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It is widely believed that faces are processed holistically such that their facial features or parts are represented as global wholes rather than independent entities. But how does their holistic representation evolve in time? According to the global-to-local hypothesis, the initial representation of faces is holistic and coarse at the outset but is becoming progressively detailed and analytic. The current study set to test this global-to-local hypothesis by applying fine-grained methods of response time analyses to the composite face illusion – a traditional marker of holistic face processing. The analyses included the delta plots and conditional accuracy functions. These tools move beyond the mean RT and accuracy to provide detailed analysis of the temporal dynamics of the composite face effect. The methodologies converged on the conclusion that the composite effect is minimal for fast RTs but becomes progressively larger as RT gets slower. This pattern is inconsistent with a global-to-local dynamics. The implications of these results to the study of face perception are discussed.

It is widely believed that faces are processed holistically such that their facial features or parts are represented as global wholes rather than independent entities. But how does their holistic representation evolve in time? According to the global-to-local hypothesis, the initial representation of faces is holistic and coarse at the outset but is becoming progressively detailed and analytic. The current study set to test this global-to-local hypothesis by applying fine-grained methods of response time analyses to the composite face illusion – a traditional marker of holistic face processing. The analyses included the delta plots and conditional accuracy functions. These tools move beyond the mean RT and accuracy to provide detailed analysis of the temporal dynamics of the composite face effect. The methodologies converged on the conclusion that the composite effect is minimal for fast RTs but becomes progressively larger as RT gets slower. This pattern is inconsistent with a global-to-local dynamics. The implications of these results to the study of face perception are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A psychosis phenotype can be observed below the threshold of clinical detection. The study aimed to investigate whether subclinical psychotic symptoms are associated with deficits in controlling emotional interference, and whether cortical brain and cardiac correlates of these deficits can be detected using functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS). A data set derived from a community sample was obtained from the Zurich Program for Sustainable Development of Mental Health Services. 174 subjects (mean age 29.67 ± 6.41, 91 females) were assigned to four groups ranging from low to high levels of subclinical psychotic symptoms (derived from the Symptom Checklist-90-R). Emotional interference was assessed using the emotional Stroop task comprising neutral, positive, and negative conditions. Statistical distributional methods based on delta plots (behavioral response time data) and quantile analysis (fNIRS data) were applied to evaluate the emotional interference effects.Results showed that both interference effects and disorder-specific (i.e., group-specific) effects could be detected, based on behavioral response times, cortical hemodynamic signals (brain correlates), and heart rate variability (cardiac correlates). Subjects with high compared to low subclinical psychotic symptoms revealed significantly reduced amplitudes in dorsolateral prefrontal cortices (interference effect, p < 0.001) and middle temporal gyrus (disorder-specific group effect, p < 0.001), supported by behavioral and heart rate results. The present findings indicate that distributional analyses methods can support the detection of emotional interference effects in the emotional Stroop. The results suggested that subjects with high subclinical psychosis exhibit enhanced emotional interference effects. Based on these observations, subclinical psychosis may therefore prove to represent a valid extension of the clinical psychosis phenotype.

It has been argued that inhibition is a mechanism of attentional control in bilingual language performance. Evidence suggests that effects of inhibition are largest in the tail of a response time (RT) distribution in non-linguistic and monolingual performance domains. We examined this for bilingual performance by conducting delta-plot analyses of naming RTs. Dutch-English bilingual speakers named pictures using English while trying to ignore superimposed neutral Xs or Dutch distractor words that were semantically related, unrelated, or translations. The mean RTs revealed semantic, translation, and lexicality effects. The delta plots leveled off with increasing RT, more so when the mean distractor effect was smaller as compared with larger. This suggests that the influence of inhibition is largest towards the distribution tail, corresponding to what is observed in other performance domains. Moreover, the delta plots suggested that more inhibition was applied by high- than low-proficiency individuals in the unrelated than the other distractor conditions. These results support the view that inhibition is a domain-general mechanism that may be optionally engaged depending on the prevailing circumstances.