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

面孔是我们每天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的身份的信息，还提供了他们的感受、他们正在看什么、他们的警觉程度等等。尽管从一张脸中提取所有这些信息似乎毫不费力，但实际上这是一项极其复杂的任务，我们对大脑如何完成这一任务的理解也很差。这项研究试图让我们更好地了解人脸处理的一个方面，也就是说，我们正在寻求阐明视觉系统如何实现识别个人面孔的困难任务。*** 人脸识别是一种重要的人类能力，它被认为涉及一种与我们对其他视觉对象的感知不同的视觉处理。这项研究计划旨在研究面部感知的结构编码方面，其中对单个面部图像进行分析，并将其与记忆中现有的面部表征进行比较。特别是，我们正在寻求更好地理解面部结构编码的三个方面之间的差异，称为特征，结构和整体处理。虽然这三种类型的处理被大多数研究人员认为是存在的，但关于它们还有很多东西需要了解。例如，它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？*** 该项目旨在更好地了解三种面部处理机制之间的差异。我们这样做的方法是多方面的，涉及感知，心理物理和电生理研究技术。该计划的第一个方面将涉及表征处理机制的空间频率要求。第二种方法将调查被认为是反映不同方面的面部处理的眼动模式。该计划的第三个要素将是一个尝试来表征的处理类型的电生理特征（ERP组件）是如何调制的空间频率变化。最后一个方面将涉及直接比较各种知觉研究范式，这些范式被认为是利用一种或另一种类型的处理，以了解这些任务的表现如何相互关联。 *** 总之，这些发现有可能为大脑如何完成面部识别提供更完整的理解。特别是，我们可能能够提供三种加工类型的更正式的表征，这将通过澄清它所研究的一些中心概念而给这个领域带来重要的进步。 除了它将带来的科学进步，拟议的研究计划将使十几名学生研究人员的培训。

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.**