Spatial summation of face information

Do all parts of the face contribute equally to face detection or are some parts more detectable than others? The task was to detect the presence of normalized frontal-face images within in aperture windows of varying extent. We performed such a face summation study using two-alternative forced-choice psychophysics. The face stimuli were scaled to equal eye-to- chin distance, foveated on the bridge of the nose. The images were windowed by a fourth-power Gaussian envelope ranging from the center of the nose to the full face width. Eight faces (4 male and 4 female) were presented in randomized order, intermixed with 8 control stimuli consisting of phase- scrambled versions of the images with equal Fourier energy. The integration functions for detection of random images did not deviate significantly from a log-log slope of -0.5, suggesting the operation of a set of ideal integrators with probability summation over all aperture sizes. The data for face detection showed that observers were not ideal integrators for the information in the face images, but integrated linearly up to some small size and failed to gain any improvement for information beyond some larger size. This performance suggested the operation of a specialized face template filter at detection threshold, differing in extent among the observers.

[1]  U. Neisser.  VISUAL SEARCH. , 1964, Scientific American.

[2]  J. Robson,et al.  Grating summation in fovea and periphery , 1978, Vision Research.

[3]  R. Yin.  Looking at Upside-down Faces , 1969 .

[4]  M. Tarr,et al.  Becoming a “Greeble” Expert: Exploring Mechanisms for Face Recognition , 1997, Vision Research.

[5]  H. Barlow.  Temporal and spatial summation in human vision at different background intensities , 1958, The Journal of physiology.

[6]  Frédéric Gosselin,et al.  Bubbles: a technique to reveal the use of information in recognition tasks , 2001, Vision Research.

[7]  A B Watson,et al.  Visual detection of spatial contrast patterns: evaluation of five simple models. , 2000, Optics express.

[8]  B. Julesz,et al.  Context Superiority in a Detection Task with Line-Element Stimuli: A Low-Level Effect , 1990, Perception.

[9]  H. Nothdurft.  Faces and Facial Expressions do not Pop Out , 1993, Perception.

[10]  G. M. Reicher.  Perceptual recognition as a function of meaninfulness of stimulus material. , 1969, Journal of experimental psychology.

[11]  S. Carey,et al.  From piecemeal to configurational representation of faces. , 1977, Science.

[12]  C. Chubb,et al.  The size-tuning of the face-distortion after-effect , 2001, Vision Research.

[13]  J. Jonides,et al.  A replication of the face-superiority effect , 1978 .

[14]  T. Valentine.  Upside-down faces: a review of the effect of inversion upon face recognition. , 1988, British journal of psychology.

[15]  N Weisstein,et al.  Visual Detection of Line Segments: An Object-Superiority Effect , 1974, Science.

[16]  P. Schyns,et al.  Show Me the Features! Understanding Recognition From the Use of Visual Information , 2002, Psychological science.

[17]  C. Tyler,et al.  Bayesian adaptive estimation of psychometric slope and threshold , 1999, Vision Research.

[18]  D. Purcell,et al.  The face-detection effect: Configuration enhances detection , 1988, Perception & psychophysics.

[19]  J. Tanaka,et al.  Features and their configuration in face recognition , 1997, Memory & cognition.

[20]  C. Tyler,et al.  Signal detection theory in the 2AFC paradigm: attention, channel uncertainty and probability summation , 2000, Vision Research.

[21]  M. Farah,et al.  What causes the face inversion effect? , 1995, Journal of experimental psychology. Human perception and performance.

[22]  Wilson S. Geisler,et al.  The physical limits of grating visibility , 1987, Vision Research.

[23]  Otto H. MacLin,et al.  Figural aftereffects in the perception of faces , 1999, Psychonomic bulletin & review.

[24]  Dean G. Purcell,et al.  The face-detection effect , 1986 .

[25]  P. Thompson,et al.  Margaret Thatcher: A New Illusion , 1980, Perception.

[26]  C W Tyler,et al.  The Morphonome image psychophysics software and a calibrator for Macintosh systems. , 1997, Spatial vision.

[27]  Christopher W. Tyler,et al.  Bit stealing: how to get 1786 or more gray levels from an 8-bit color monitor , 1992, Electronic Imaging.

[28]  ERNEST BAUMGARDT.  Visual Spatial and Temporal Summation , 1959, Nature.

[29]  J. Findlay,et al.  Face Detection in Peripheral Vision: Do Faces Pop Out? , 1997, Perception.

[30]  P. Bennett,et al.  Deriving behavioural receptive fields for visually completed contours , 2000, Current Biology.

[31]  M. Farah,et al.  Parts and Wholes in Face Recognition , 1993, The Quarterly journal of experimental psychology. A, Human experimental psychology.