The Influence Of Literacy Acquisition On The Face Processing

Researches from the past have confirmed that literates are more inclined to analytically process faces, while illiterates on contrary, holistic processing. This paper is focused on determining whether literacy acquisition has any effect on holistic and analytical processing of faces.This experiment employs in total21Chinese subjects,15are literate while6are illiterate. Upright and invert facial images are both taken from stimulus materials comprised of4races: Han, Mongolian, Uyghur and Caucasian. Each race includes2males and2females. Both upright and invert facial images are then edited by Photoshop, in order that horizontal distance from one eye to another is increased and decreased by15%, and then30%. Vertical distance between eyes and mouths is also increased and decreased by the same percentage. Subjects are then first assigned to observe upright facial images and then inverted versions. Both types of images from the same stimulus materials are randomly paired by E-Prime software. Subjects are then expected to determine sameness and differences in these pairs.The conclusion drawn from this experiment is that both Chinese literates and illiterates are more inclined to holistically processing of faces, which is placed in stark contrast to results from researches in the past carried out on English speaking subjects. Major factor that contributes to such a contrast is that word formation of Chinese language is very different from that of English language, explaining the inclination of Chinese subject in analytically processing faces. It’s also observed that Illiterates are more capable of recognizing changes in faces than the literates.15%changes between horizontal distance between eyes and eyes and vertical distance from eyes to mouths are harder to recognize than30%in both categories, and that change in horizontal distance is harder to notice than change in vertical distance.