About-face on face recognition ability and holistic processing.

Previous work found a small but significant relationship between holistic processing measured with the composite task and face recognition ability measured by the Cambridge Face Memory Test (CFMT; Duchaine & Nakayama, 2006). Surprisingly, recent work using a different measure of holistic processing (Vanderbilt Holistic Face Processing Test [VHPT-F]; Richler, Floyd, & Gauthier, 2014) and a larger sample found no evidence for such a relationship. In Experiment 1 we replicate this unexpected result, finding no relationship between holistic processing (VHPT-F) and face recognition ability (CFMT). A key difference between the VHPT-F and other holistic processing measures is that unique face parts are used on each trial in the VHPT-F, unlike in other tasks where a small set of face parts repeat across the experiment. In Experiment 2, we test the hypothesis that correlations between the CFMT and holistic processing tasks are driven by stimulus repetition that allows for learning during the composite task. Consistent with our predictions, CFMT performance was correlated with holistic processing in the composite task when a small set of face parts repeated over trials, but not when face parts did not repeat. A meta-analysis confirms that relationships between the CFMT and holistic processing depend on stimulus repetition. These results raise important questions about what is being measured by the CFMT, and challenge current assumptions about why faces are processed holistically.

Reliability of composite-task measurements of holistic face processing.

There is growing interest in the study of individual differences in face recognition, including one of its hallmarks, holistic processing, which can be defined as a failure of selective attention to parts. These efforts demand that researchers be aware of, and try to maximize, the reliability of their measurements. Here we report on the reliability of measurements using the composite task (complete design), a measure of holistic processing that has been shown to have relatively good validity. Several studies have used the composite task to investigate individual differences, yet only one study has discussed its reliability. We investigate the reliability of composite-task measurements in eight data sets from five different samples of subjects. In general, we found reliability to be fairly low, but there was substantial variability across experiments. Researchers should keep in mind that reliability is a property of measurements, not of a task, and think about the ways in which measurements in a particular task may be improved before embarking on individual differences research.

NIH Toolbox Cognition Battery (CB): validation of executive function measures in adults.

This study describes psychometric properties of the NIH Toolbox Cognition Battery (NIHTB-CB) executive function measures in an adult sample. The NIHTB-CB was designed for use in epidemiologic studies and clinical trials for ages 3 to 85. A total of 268 self-described healthy adults were recruited at four university-based sites, using stratified sampling guidelines to target demographic variability for age (20-85 years), gender, education and ethnicity. The NIHTB-CB contains two computer-based instruments assessing executive function: the Dimensional Change Card Sort (a measure of cognitive flexibility) and a flanker task (a measure of inhibitory control and selective attention). Participants completed the NIHTB-CB, corresponding gold standard convergent and discriminant measures, and sociodemographic questionnaires. A subset of participants (N=89) was retested 7 to 21 days later. Results reveal excellent sensitivity to age-related changes during adulthood, excellent test-retest reliability, and adequate to good convergent and discriminant validity. The NIH Toolbox EF measures can be used effectively in epidemiologic and clinical studies.

The Vanderbilt holistic face processing test: a short and reliable measure of holistic face processing.

Efforts to understand individual differences in high-level vision necessitate the development of measures that have sufficient reliability, which is generally not a concern in group studies. Holistic processing is central to research on face recognition and, more recently, to the study of individual differences in this area. However, recent work has shown that the most popular measure of holistic processing, the composite task, has low reliability. This is particularly problematic for the recent surge in interest in studying individual differences in face recognition. Here, we developed and validated a new measure of holistic face processing specifically for use in individual-differences studies. It avoids some of the pitfalls of the standard composite design and capitalizes on the idea that trial variability allows for better traction on reliability. Across four experiments, we refine this test and demonstrate its reliability.

Experience moderates overlap between object and face recognition, suggesting a common ability.

