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It can be difficult to recognise new instances of an unfamiliar face. Recognition errors in this particular situation appear to be viewpoint dependent with error rates increasing with the angular distance between the face views. Studies using front views for comparison have shown that recognising faces rotated in yaw can be difficult and that recognition of faces rotated in pitch is more challenging still. Here we investigate the extent to which viewpoint dependent face recognition depends on the comparison view. Participants were assigned to one of four different comparison view groups: front, ¾ yaw (right), ¾ pitch-up (above) or ¾ pitch-down (below). On each trial, participants matched their particular comparison view to a range of yaw or pitch rotated test views. Results showed that groups with a front or ¾ yaw comparison view had superior overall performance and more successful generalisation to a broader range of both pitch and yaw test views compared to groups with pitch-up or pitch-down comparison views, both of which had a very restricted generalisation range. Regression analyses revealed the importance of image similarity between views for generalisation, with a lesser role for 3D face depth. These findings are consistent with a view interpolation solution to view generalisation of face recognition, with front and ¾ yaw views being most informative.

Matching the identities of unfamiliar faces is heavily influenced by variations in their images. Changes to viewpoint and lighting direction during face perception are commonplace across yaw and pitch axes and can result in dramatic image differences. We report two experiments that, for the first time, factorially investigate the combined effects of lighting and view angle on matching performance for unfamiliar faces. The use of three-dimensional head models allowed control of both lighting and viewpoint. We found viewpoint effects in the yaw axis with little to no effect of lighting. However, for rotations about the pitch axis, there were both viewpoint and lighting effects and these interacted where lighting effects were found only for front views and views from below. The pattern of effects was similar regardless of whether view variation occurred as a result of head (Experiment 1) or camera (Experiment 2) suggesting that face matching is not purely image based. Along with face inversion effects in Experiment 1, the results of this study suggest that face perception is based on shape and surface information and draws on implicit knowledge of upright faces and ecological (top) lighting conditions.

2016 The Experimental Psychology Society The other-race effect in face identification has been reported in many situations and by many different ethnicities, yet it remains poorly understood. One reason for this lack of clarity may be a limitation in the methodologies that have been used to test it. Experiments typically use an old-new recognition task to demonstrate the existence of the other-race effect, but such tasks are susceptible to different social and perceptual influences, particularly in terms of the extent to which all faces are equally individuated at study. In this paper we report an experiment in which we used a face learning methodology to measure the other-race effect. We obtained naturalistic photographs of Chinese and Caucasian individuals, which allowed us to test the ability of participants to generalize their learning to new ecologically valid exemplars of a face identity. We show a strong own-race advantage in face learning, such that participants required many fewer trials to learn names of own-race individuals than those of other-race individuals and were better able to identify learned own-race individuals in novel naturalistic stimuli. Since our methodology requires individuation of all faces, and generalization over large image changes, our finding of an other-race effect can be attributed to a specific deficit in the sensitivity of perceptual and memory processes to other-race faces.

Although many researchers agree that faces are processed holistically, we know relatively little about what information holistic processing captures from a face. Most studies that assess the nature of holistic processing do so with changes to the face affecting many different aspects of face information (e.g., different identities). Does holistic processing affect every aspect of a face? We used the composite task, a common means of examining the strength of holistic processing, with participants making same-different judgments about configuration changes or component changes to 1 portion of a face. Configuration changes involved changes in spatial position of the eyes, whereas component changes involved lightening or darkening the eyebrows. Composites were either aligned or misaligned, and were presented either upright or inverted. Both configuration judgments and component judgments showed evidence of holistic processing, and in both cases it was strongest for upright face composites. These results suggest that holistic processing captures a broad range of information about the face, including both configuration-based and component-based information.

There is evidence that facial expressions are perceived holistically and featurally. The composite task is a direct measure of holistic processing (although the absence of a composite effect implies the use of other types of processing). Most composite task studies have used static images, despite the fact that movement is an important aspect of facial expressions and there is some evidence that movement may facilitate recognition. We created static and dynamic composites, in which emotions were reliably identified from each half of the face. The magnitude of the composite effect was similar for static and dynamic expressions identified from the top half (anger, sadness and surprise) but was reduced in dynamic as compared to static expressions identified from the bottom half (fear, disgust and joy). Thus, any advantage in recognising dynamic over static expressions is not likely to stem from enhanced holistic processing, rather motion may emphasise or disambiguate diagnostic featural information.

Holistic processing is considered one of the hallmarks of face recognition. Recent studies using the composite task claim to show a lack of holistic processing for dynamic faces, however they only presented moving faces in the learning phase and tested with static composite images. So while previous research has addressed the question of whether moving faces influence the processing of subsequently viewed static faces, the question of whether moving faces are processed holistically remains unanswered. We address that question here. In our study participants learned faces in motion and were tested on moving composite faces, or learned static faces and were tested on static composite faces. We found a clear composite effect for both upright static and dynamic faces, with no significant difference in the magnitude of those effects. Further, there was no evidence of composite or motion effects in inverted conditions, ruling out low level or other motion signal properties as explanations of performance in upright faces. Together, these results show that upright moving faces are processed holistically, in a similar manner to static faces, extending decades of research with static faces and confirming the importance of holistic processing to familiar face recognition.

