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

脸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人们的身份信息，还提供了他们的感受、他们在看什么、他们的警觉程度等等信息。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项任务的理解很少。这项研究试图让我们更好地理解人脸处理的一个方面；也就是说，我们正在试图阐明视觉系统如何完成识别单个面孔的艰巨任务。人脸识别是一种非常重要的人类能力，它涉及的视觉处理与我们对其他视觉物体的感知在本质上是不同的。它甚至被认为有一组大脑区域专门用于它。提出的研究计划调查了面部感知的结构编码方面，其中对个体面部图像进行分析，并将其与记忆中的现有面部表征进行比较。特别是，我们正在寻求更好地理解面孔结构编码的三个方面的差异，即特征处理、构形处理和整体处理。尽管大多数研究人员认为这三种类型的加工是存在的，但关于它们还有很多有待了解的地方。例如，他们所依赖的视觉空间信息的尺度是什么？面部的哪些部分对每个人都很重要？***本项目旨在更好地了解三种人脸处理机制之间的差异。我们的研究方法是多方面的，包括知觉、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。第二种方法将研究被认为反映面部处理不同方面的眼球运动模式。该计划的第三个要素将是尝试根据其电生理特征（ERP组件）如何通过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，这些发现有可能对大脑如何完成面部识别提供更全面的理解。特别是，我们可能能够提供三种处理类型的更正式的特征，这将通过澄清它所研究的一些中心概念，为这一领域带来重要的进步。除了它将带来的科学进步之外，拟议的研究计划还将能够培养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.**