The perception of a face can be greater than the sum of its parts.
Published in Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 2014
Recommended citation: Shen, J., & Palmeri, T. J., (2014). The perception of a face can be greater than the sum of its parts. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review. 1-7. doi:10.3758/s13423-014-0726-y
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25228169
We tested whether the facial-feature integration index, as defined in Gold, Mundy, and Tjan (2012), would equal 1 when faces have a range of configurations mirroring the range of variability in real-world faces, using the same experimental procedure and calculating the same integration index as Gold et al. When tested on faces with the same configuration, we also observed an integration index similar to what Gold et al. reported. But when tested on faces with variable configurations, we observed an integration index sig- nificantly greater than 1. Combing our results with those of Gold et al. further clarifies the theoretical construct of holistic processing in face recognition and what it means for the whole to be greater than the sum of its parts.