Poster Title:
Holistic processing of postural body configuration across different identities
Subject area:
Visual perception, Body perception, High-level processing
Abstract [50 words max.]:
Recent studies suggest that human bodies of conspecifics are visually processed via holistic
strategies but have mainly focussed on mere standing body stimuli. The current study explored via
the composite task whether other body postures are holistically processed. We show that body
postures are processed holistically even when different identities are used.
Supporting summary: [500 words max., plain text]:
Studies regarding the visual processing of human bodies have suggested that not just mere standing
bodies in identity-based matching, but also other body postures (e.g., Reed, Stone, Bozova, &
Tanaka, 2003; Reed, Stone, Grubb, & McGoldrick, 2006; Tao & Sun, 2013) are susceptible to a
holistic processing strategy. Recently, we (Willems, Vrancken, Germeys, & Verfaillie, 2014) explored
whether human body postures are processed holistically by using the composite design originally
suggested by Young, Hellawell, and Hay (1987). In the original task of Young and colleagues (1987),
participants had to decide whether two top halves of a face were the same, while ignoring the
bottom face halves. A composite effect for faces was observed as a decreased discrimination
performance when two identical top halves of a face were combined with different bottom face
halves. The fact that the task-irrelevant face half was able to influence the perceived identity of the
top half, has been seen as evidence for holistic processing (i.e., processing of the stimulus as a whole
rather than processing of decomposed parts). Recent studies adapted the paradigm to be used with
body stimuli (Robbins & Coltheart, 2012; Soria-Bauser, Suchan, & Daum, 2011) and used a traditional
identity-based task. However, the body composite effect has recently been applied to a whole range
of body postures (Willems, et al., 2014). Unfortunately, there has been some debate whether the
original composite design is suitable to measure holistic processing (e.g., Richler & Gauthier, 2013;
Rossion, 2013). Furthermore, a posture-based task in which the same model is used throughout a
trial, might be susceptible to alternative low and mid-level strategies like limb-angles and shading
differences. As such, the current study implements the proposed alternative to the composite effect
(i.e., a composite paradigm in which response congruency is taken into account on top of the
traditional alignment-based composite effect) and the use of different models within a trial while
still using a posture-based task. Results of our study indicate that the holistic processing of body
postures still occurs, even when two different models are used.
(Co-)Author information:
Willems Sam
Faculty of Psychology & Educational Sciences, Experimental Psychology
University of Leuven
sam.willems@ppw.kuleuven.be
URL: http://www.kuleuven.be/wieiswie/nl/person/00079329
Fierens Barbara
Faculty of Psychology & Educational Sciences, Experimental Psychology
University of Leuven
barbara.fierens@student.kuleuven.be
Karl Verfaillie
Faculty of Psychology & Educational Sciences, Experimental Psychology
University of Leuven
karl.verfaillie@ppw.kuleuven.be
URL: http://www.kuleuven.be/wieiswie/nl/person/00002342
Reed, C. L., Stone, V. E., Bozova, S., & Tanaka, J. (2003). The body-inversion effect. Psychological
Science, 14(4), 302-308. doi: 10.1111/1467-9280.14431
Reed, C. L., Stone, V. E., Grubb, J. D., & McGoldrick, J. E. (2006). Turning configural processing upside
down: Part and whole body postures. Journal of Experimental Psychology-Human Perception
and Performance, 32(1), 73-87. doi: 10.1037/0096-1523.32.1.73
Richler, J. J., & Gauthier, I. (2013). When intuition fails to align with data: A reply to Rossion (2013).
Visual Cognition, 21(2), 254-276. doi: 10.1080/13506285.2013.796035
Robbins, R., & Coltheart, M. (2012). Left-right holistic integration of human bodies. Quarterly Journal
of Experimental Psychology, 65(10), 1962-1974. doi: 10.1080/17470218.2012.674145
Rossion, B. (2013). The composite face illusion: A whole window into our understanding of holistic
face perception. Visual Cognition, 21(2), 139-253. doi: 10.1080/13506285.2013.772929
Soria-Bauser, D. A., Suchan, B., & Daum, I. (2011). Differences between perception of human faces
and body shapes: Evidence from the composite illusion. Vision Research, 51(1), 195-202. doi:
10.1016/j.visres.2010.11.007
Tao, W., & Sun, H. (2013). Configural processing in body posture recognition: an eye-tracking study.
Neuroreport, 24(16), 903-910. doi: 10.1097/wnr.0000000000000017
Willems, S., Vrancken, L., Germeys, F., & Verfaillie, K. (2014). Holistic processing of human body
postures: Evidence from the composite effect. Frontiers in Psychology, 5. doi:
10.3389/fpsyg.2014.00618
Young, A. W., Hellawell, D., & Hay, D. C. (1987). Configurational information in face perception.
Perception, 16(6), 747-759. doi: 10.1068/p160747