Abstract
Some theories of holistic face processing propose that parts in faces (eyes, nose, mouth, etc.) are not explicitly represented. So far, the empirical evidence has shown that whole-to-part superiority is found when wholes are learned. We substantiated this using photographic faces. More importantly, we investigated whether learning parts also reveals holistic effects. This has not been attempted before. Four experiments showed that after learning facial parts, recognition of these parts was disrupted when the part was shown in the full face. This distraction effect was strongest when perceivers were not directed to focus on a particular facial feature. Thus, it is very difficult to ignore irrelevant parts in faces. In fact, this might be the essence of holistic face processing.
Acknowledgments
This research was supported by a grant to Leder from the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG, Le1286). We particularly thank G. Harsa´nyi and all students for their help in conducting the experiments. We thank Eric Kearney and Steve Pawlett for proof-reading the manuscript. Moreover, we thank Mike Burton, Jules Davidoff, and an anonymous reviewer for their helpful comments.
Notes
The German versions were used in all experiments.