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Abstract

Many researchers believe that faces-whether presented alone or as part of an ensemble-are processed automatically. According to this idea, (a) the detection of single or multiple faces is resource free and does not require allocation of attention, and (b) visual search for faces is held in parallel. The current study put these hypotheses under direct scrutiny. Participants performed in a redundant target-detection task, responding according to the presence or absence of a face (or faces) on the display. I used a rigorous methodology known as the system factorial technology (SFT). The SFT methodology afforded simultaneous assessment of (a) architecture (serial vs. parallel), (b) stopping rule (exhaustive vs. self-terminating), and (c) capacity (limited, unlimited, or supercapacity). SFT analyses were held at the level of the mean RTs and at the level of the RT distributions. The analyses pointed conclusively to a serial self-terminating architecture with limited capacity. These findings cast serious doubts on the alleged automaticity of face perception.

Keywords Face perception .SFT . Redundant target

(ProQuest: ... denotes formulae omitted.)

Introduction

Imagine that you are expecting to meet your parents at the airport's landing gate. Will you be faster to notice your parents' arrival when both of their faces (mom's and dad's) show up in the gate, compared with a case in which only one of their faces (dad's) appears? Should your ability to detect your parents' arrival improve due to the redundancy of faces? This mundane example captures important practical and theoretical issues in the study of face perception, which the current study aims to address. Faces convey a great deal of information regarding a host of physical and social dimensions (Bruce & Young, 1986; Fitousi, 2020b). Efficient detection and recognition of faces is critical for our survival. It therefore comes with no surprise that many researchers ascribe faces a special status (Diamond & Carey, 1986; Farah et al., 1998; Palermo & Rhodes, 2007;Yin, 1969; Young etal., 1987). They argue that faces (a) are processed holistically (Tanaka & Farah, 1993), (b) capture attention automatically (Langton et al., 2008), (c) draw on minimal mental resources (Lavie et al., 2003), and (d) induce parallel rather than serial processing (Hansen & Hansen, 1988; Hershler & Hochstein, 2005). However, these hypotheses are not universally accepted. Several...

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