Some research finds that face recognition is largely independent from the recognition of other objects; a specialized and innate ability to recognize faces could therefore have little or nothing to do with our ability to recognize objects. We propose a new framework in which recognition performance for any category is the product of domain-general ability and category-specific experience. In Experiment 1, we show that the overlap between face and object recognition depends on experience with objects. In 256 subjects we measured face recognition, object recognition for eight categories, and self-reported experience with these categories. Experience predicted neither face recognition nor object recognition but moderated their relationship: Face recognition performance is increasingly similar to object recognition performance with increasing object experience. If a subject has a lot of experience with objects and is found to perform poorly, they also prove to have a low ability with faces. In a follow-up survey, we explored the dimensions of experience with objects that may have contributed to self-reported experience in Experiment 1. Different dimensions of experience appear to be more salient for different categories, with general self-reports of expertise reflecting judgments of verbal knowledge about a category more than judgments of visual performance. The complexity of experience and current limitations in its measurement support the importance of aggregating across multiple categories. Our findings imply that both face and object recognition are supported by a common, domain-general ability expressed through experience with a category and best measured when accounting for experience.

II. NIH Toolbox Cognition Battery (CB): measuring executive function and attention.

In this chapter, we discuss two measures designed to assess executive function (EF) as part of the NIH Toolbox Cognition Battery (CB) and report pediatric data from the validation study. EF refers to the goal-directed cognitive control of thought, action, and emotion. Two measures were adapted for standardized computer administration: the Dimensional Change Card Sort (a measure of cognitive flexibility) and a flanker task (a measure of inhibitory control in the context of selective visual attention). Results reveal excellent developmental sensitivity across childhood, excellent reliability, and (in most cases) excellent convergent validity. Correlations between the new NIH Toolbox measures and age were higher for younger children (3-6 years) than for older children (8-15 years), and evidence of increasing differentiation of EF from other aspects of cognition (indexed by receptive vocabulary) was obtained.

Holistic processing predicts face recognition.

The concept of holistic processing is a cornerstone of face-recognition research. In the study reported here, we demonstrated that holistic processing predicts face-recognition abilities on the Cambridge Face Memory Test and on a perceptual face-identification task. Our findings validate a large body of work that relies on the assumption that holistic processing is related to face recognition. These findings also reconcile the study of face recognition with the perceptual-expertise work it inspired; such work links holistic processing of objects with people's ability to individuate them. Our results differ from those of a recent study showing no link between holistic processing and face recognition. This discrepancy can be attributed to the use in prior research of a popular but flawed measure of holistic processing. Our findings salvage the central role of holistic processing in face recognition and cast doubt on a subset of the face-perception literature that relies on a problematic measure of holistic processing.

Beliefs alter holistic face processing ... if response bias is not taken into account.

The composite paradigm is widely used to quantify holistic processing (HP) of faces, but there is debate regarding the appropriate design (partial vs. complete) and measures in this task. Here, we argue that some operational definitions of HP are problematic because they are sensitive to top-down influences, even though the underlying concept is assumed to be cognitively impenetrable. In Experiment 1, we told one group of participants that the target face half would remain the same on 75% of trials and another group that it would change on 75% of trials. The true proportion of same/different trials was 50%-groups only differed in their beliefs about the target halves. In Experiment 2, we manipulated the actual proportion of same/different trials in the experiment (75% of trials were the same for one group; 75% of trials were different for another group) but did not give explicit instructions about proportions. In both experiments, these manipulations influenced response biases that altered partial design measures of HP while the complete design measure was unaffected. We argue that the partial design should be abandoned because it has poor construct validity.

Developmental trajectories of restricted and repetitive behaviors and interests in children with autism spectrum disorders.

This study examined how restricted and repetitive behaviors and interests (RRBs) developed over time in a sample of children with autism spectrum disorders (ASD). One hundred ninety-two children referred for a diagnosis of autism at age 2, and 22 children with nonspectrum development disorders were evaluated with a battery of cognitive and diagnostic measures at age 2 and subsequently at ages 3, 5, and 9. Factor analysis of the RRB items on the Autism Diagnostic Interview-Revised revealed two RRB factors at each wave of data collection, one comprising "repetitive sensorimotor" (RSM) behaviors and the other "insistence on sameness" (IS) behaviors. For children with ASD, RSM scores remained relatively high over time, indicating consistent severity, whereas IS scores started low and increased over time, indicating worsening. Having a higher nonverbal intelligence (NVIQ) at age 2 was associated with milder concurrent RSM behaviors and with improvement in these behaviors over time. There was no relationship between NVIQ at age 2 and IS behaviors. However, milder social/communicative impairment, at age 2 was associated with more severe concurrent IS behaviors. Trajectory analysis revealed considerable heterogeneity in patterns of change over time for both kinds of behaviors. These findings are discussed in terms of their implications for our understanding of RRBs in ASD and other disorders, making prognoses about how RRBs will develop in children with ASD as they get older, and using RRBs to identify ASD phenotypes in genetic studies.