Paper presented at the Australasian Experimental Psychology Conference 2015, 8-11 April 2015, Sydney, Australia.

Paper presented at the Australasian Experimental Psychology Conference 2015, 8-11 April 2015, Sydney, Australia.

Investigations of change detection consistently reveal an effect of change magnitude: changes involving more object parts are detected more easily than those involving fewer parts. Whether large changes improve detection by providing stronger preattentive signals to the change location is subject to debate. We report a cued object change detection experiment that tested this hypothesis while controlling for stimulus familiarity, semantic knowledge, and change type (addition versus deletion). We found strong magnitude effects regardless of whether trials were validly or invalidly cued. The size of the cueing effects, which were exhibited for all the change magnitudes examined, did not decrease with the number of parts changing. These findings provide little support for a preattentive guidance hypothesis and instead support the thesis that change detection requires attention.

presented at The 41st Annual Australasian Experimental Psychology Conference, 23-26 April 2014, Brisbane, Australia

presented at The Psychonomic Society 55th Annual Meeting, 20-23 November 2014, Long Beach, United States

presented at The 41st Annual Australasian Experimental Psychology Conference, 23-26 April 2014, Brisbane, Australia

presented at The Asia-Pacific Conference on Vision (APCV) 2014 19-22 July 2014, Takamatsu, Japan

Paper presented at the 2013 Experimental Psychology Conference on the 3-6 April 2013.

Holistic coding for faces is shown in several illusions that demonstrate integration of the percept across the entire face. The illusions occur upright but, crucially, not inverted. Converting the illusions into experimental tasks that measure their strength - and thus index degree of holistic coding - is often considered straightforward yet in fact relies on a hidden assumption, namely that there is no contribution to the experimental measure from secondary cognitive factors. For the composite effect, a relevant secondary factor is size of the "spotlight" of visuospatial attention. The composite task assumes this spotlight can be easily restricted to the target half (e.g., top-half) of the compound face stimulus. Yet, if this assumption were not true then a large spotlight, in the absence of holistic perception, could produce a false composite effect, present even for inverted faces and contributing partially to the score for upright faces. We review evidence that various factors can influence spotlight size: race/culture (Asians often prefer a more global distribution of attention than Caucasians); sex (females can be more global); appearance of the join or gap between face halves; and location of the eyes, which typically attract attention. Results from five experiments then show inverted faces can sometimes produce large false composite effects, and imply that whether this happens or not depends on complex interactions between causal factors. We also report, for both identity and expression, that only top-half face targets (containing eyes) produce valid composite measures. A sixth experiment demonstrates an example of a false inverted part-whole effect, where encoding-specificity is the secondary cognitive factor. We conclude the inverted face control should be tested in all composite and part-whole studies, and an effect for upright faces should be interpreted as a pure measure of holistic processing only when the experimental design produces no effect inverte

Recent evidence suggests stronger holistic processing for own-race faces may underlie the own-race advantage in face memory. In previous studies Caucasian participants have demonstrated larger holistic processing effects for Caucasian over Asian faces. However, Asian participants have consistently shown similar sized effects for both Asian and Cau- casian faces. We investigated two proposed explanations for the holistic processing of other-race faces by Asian participants: (1) greater other-race exposure, (2) a general global processing bias. Holistic processing was tested using the part-whole task. Participants were living in predominantly own-race environments and other-race contact was evalu- ated. Despite reporting significantly greater contact with own-race than other-race people, Chinese participants displayed strong holistic processing for both Asian and Caucasian upright faces. In addition, Chinese participants showed no evidence of holistic processing for inverted faces arguing against a general global processing bias explanation. Caucasian participants, in line with previous studies, displayed stronger holistic processing for Cau- casian than Asian upright faces. For inverted faces there were no race-of-face differences. These results are used to suggest that Asians may make more general use of face-specific mechanisms than Caucasians. This Document is Protected by copyright and was first published by Frontiers. All rights reserved. it is reproduced with permission.

Upright faces are thought to be processed holistically. However, the range of views within which holistic processing occurs is unknown. Recent research by McKone (2008) suggests that holistic processing occurs for all yaw-rotated face views (i.e., full-face through to profile). Herewe examined whether holistic processing occurs for pitch, aswell as yaw, rotated face views. In this face recognition experiment: (i) participants made same/different judgments about two sequentially presented faces (either both upright or both inverted); (ii) the test face was pitch/yaw rotated by between 0° and 75° from the encoding face (always a full-face view). Our logic was as follows: if a particular pitch/yaw-rotated face view is being processed holistically when upright, then this processing should be disrupted by inversion. Consistent with previous research, significant face inversion effects (FIEs) were found for all yaw-rotated views. However, while FIEs were found for pitch rotations up to 45°, none were observed for 75° pitch rotations (rotated either above or below the full face). We conclude that holistic processing does not occur for all views of upright faces (e.g., not for uncommon pitch rotated views), only those that can be matched to a generic global representation of a face.

