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Turning an object upside-down disrupts our ability to perceive it accurately, and this inversion effect is disproportionately larger for faces and whole bodies than most other objects. This disproportionate inversion effect is taken as an indicator of holistic processing for these stimuli. Large inversion effects are also found when viewing motion-only information from faces and bodies; however, these have not been compared to other moving objects in an identity task so it is unclear whether inversion effects remain disproportionately larger for faces and bodies when they are engaged in motion. The current study investigated the effect of inversion on static and moving unfamiliar faces, human bodies, and German Shepherd dogs in an old-new recognition memory task. Sensitivity and baseline corrected reaction time (RT) results revealed that inversion effects for faces and whole-bodies remained disproportionately larger than those for German Shepherd dogs, regardless of presentation type, suggesting that both static and moving faces and bodies are processed holistically. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Face memory is worse for races other than one's own, in part because other-race faces are less holistically processed. Both experiential factors and social factors have been suggested as reasons for this other-race effect. Direct measures of holistic processing for race and a non-racial category in faces have never been employed, making it difficult to establish how experience and group membership interact. This study is the first to directly explore holistic processing of own-race and other-race faces, also classed by a non-racial category (university affiliation). Using a crossover design, White undergraduates (in Australia) completed the part-whole task for White (American) and Black South African faces attributed to the University of Western Sydney (own) and University of Sydney (other). Black South African undergraduates completed the same task for White and Black South African faces attributed to the University of Cape Town (own) and Stellenbosch University (other). It was hypothesised that own-race faces would be processed more holistically than other-race faces and that own-university faces would be processed more holistically than other-university faces. Results showed a significant effect of race for White participants (White faces were matched more accurately than Black faces), and wholes were matched more accurately than parts, suggesting holistic processing, but only for White faces. No effect of university was found. Black South African participants, who have more experience with other-race faces, processed wholes better than parts irrespective of race and university category. Overall, results suggest that experiential factors of race outweigh any effects of a non-racial shared group membership. The quality of experience for the named populations, stimuli presentation, and degree of individuation are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Summary This article focuses on adult social work’s response in England to high-risk domestic violence cases and the role of adult social workers in multi-agency risk and assessment conferences. The research was undertaken between 2013 and 2014 and focused on one city in England and involved the research team attending multi-agency risk and assessment conferences. Interviews with 20 adult social workers, 24 multi-agency risk and assessment conferences attendees, 14 adult service users at time T1 (including follow-up interviews after six months, T2), focus groups with independent domestic violence advocates and Women’s Aid and an interview with a Women’s Aid service user. Findings The findings suggest that although adult social workers accept the need to be involved in domestic violence cases they are uncertain of what their role is and are confused with the need to operate a parallel domestic violence and adult safeguarding approach, which is further, complicated by issues of mental capacity. Multi-agency risk and assessment conferences are identified as overburdened, under-represented meetings staffed by committed managers. However, they are in danger of becoming managerial processes neglecting the service users they are meant to protect. Applications The article argues for a re-engagement of adult social workers with domestic violence that has increasingly become over identified with child protection. It also raises the issue whether multi-agency risk and assessment conferences remain fit for purpose and whether they still represent the best possible response to multi-agency coordination and practice in domestic violence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Facial movement may provide cues to identity, by supporting the extraction of face shape information via structure-from-motion, or via characteristic patterns of movement. Currently, it is unclear whether familiar and unfamiliar faces derive the same benefit from these mechanisms. This study examined the movement advantage by asking participants to match moving and static images of famous and unfamiliar faces to facial point-light displays (PLDs) or shape-normalised avatars in a same/different task (experiment 1). In experiment 2 we also used a same/different task, but participants matched from PLD to PLD or from avatar to avatar. In both experiments, unfamiliar face matching was more accurate for PLDs than for avatars, but there was no effect of stimulus type on famous faces. In experiment 1, there was no movement advantage, but in experiment 2, there was a significant movement advantage for famous and unfamiliar faces. There was no evidence that familiarity increased the movement advantage. For unfamiliar faces, results suggest that participants were relying on characteristic movement patterns to match the faces, and did not derive any extra benefit from the structure-from-motion cues in the PLDs. The results indicate that participants may use static and movement-based cues in a flexible manner when matching famous and unfamiliar faces. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Holistic integration of faces has been widely studied. More recently, investigations have explored whether similar processing is used for human bodies. Here we show that holistic processing, as measured by the composite task, does occur for bodies but is stronger for left and right halves than for top and bottom halves. We also found composite effects for left–right halves of inverted bodies. Standard composite effects were found for top halves of faces, tested as a control. We argue that our results suggest that holistic processing of faces and bodies might not exclusively occur for identification, but instead may also have evolved to aid communication and/or decisions about mate choice (through judging symmetry). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In previous studies we created 8 new versions of a single face: 4 differed only in the spacing among features and 4 differed in the shape of the eyes and mouth. Compared to the spacing set, results for this feature set indicated little impairment by inversion, earlier adult-like accuracy (Mondloch et al, 2002 Perception 31 553–566), and normal performance after a history of early visual deprivation from bilateral congenital cataract (Le Grand et al, 2001 Nature 410 890, 412 786). Here we addressed the possibility that this pattern might have resulted from our having inadvertently selected easily discriminated features or including some faces with make-up. We created 20 featural versions of a single female face and asked adults, 10-year-old children, and patients treated for bilateral congenital cataract to make same/different judgments for 120 pairings (half different). The results confirm that adults easily discriminate facial features, even after early visual deprivation from cataract, and that inversion has only a small effect. By the age of 10 years, children are close to, but not quite at, adult levels of accuracy. The previous findings cannot be attributed to our having inadvertently created a feature set that was unusually easy to discriminate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]