Individual Differences in Holistic Processing Predict Face Recognition Ability

Why do some people recognize feces easily and others frequently make mistakes in recognizing faces? Classic behavioral work has shown that feces are processed in a distinctive holistic manner that is unlike the processing of objects. In the study reported here, we investigated whether individual differences in holistic fece processing have a significant influence on fece recognition. We found that the magnitude of face-specific recognition accuracy correlated with the extent to which participants processed feces holistically, as indexed by the composite-face effect and the whole-part effect. This association is due to face-specific processing in particular, not to a more general aspect of cognitive processing, such as general intelligence or global attention. This finding provides constraints on computational models of fece recognition and may elucidate mechanisms underlying cognitive disorders, such as prosopagnosia and autism, that are associated with deficits in face recognition.