52–60.
24.
MeinhardtG.Meinhardt-InjacB.PersikeM. (2014). The complete design in the composite face paradigm: Role of response bias, target certainty, and feedback. Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, 8, Article 885. doi:10.3389/fnhum.2014.00885
25.
Meinhardt-InjacB.BoutetI.PersikeM.MeinhardtG.ImhofM. (2017). From development to aging: Holistic face perception in children, younger and older adults. Cognition, 158, 134–146.
26.
Meinhardt-InjacB.PersikeM.MeinhardtG. (2011). The context effect in face matching: Effects of feedback. Vision Research, 51, 2121–2131.
27.
OrucI.ShafaiF.IarocciG. (2018). Link between facial identity and expression abilities suggestive of origins of face impairments in autism: Support for the social-motivation hypothesis. Psychological Science, 29, 1859–1867.
28.
RezlescuC.SusiloT.WilmerJ. B.CaramazzaA. (2017). The inversion, part-whole, and composite effects reflect distinct perceptual mechanisms with varied relationships to face recognition. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 43, 1961–1974.
29.
RichlerJ. J.FloydR. J.GauthierI. (2014). The Vanderbilt Holistic Face Processing Test: A short and reliable measure of holistic face processing. Journal of Vision, 14(11), Article 10. doi:10.1167/14.11.10
30.
RichlerJ. J.FloydR. J.GauthierI. (2015). About-face on face recognition ability and holistic processing. Journal of Vision, 15(9), Article 15. doi:10.1167/15.9.15
31.
RichlerJ. J.GauthierI. (2014). A meta-analysis and review of holistic face processing. Psychological Bulletin, 140, 1281–1302.
32.
RichlerJ. J.GauthierI.WengerM. J.PalmeriT. J. (2008). Holistic processing of faces: Perceptual and decisional components. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 34, 328–342.
RoyerJ.BlaisC.CharbonneauI.DéryK.TardifJ.DuchaineB.FisetD. (2018). Greater reliance on the eye region predicts better face recognition ability. Cognition, 181, 12–20.
35.
SotoF. A.AshbyF. G. (2015). Categorization training increases the perceptual separability of novel dimensions. Cognition, 139, 105–129.
36.
SundayM. A.RichlerJ. J.GauthierI. (2017). Limited evidence of individual differences in holistic processing in different versions of the part-whole paradigm. Attention, Perception & Psychophysics, 79, 1453–1465.
37.
VerhallenR. J.BostenJ. M.GoodbournP. T.Lawrance-OwenA. J.BargaryG.MollonJ. D. (2017). General and specific factors in the processing of faces. Vision Research, 141, 217–227.
38.
VidnyánszkyZ.SohnW. (2005). Learning to suppress task-irrelevant visual stimuli with attention. Vision Research, 45, 677–685.
39.
YoungA. W.HellawellD.HayD. C. (1987). Configurational information in face perception. Perception, 42, 1166–1178.
40.
ZhaoM.BülthoffH. H.BülthoffI. (2016). Beyond faces and expertise: Facelike holistic processing of nonface objects in the absence of expertise. Psychological Science, 27, 213–222.
Supplementary Material
Please find the following supplemental material available below.
For Open Access articles published under a Creative Commons License, all supplemental material carries the same license as the article it is associated with.
For non-Open Access articles published, all supplemental material carries a non-exclusive license, and permission requests for re-use of supplemental material or any part of supplemental material shall be sent directly to the copyright owner as specified in the copyright notice associated with the article.
