title: Holistic crowding of Mooney faces.
abstract: An object or feature is generally more difficult to identify when other objects are presented nearby, an effect referred to as crowding. Here, we used Mooney faces to examine whether crowding can also occur within and between holistic face representations (C. M. Mooney, 1957). Mooney faces are ideal stimuli for this test because no cues exist to distinguish facial features in a Mooney face; to find any facial feature, such as an eye or a nose, one must first holistically perceive the image as a face. Through a series of six experiments we tested the effect of crowding on Mooney face recognition. Our results demonstrate crowding between and within Mooney faces and fulfill the diagnostic criteria for crowding, including eccentricity dependence and lack of crowding in the fovea, critical flanker spacing consistent with less than half the eccentricity of the target, and inner-outer flanker asymmetry. Further, our results show that recognition of an upright Mooney face is more strongly impaired by upright Mooney face flankers than inverted ones. Taken together, these results suggest crowding can occur selectively between high-level representations of faces and that crowding must occur at multiple levels in the visual system.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, University of California, Davis, CA 95618, USA. ffarzin@ucdavis.edu
authors.forename: Faraz
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Farzin
authors.forename: Susan M
authors.initials: SM
authors.lastname: Rivera
authors.forename: David
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Whitney
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D005145:Face; D005260:Female; D005783:Gender Identity; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D010364:Pattern Recognition, Visual; D010775:Photic Stimulation / Q000379:methods*; D013028:Space Perception / Q000502:physiology; D014794:Visual Fields; D014796:Visual Perception / Q000502:physiology; D055815:Young Adult