Research report 2017 - Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics
Holistic perception of faces and objects
Authors
Bülthoff, Isabelle ; Zhao, Mintao; Bülthoff, Heinrich
Departments
Abteilung Wahrnehmung, Kognition und Handlung
Summary
We cannot process any individual feature in a face without the other parts of the face influencing our perception. So far, this so-called holistic perception had been demonstrated mostly with static faces (images) or with objects that we know very well. However, the Max-Planck scientists have shown that dynamic faces and unknown objects (displaying specific properties) are also perceived holistically. Their results pose a challenge to current dominant theories about holistic processing.