The Holistic Processing Interpretation Of Own Age Bias In Face Perception:a Test Of The Perceptual Field Hypothesis

The OAB(own-age bias)refers to the phenomenon that the recognition performance of own-age faces is significantly better than the recognition performance of other-age faces.Experience-based holistic processing theory is a mainstream explanation of this phenomenon.Previous studies have adopted three common paradigms(inverted face paradigm composite face paradigm and part-whole paradigm),but these paradigms all have some limitations.The purpose of this study is to explore what the own-age biass on holistic processing will be like when faces are presented in different orientations and target face area changes,so as to develop the hollistic processing explanation to the own-age bias.And at the same time,we examine a new indicator of holistic process,the perceptual field,which refers to the area of vision where the observer can extract diagnostic visual information when processing a face.On this basis,we explored whether there are differences in the eye movement patterns when individual processing own-age and other-age faces,and what eye movement indicators can be used to represent the size of perceptual field.The purpose of Experiment 1 included two aspects.One was to use the inverted face paradigm to test if the perceptual field could be used as an indicator of holistic processing,and the other was to examine whether the holistic processing difference between own-age face and other-age face was affected by the face orientation.Experiment 1 included two experiments,one for adults subjects and one for children subjects.The experiment manipulated the face orientation and asked the participants to select the same one from two alternative faces as the fusion face,in order to examine the size of the perceptual field when they processed own-age faces and other-age faces.The results show that both adult and child subjects have a greater perceptual field when processing upright faces than they do when processing upside-down faces.Moreover,the perceptual field of own-age faces was significantly larger than that of other-age faces for adult subjects when faces are upright.However,this difference was not significant when the faces were inverted.This shows that the holistic processing differences between own-age faces and other-age faces for adult subjects are affected by the face orientation.We did not find significant differences in the size of the perceptual field between own-age faces and other-age faces for child subjects,suggesting that the holistic processing differences between own-age faces and other-age faces for child subjects was not stable.The purpose of Experiment 2 was to examine whether the holistic processing differences between own-age faces and other-age faces were different in different face areas.In the experiment,adult subjects were used.The experiment manipulated face area,the upper half and lower half of the face,and asked subjects to select the same one as the fusion face from two alternative faces.This was to examine the size of the perceptual field when they processed the upper half and lower half of the face.As a result,it was found that the perceptual field of own-age faces was significantly greater than that of other-age faces when subjects processed the upper half of the face.However,this difference was not significant when subjects processed the lower half of the face.This shows that the holistic processing differences between own-age faces and other-age faces will be different when individuals process different areas of the face.In Experiment 3,eye movement techniques were used to explore the differences in eye movement patterns when individuals process own-age faces and other-age faces,and what eye movement indicators can be used to characterize the size of perceptual field.The experiment adopted adult as subjects.Based on the experiment 1a,experiment 3 recorded eye movement information.The results showed that compared with other-age face processing,adult subjects had fewer fixations and longer fixation time at a single fixation when processing own-age faces;there was no significant difference in the total fixation duration between own-age faces and other-age faces processing.In the exploratory aspect,eye movement index for the size of perceptual field,adult subjects had significant differences in the distance between the first fixation and eye horizontal axis when processing own-age faces and other-age faces.In summary,we found that:(1)Adults and children have greater perceptual fields when processing upright faces than they do when processing inverted faces;(2)The holistic processing differences between own-age faces and other-age faces for adult subjects will be different when they process different areas of the face and faces with different orientations.(3)Compared with processing other-age faces,adult subjects have fewer fixations and longer fixation time for a single fixation when processing own-age faces.From this we believe that:(1)the size of the perceptual field can be used as an holistic processing index;(2)when processing different areas of the face and when faces are presented in differend orientations,the holistic processing difference between own-age faces and other-age faces will be different for adult;(3)Adults have different eye movement patterns when processing own-age faces and other-age faces.This suggests that the difference in perceptual field between own-age face processing and other-age face processing may be the cause of own age bias,because larger perceptual fields allow individuals to integrate more face information and then show better processing performance for own-age faces.