Does response interference contribute to face composite effects?

Holistic processing of faces can be measured as a failure of selective attention to one face-half under instructions to ignore the other face-half in a naming or same/different matching task. But is interference from the irrelevant half due to response interference rather than to holistic processing? Here, participants learned to name two faces "Fred" and two "Bob." At test, composites were created from top and bottom halves of different learned faces or of a novel face, and composites were either aligned or misaligned. Naming was slower when the irrelevant half was from a different face as opposed to the same face, regardless of whether it was associated with the same name, a different name, or no name, suggesting holistic processing. Interference was eliminated when composite halves were misaligned. These results suggest that, unlike Stroop effects, composite effects are not due to response interference.

Individual differences in object recognition.

There is substantial evidence for individual differences in personality and cognitive abilities, but we lack clear intuitions about individual differences in visual abilities. Previous work on this topic has typically compared performance with only 2 categories, each measured with only 1 task. This approach is insufficient for demonstration of domain-general effects. Most previous work has used familiar object categories, for which experience may vary between participants and categories, thereby reducing correlations that would stem from a common factor. In Study 1, we adopted a latent variable approach to test for the first time whether there is a domain-general object recognition ability, o. We assessed whether shared variance between latent factors representing performance for each of 5 novel object categories could be accounted for by a single higher-order factor. On average, 89% of the variance of lower-order factors denoting performance on novel object categories could be accounted for by a higher-order factor, providing strong evidence for o. Moreover, o also accounted for a moderate proportion of variance in tests of familiar object recognition. In Study 2, we assessed whether the strong association across categories in object recognition is due to third-variable influences. We find that o has weak to moderate associations with a host of cognitive, perceptual, and personality constructs and that a clear majority of the variance in and covariance between performance on different categories is independent of fluid intelligence. This work provides the first demonstration of a reliable, specific, and domain-general object recognition ability, and suggest a rich framework for future work in this area. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved).

Revisiting the role of spatial frequencies in the holistic processing of faces.

V. Goffaux and B. Rossion (2006) argued that holistic processing of faces is largely supported by low spatial frequencies (LSFs) but less so by high spatial frequencies (HSFs). We addressed this claim using a sequential matching task with face composites. Observers judged whether the top halves of aligned or misaligned composites were identical. We replicated the V. Goffaux and B. Rossion (2006) results, finding a greater alignment effect in accuracy for LSF compared with HSF faces on same trials. However, there was also a greater bias for responding "same" for HSF compared with LSF faces, indicating that the alignment effects arose from differential response biases. Crucially, comparable congruency effects found for LSF and HSF suggest that LSF and HSF faces are processed equally holistically. These results demonstrate that it is necessary to use measures that take response biases into account in order to fully understand the holistic nature of face processing.

The Q-CHAT (Quantitative CHecklist for Autism in Toddlers): a normally distributed quantitative measure of autistic traits at 18-24 months of age: preliminary report.

We report a major revision of the CHecklist for Autism in Toddlers (CHAT). This quantitative CHAT (Q-CHAT) contains 25 items, scored on a 5 point scale (0-4). The Q-CHAT was completed by parents of n = 779 unselected toddlers (mean age 21 months) and n = 160 toddlers and preschoolers (mean age 44 months) with an Autism Spectrum Condition (ASC). The ASC group (mean (SD) = 51.8 (14.3)) scored higher on the Q-CHAT than controls (26.7 (7.8)). Boys in the control group (27.5 (7.8)) scored higher than girls (25.8 (7.7)). The intraclass correlation for test-retest reliability was 0.82 (n = 330). The distribution in the control group was close to normal. Full examination of the clinical validity of the Q-CHAT and test properties is underway.

Why does selective attention to parts fail in face processing?

