Characterization of Featural, Configural, and Holistic Processing in the Structural Encoding of Faces

人脸是我们日常遇到的最重要的视觉刺激之一。它们不仅为我们提供了关于人们身份的信息，还包括他们的感受、他们正在看的东西、他们的警觉水平等等。尽管从一张脸中提取所有这些信息看起来很容易，但实际上这是一项令人难以置信的复杂任务，而且我们对大脑是如何完成这一任务的理解很差。这项研究试图让我们更好地理解人脸处理的一个方面，即我们试图阐明视觉系统是如何完成识别单个人脸的困难任务的。 人脸识别是一种如此重要的人类能力，被认为涉及一种与我们对其他视觉对象的感知具有质的不同的视觉处理。它甚至被认为有一组专门负责这方面的大脑区域。提出的研究程序研究了人脸感知的结构编码方面，即分析单个人脸图像，并将其与记忆中现有的人脸表征进行比较。特别是，我们试图更好地理解人脸结构编码的三个方面之间的差异，这三个方面称为特征加工、配置加工和整体加工。尽管大多数研究人员认为这三种加工过程都存在，但仍有许多事情需要我们去了解。例如，他们依赖于什么尺度的视觉空间信息？脸部的哪些部位对每个人来说都很重要？ 他说，这个项目旨在更好地了解三种人脸处理机制之间的差异。我们的方法是多方面的，包括感知、心理物理和电生理研究技术。该计划的第一个方面将涉及描述处理机制的空间频率要求。第二种方法将研究被认为反映面部加工不同方面的眼球运动模式。该计划的第三个要素将是试图根据其电生理特征(事件相关电位成分)如何被空间频率变化调制来表征处理类型。最后一个方面将涉及直接比较各种知觉研究范式，这些范式被认为利用了一种或另一种类型的加工，以了解这些任务的表现如何相互关联。 这些发现加在一起，有可能为大脑如何完成人脸识别提供更完整的理解。特别是，我们也许能够对这三种加工类型提供更正式的描述，这将通过澄清该领域调查的一些核心概念而为该领域带来重要进展。 他说，除了它将带来的科学进步外，拟议的研究计划还将能够培训十几名学生研究人员。

Faces are one of the most important visual stimuli we encounter on a daily basis. They provide us with information about not only people’s identities, but also how they are feeling, what they are looking at, their level of alertness, and so on. Although extracting all this information from a face seems effortless, it is in fact an incredibly complex task, and our understanding of how the brain accomplishes it is poor. This research is an attempt to give us a better understanding of one aspect of face processing; That is, we are seeking to elucidate how the visual system achieves the difficult task of recognizing individual faces.      Face recognition is such an important human capacity that is thought to involve a qualitatively different kind of visual processing than our perception of other visual objects. It is even thought to have a set of brain areas specifically devoted to it. The proposed research program investigates the structural encoding aspect of face perception, wherein individual face images are analyzed and compared to existing representations of faces in memory. In particular, we are seeking to better understand the differences between 3 aspects of the structural encoding of faces called featural, configural, and holistic processing. Although these three types of processing are thought to exist by most researchers, there is much that remains to be understood about them. For instance, what scales of visuospatial information do they rely on? What parts of the face are important to each?      This project is aimed at providing a greater understanding of the differences between the three face processing mechanisms. Our approach to doing this is multi-faceted, involving perceptual, psychophysical, and electrophysiological research techniques. The first aspect of the program will involve characterizing the spatial frequency requirements of the processing mechanisms. A second approach will investigate patterns of eye movements thought to be reflective of the different aspects of face processing. A third element of the program will be an attempt to characterize the processing types in terms of how their electrophysiological signatures (ERP components) are modulated by spatial frequency variations. The final aspect will involve directly comparing a variety of perceptual research paradigms that are thought to tap into one or the other type of processing to see how performance on these tasks correlate with one another.      Together, these findings have the potential to provide a more complete understanding of how the brain accomplishes face recognition. In particular, we may be able to provide a more formal characterization of the three processing types, which would bring an important advance to this field by clarifying some of the central concepts that it investigates.      In addition to the scientific advances it will bring, the proposed research program will enable the training of over a dozen student researchers.