Species Specificity Of Face Holistic Processing

Own-species faces are recognized better than other-species faces, which is called the species specificity(SS) of face recognition. However, it remains unknown why performance in recognizing own-species faces are better than that in recognizing other-species ones. Many studies hint that Experience-based Holistic Processing(EBH) account, which holds that plenty of experience with faces enables people to process these faces holistically, resulting in better performance for them, may explain the SS of face recognition.To examine whether EBH could account for the SS of face recognition, two studies were conducted to investigate the discrepancies in holistic processing(HP) of different speices faces(Study 1) and the relationship between experience and HP for other-species faces(Study 2). The focus of study 1 was the discrepancies in HP for different species’ faces. Complete design of composite face task(the interaction between congruency and alignment was used as the indicator of HP) was used to examine Asian participants’ HP for Asian, Caucasian, monkey and sheep faces when the upper(Experiment 1) or lower(Experiment 2) parts of faces were focused respectively. Results were as follows:(1) Asian and Caucasian faces were processed holistically despite which parts of faces were focused.(2) Monkey faces were processed holistically only when lower parts of faces were focused,(3) Asian participants didn’t process sheep faces holistically in both conditions. The focus of study 2 was the role of experience in HP for other-species faces. Subordinate-level training was used to increase participants’ experience with other-speices faces and composite face task was used to examine their HP for human, monkey and sheep faces before and after training. In addition, to understand the effect of training in time course, three post-tests were conducted. Results were as follows:(1) Increasing in experience with monkey faces enabled people to process these faces holistically and yet this effect would not be generalized to other monkey faces which didn’t appear in the training.(2) Effect of training lasted at least two weeks and no more than four months.To summary,(1) People processed own-species faces more holistically, while they processed other-species faces less holistically, i.e. SS of HP.(2) Increase in experience with monkey faces enabled people to process these faces holistically.(3) EBH could explain the SS of face recognition.