The Influence On Faces Holistic Processing From Reading Experience

Recent behavioral and brain imaging studies have shown that reading expertise acquisition can affect visual object processing,especially face processing.Holistic processing has been regarded as a behavioral marker common for face processing and word processing,however,it remains unclear whether and how reading experience affects the ability of face holistic processing.Therefore,to reveal how the reading experience affects face processing,current study investigates the inversion face effect and composite face effect illiterates lacking reading experience and their counterpart literates.Study one systematically explored the influence of reading experience on face inversion effect.Experiment la investigated face and house inversion effect of literate and illiterate participants.Experiment lb examined the inversion effect of high-frequency and low-frequency faces in literate and illiterate participants.Study two systematically probed into the impact of reading experience on the composite face effect.Experiment 2a investigated face and house composite effect of literate and illiterate participants.Experiment 2b discussed the effect of reading experience on composite effect of high-frequency and low-frequency faces.With a shorter exposure duration of face(i.e.,200ms),experiment 2c revealed the effect of reading experience on composite effect of face filtered by spatial frequency.The present study concluded that:(1)For full-spectrum face and low-frequency faces,the inversion effect of illiterates is significantly smaller than that of literates.As for high-frequency faces,there is no literacy effect on the magnitude of face inversion effect.This suggests reading experience promotes the ability of face holistic processing.(2)With exposure duration of face being 600ms,on discrimination ability,literates and illiterates showed composite effect for faces with three kinds of spatial frequencies.And on reaction time,only literates showed composite effect for faces.These results suggested that reading expertise might impact composite face effect when reaction time was considered.(3)When experimental task became difficult(i.e.,exposure duration is 200 ms),on discrimination ability,illiterates and literates showed face composite effect for low spatial frequency face.And on reaction time,only literates showed face composite effect.These results indicated that when the task became difficult,the literacy effect on composite face effect could be more visible in reaction time.