The role of inner and outer face parts in holistic processing: a developmental study.
The effects of inner-outer feature interactions with unfamiliar faces were investigated in 6- and 10-year-old children and adults (20-30 years) to determine their contribution in holistic face vision. Participants completed a two-alternative forced-choice (2AFC) task under two conditions. The congruent condition used whole, inner-only, and outer-only stimuli. The incongruent condition used stimuli combining the inner features from one face with outer features from a novel face, or vice versa. Results yielded strong congruency effects which were moderated by pronounced feature-type asymmetries specific to developmental stage. Adults showed an inner-feature preference during congruent trials, but no asymmetry for incongruent trials. Children showed no asymmetry for congruent trials, but an outer-feature preference for incongruent trials. These findings concur with recent theoretical developments indicating that adults and children are likely to differ in the types of feature-specific information they preferentially encode in face perception, and that holistic effects are moderated differently in adults and children as a function of feature type.
School of Psychological Sciences, University of Manchester, UK; School of Psychology, University of Southampton, UK. Electronic address: mark.knowles@postgrad.manchester.ac.uk.
Mark M
MM
Knowles
Department of Psychology, Lancaster University, UK.
Dennis C
DC
Hay
D000328:Adult; D002648:Child; D002657:Child Development / Q000502:physiology*; D005145:Face; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D010775:Photic Stimulation; D021641:Recognition, Psychology / Q000502:physiology*; D014796:Visual Perception / Q000502:physiology*; D055815:Young Adult
Children; Congruency effect; Development; Face processing; Face recognition; Holistic processing