Poster presented at the 39th Australasian Experimental Psychology Conference, University of New South Wales, 12-15 April 2012

presented at the 39th Australasian Experimental Psychology Conference, University of New South Wales, 12-15 April 2012

We directly compared recognition for faces following 0° – 75° viewpoint rotation about the yaw, pitch, and roll axes. The aim was to determine the extent to which configural and featural information supported face recognition following rotations about each of these axes. Experiment 1 showed that performance on a sequential-matching task was viewpoint-dependent for all three types of rotation. The best face-recognition accuracy and shortest reaction time was found for roll rotations, then for yaw rotations, and finally the worst accuracy and slowest reaction time was found for pitch rotations. Directional differences in recognition were found for pitch rotations, but not for roll or yaw. Experiment 2 provided evidence that, in all three cases, viewpoint-dependent declines in recognition were primarily driven by the loss of configural information. However, it also appeared that significant featural information was lost following yaw and pitch (but not roll) rotations. Together, these findings show that unfamiliar-face recognition is viewpoint-dependent following rotation about each axis (and in each direction), and that performance is based on the availability of configural and, to a lesser extent, featural information.

Previous research has shown that changes to the configuration of an object's parts are better detected than changes to the shape/arrangement of those parts. This finding suggests that configural, rather than shape, information plays a critical role in object change detection. The current study investigated configural and shape changes in greater detail to determine what aspects of these two types of object properties, if any, were more or less important for change detection. Specifically we investigated configural changes in terms of the orientation of the part change and shape changes in terms of the non-accidental properties of the part change. Using a one-shot change detection task with a single object display, we manipulated: (i) the orientation of a configuration change (0°, 90° or 180°) and (ii) both the number and the type of non-accidental object properties (NAPs) involved in each shape change (3 NAPs were manipulated in total: curvature of axis, curvature of edges, and constancy of size). We found that changes to the curvature of the axis were better detected than changes to either the curvature of edges or to the constancy of size. Detection accuracy was better when there were more NAPs involved in a change. Configural changes involving 180° were more accurately detected than changes involving either 0° or 90°. These results suggest that the axes and basic layout of parts is critical information in change detection. Implications for theories of object recognition are discussed.

It is important to look at the combined effects of lighting and view direction on face recognition, as both depend on the three dimensional shape of the face and are in some ways analogous. For example, both pitch rotations and the change between top and bottom lighting involve rotations about the left-right axis, just as yaw and left/right lighting involved rotations about the vertical axis. We investigated identity matching performance across 45° rotations of the light source or the face about pitch or yaw with all images shown either upright or inverted. Upright images were better matched than inverted images, showing that image differences are not sufficient to explain performance. This is consistent with the idea that the use of class-based knowledge of upright faces is important for this task. The effects of face and light rotation interacted and depended on the axis of rotation. Overall, rotations about pitch impaired performance more than rotations about yaw, and changes in view impaired performance more than changes in light. The interaction between face and light rotation was such that if both rotated in the same direction, equivalent to a rotation of the camera in the opposite direction, performance was as good or better than if the face alone rotated. This was particularly pronounced for pitch rotations, with a clear pitch up advantage but only when the light rotated in the same direction. The results are interpreted in terms of image, surface and three-dimensional models based accounts of face matching.

In 2 experiments, nonpilots made time-to-contact (TTC) judgments during simulated oblique descents toward a groundplane. Experiment 1 revealed a significant effect of simulated glideslope on TTC judgments: 3-degree simulations were underestimated, 6-degree simulations were generally accurate, and 9-degree simulations were overestimated. However, there was a significant reduction in this glideslope effect when the simulated aimpoint was explicitly (as opposed to implicitly) identified throughout the display. This glideslope effect was also found to disappear in Experiment 2, when aimpoint distance was held constant for all glideslopes, suggesting that TTC was being indirectly calculated based on perceived distance.

This study examined 3 visual strategies for timing the initiation of the landing flare based on perceptions of either: (i) a critical height above ground level; (ii) a critical runway width angle (Y); or (iii) a critical time-to-contact (TTC) with the runway. Visual displays simulated landing approaches with trial-to-trial variations in glideslope, lighting, and scene detail. Twenty-four participants (8 private pilots, 8 student pilots and 8 non-pilots) were instructed to initiate the flare when they perceived that their TTC with the runway (30 m wide by 840 m long) had reached a critical value of 2 seconds. Our results demonstrated a significant effect of flight experience on flare timing accuracy and dominance of the height-based strategy over the runway-width-angle and TTC-based strategies.