Differential responding to the internal and external facial features, holistic and part-based processing

grantor: University of TorontoWe investigated earlier claims (e.g., Moscovitch et al., 1997) that recognition of upright (same and different) and inverted faces relies upon holistic and part-based decompositional processing strategies associated with the face- and object-recognition systems, respectively. Viewers made a same-different judgment of two faces presented either sequentially or simultaneously on screen. Whereas responding to upright same faces appeared to rely upon holistic or configurational processing strategies, responding to upright different and all inverted faces was instead mediated by part-based processing strategies. Moreover, attending to the internal features alone was sufficient to form a discrimination judgment for upright different and all inverted faces; the same was true for upright same faces when attention was focused on the internal features alone at study. By contrast, viewers relied upon both the internal and external features to form a discrimination judgment for upright same faces when attention was focused on the entire face at study.M.A