Behavioral and neural markers of visual configural processing in social scene perception

Research on face perception has revealed highly specialized visual mechanisms such as configural processing, and provided markers of interindividual differences –including disease risks and alterations– in visuo-perceptual abilities that traffic in social cognition. Is face perception unique in degree or kind of mechanisms, and in its relevance for social cognition? Combining functional MRI and behavioral methods, we address the processing of an uncharted class of socially relevant stimuli: minimal social scenes involving configurations of two bodies spatially close and face-to-face as if interacting (hereafter, facing dyads). We report category-specific activity for facing (vs. non-facing) dyads in visual cortex. That activity shows face-like signatures of configural processing –i.e., stronger response to facing (vs. non-facing) dyads, and greater susceptibility to stimulus inversion for facing (vs. non-facing) dyads–, and is predicted by performance-based measures of configural processing in visual perception of body dyads. Moreover, we observe that the individual performance in body-dyad perception is reliable, stable-over-time and correlated with the individual social sensitivity, coarsely captured by the Autism-Spectrum Quotient. Further analyses clarify the relationship between single-body and body-dyad perception. We propose that facing dyads are processed through highly specialized mechanisms –and brain areas–, analogously to other biologically and socially relevant stimuli such as faces. Like face perception, facing-dyad perception can reveal basic (visual) processes that lay the foundations for understanding others, their relationships and interactions.