title: Beyond Faces and Expertise: Facelike Holistic Processing of Nonface Objects in the Absence of Expertise.
abstract: Holistic processing-the tendency to perceive objects as indecomposable wholes-has long been viewed as a process specific to faces or objects of expertise. Although current theories differ in what causes holistic processing, they share a fundamental constraint for its generalization: Nonface objects cannot elicit facelike holistic processing in the absence of expertise. Contrary to this prevailing view, here we show that line patterns with salient Gestalt information (i.e., connectedness, closure, and continuity between parts) can be processed as holistically as faces without any training. Moreover, weakening the saliency of Gestalt information in these patterns reduced holistic processing of them, which indicates that Gestalt information plays a crucial role in holistic processing. Therefore, holistic processing can be achieved not only via a top-down route based on expertise, but also via a bottom-up route relying merely on object-based information. The finding that facelike holistic processing can extend beyond the domains of faces and objects of expertise poses a challenge to current dominant theories.
authors.affiliation: Department of Human Perception, Cognition, and Action, Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics, Tübingen, Germany mintao.zhao@tuebingen.mpg.de.
authors.forename: Mintao
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Zhao
authors.affiliation: Department of Human Perception, Cognition, and Action, Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics, Tübingen, Germany Department of Brain and Cognitive Engineering, Korea University.
authors.forename: Heinrich H
authors.initials: HH
authors.lastname: Bülthoff
authors.affiliation: Department of Human Perception, Cognition, and Action, Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics, Tübingen, Germany.
authors.forename: Isabelle
authors.initials: I
authors.lastname: Bülthoff
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D005145:Face; D000066499:Facial Recognition; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008960:Models, Psychological; D011581:Psychological Tests; D055815:Young Adult
keywords: Gestalt; composite-face effect; expertise; face perception; holistic processing