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Relative tuning of holistic face processing towards the fovea

Humans quickly detect and gaze at faces in the world, which reflects their importance in cognition and may lead to tuning of face recognition toward the central visual field. Although sometimes reported, foveal selectivity in face processing is debated: brain imaging studies have found evidence for...

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Autores principales: Canas-Bajo, Teresa, Whitney, David
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: 2022
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10101769/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35461170
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.visres.2022.108049
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author Canas-Bajo, Teresa
Whitney, David
author_facet Canas-Bajo, Teresa
Whitney, David
author_sort Canas-Bajo, Teresa
collection PubMed
description Humans quickly detect and gaze at faces in the world, which reflects their importance in cognition and may lead to tuning of face recognition toward the central visual field. Although sometimes reported, foveal selectivity in face processing is debated: brain imaging studies have found evidence for a central field bias specific to faces, but behavioral studies have found little foveal selectivity in face recognition. These conflicting results are difficult to reconcile, but they could arise from stimulus-specific differences. Recent studies, for example, suggest that individual faces vary in the degree to which they require holistic processing. Holistic processing is the perception of faces as a whole rather than as a set of separate features. We hypothesized that the dissociation between behavioral and neuroimaging studies arises because of this stimulus-specific dependence on holistic processing. Specifically, the central bias found in neuroimaging studies may be specific to holistic processing. Here, we tested whether the eccentricity-dependence of face perception is determined by the degree to which faces require holistic processing. We first measured the holistic-ness of individual Mooney faces (two-tone shadow images readily perceived as faces). In a group of independent observers, we then used a gender discrimination task to measured recognition of these Mooney faces as a function of their eccentricity. Face gender was recognized across the visual field, even at substantial eccentricities, replicating prior work. Importantly, however, holistic face gender recognition was relatively tuned—slightly, but reliably stronger in the central visual field. Our results may reconcile the debate on the eccentricity-dependance of face perception and reveal a spatial inhomogeneity specifically in the holistic representations of faces.
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spelling pubmed-101017692023-04-13 Relative tuning of holistic face processing towards the fovea Canas-Bajo, Teresa Whitney, David Vision Res Article Humans quickly detect and gaze at faces in the world, which reflects their importance in cognition and may lead to tuning of face recognition toward the central visual field. Although sometimes reported, foveal selectivity in face processing is debated: brain imaging studies have found evidence for a central field bias specific to faces, but behavioral studies have found little foveal selectivity in face recognition. These conflicting results are difficult to reconcile, but they could arise from stimulus-specific differences. Recent studies, for example, suggest that individual faces vary in the degree to which they require holistic processing. Holistic processing is the perception of faces as a whole rather than as a set of separate features. We hypothesized that the dissociation between behavioral and neuroimaging studies arises because of this stimulus-specific dependence on holistic processing. Specifically, the central bias found in neuroimaging studies may be specific to holistic processing. Here, we tested whether the eccentricity-dependence of face perception is determined by the degree to which faces require holistic processing. We first measured the holistic-ness of individual Mooney faces (two-tone shadow images readily perceived as faces). In a group of independent observers, we then used a gender discrimination task to measured recognition of these Mooney faces as a function of their eccentricity. Face gender was recognized across the visual field, even at substantial eccentricities, replicating prior work. Importantly, however, holistic face gender recognition was relatively tuned—slightly, but reliably stronger in the central visual field. Our results may reconcile the debate on the eccentricity-dependance of face perception and reveal a spatial inhomogeneity specifically in the holistic representations of faces. 2022-08 2022-04-20 /pmc/articles/PMC10101769/ /pubmed/35461170 http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.visres.2022.108049 Text en https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) ).
spellingShingle Article
Canas-Bajo, Teresa
Whitney, David
Relative tuning of holistic face processing towards the fovea
title Relative tuning of holistic face processing towards the fovea
title_full Relative tuning of holistic face processing towards the fovea
title_fullStr Relative tuning of holistic face processing towards the fovea
title_full_unstemmed Relative tuning of holistic face processing towards the fovea
title_short Relative tuning of holistic face processing towards the fovea
title_sort relative tuning of holistic face processing towards the fovea
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10101769/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35461170
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.visres.2022.108049
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