Chapter 3: Face Perception and Top-Down/Bottom-Up Processing

Flashcards covering key concepts from Chapter 3 on face perception, holistic processing, inversion effects, the Tanaka & Sengco Part/Whole findings, prosopagnosia, the FFA, ORE, and top-down vs bottom-up processing.

What is holistic perception in face recognition?

Perceiving a face as a whole, integrating relationships between features to form the full configuration.

Why is face inversion more difficult to recognize?

Inversion disrupts holistic processing, reducing the ability to process the face as an integrated whole while low-level properties remain the same.

What is the composite task in face perception research?

Participants report the identity of one half of a face while ignoring the other half; holistic processing makes it harder to ignore the other half.

What did Tanaka & Sengco (1997) show with the Part/Whole task?

Memory for facial features is better when those features are part of the original face configuration than when seen in isolation or in an altered configuration, indicating holistic encoding.

What is the sequence of recognition results in the Tanaka & Sengco study?

Original configuration (best) > New configuration (moderate) > Isolation (worst); features are better remembered when in the original face context.

What is the Fusiform Face Area (FFA)?

A brain region with selective neural activation to faces compared to objects.

What is the Other-Race Effect (ORE)?

Better recognition of faces from one's own race than faces from other races.

What did cross-cultural studies reveal about ORE?

ORE magnitude can vary with exposure; in some cases (e.g., adoptees or specific age groups) the effect is reduced or reversed, showing experience shapes the bias.

What is the Sensitive Period for face perception?

A developmental window (up to about 10–12 years) during which exposure shapes face perception abilities, with exposure to other-race faces increasing plasticity.

What is Prosopagnosia?

Inability to recognize faces, though individual facial features can be described; can be acquired or developmental, and object recognition may be intact.

What is the Thatcher Illusion?

Inversion disrupts holistic processing while local (feature) processing is retained, making some altered features harder to detect.

What is the impact of semantic knowledge on perception (Davenport & Potter, 2004)?

Semantically consistent images are more likely to be recognized; knowledge and scene context influence perception and allow perception to access context.

What is top-down processing?

Processing guided by knowledge, memory, and expectations that influence interpretation of sensory information.

What is bottom-up processing?

Processing determined by the physical characteristics of the stimulus, building up from simple features to complex representations.

What did Bar et al. (2006) find about top-down influence on perception?

Top-down signals from the frontal cortex (orbitofrontal cortex) can influence object recognition before the ventral stream completes recognition, helping to narrow choices.

How does house feature recognition compare to face recognition in terms of holistic processing?

House features (e.g., a door) are recognized relatively consistently across conditions, suggesting less holistic processing compared to faces.

How long does it typically take to recognize a face as familiar?

Approximately 200–400 milliseconds.

What is the role of the perceptual field in face inversion (P16)?

Upright faces allow a larger perceptual field for holistic processing; inversion reduces this field, prompting more feature-by-feature analysis.