One hallmark of holistic face processing is an inability to selectively attend to 1 face part while ignoring information in another part. In 3 sequential matching experiments, the authors tested perceptual and decisional accounts of holistic processing by measuring congruency effects between cued and uncued composite face halves shown in spatially aligned or disjointed configurations. The authors found congruency effects when the top and bottom halves of the study face were spatially aligned, misaligned (Experiment 1), or adjacent to one another (Experiment 2). However, at test, congruency effects were reduced by misalignment and abolished for adjacent configurations. This suggests that manipulations at test are more influential than manipulations at study, consistent with a decisional account of holistic processing. When encoding demands for study and test faces were equated (Experiment 3), the authors observed effects of study configuration suggesting that, consistent with a perceptual explanation, encoding does influence the magnitude of holistic processing. Together, these results cannot be accounted for by current perceptual or decisional accounts of holistic processing and suggest the existence of an attention-dependent mechanism that can integrate spatially separated face parts.

Holistic processing of faces: perceptual and decisional components.

Researchers have used several composite face paradigms to assess holistic processing of faces. In the selective attention paradigm, participants decide whether one face part (e.g., top) is the same as a previously seen face part. Their judgment is affected by whether the irrelevant part of the test face is the same as or different than the relevant part of the study face. This failure of selective attention implies holistic processing. However, the authors show that this task alone cannot distinguish between perceptual and decisional sources of holism. The distinction can be addressed by the complete identification paradigm, in which both face parts are judged to be same or different, combined with analyses based on general recognition theory (F. G. Ashby & J. T. Townsend, 1986). The authors used a different paradigm, sequential responses, to relate these 2 paradigms empirically and theoretically. Sequential responses produced the same results as did selective attention and complete identification. Moreover, disruptions of holistic processing by systematic misalignment of the faces corresponded with systematic and significant changes in the decisional components, but not in the perceptual components, that were extracted using general recognition theory measures. This finding suggests a significant decisional component of holistic face processing in the composite face task.

How holistic processing of faces relates to cognitive control and intelligence.

The Vanderbilt Holistic Processing Test for faces (VHPT-F) is the first standard test designed to measure individual differences in holistic processing. The test measures failures of selective attention to face parts through congruency effects, an operational definition of holistic processing. However, this conception of holistic processing has been challenged by the suggestion that it may tap into the same selective attention or cognitive control mechanisms that yield congruency effects in Stroop and Flanker paradigms. Here, we report data from 130 subjects on the VHPT-F, several versions of Stroop and Flanker tasks, as well as fluid IQ. Results suggested a small degree of shared variance in Stroop and Flanker congruency effects, which did not relate to congruency effects on the VHPT-F. Variability on the VHPT-F was also not correlated with Fluid IQ. In sum, we find no evidence that holistic face processing as measured by congruency in the VHPT-F is accounted for by domain-general control mechanisms.

Restricted and repetitive behaviors in young children with autism spectrum disorders.

Restricted and repetitive behaviors (RRBs) on the Autism Diagnostic Interview- Revised (ADI-R: Lord, Rutter, & Le Couteur (1994) were examined in 165 children with Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD), 49 children with non-spectrum developmental disorders (DD), and 65 children with typical development (TD) at approximately 2 years of age. A factor analysis found evidence for a repetitive sensorimotor (RSM) factor and an insistence on sameness (IS) factor. Behaviors that loaded on the RSM factor were prevalent in children with ASD and significantly more common and severe than in children with DD or TD. On average, children with ASD had more RSM behaviors. Behaviors that loaded on the IS factor were relatively uncommon and did not differ in prevalence or severity across groups.

Predictors of perceived negative impact in mothers of children with autism spectrum disorder.

Mothers of 110 children with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) were interviewed with the Child and Adolescent Impact Assessment when their children were approximately 9 years old. Regression analyses revealed that African American mothers reported lower levels of perceived negative impact of having a child with ASD than did Caucasian mothers. Higher repetitive behavior scores on the Autism Diagnostic Interview-Revised, lower adaptive behavior scores on the Vineland Adaptive Behavior Scales, and less perceived social support were also significant predictors of higher perceived negative impact. Identifying predictors of perceived negative impact is an important first step in designing interventions to support families and target parents who may be at risk for experiencing higher levels of stress.

Limited evidence of individual differences in holistic processing in different versions of the part-whole paradigm.

The part-whole paradigm was one of the first measures of holistic processing and it has been used to address several topics in face recognition, including its development, other-race effects, and more recently, whether holistic processing is correlated with face recognition ability. However the task was not designed to measure individual differences and it has produced measurements with low reliability. We created a new holistic processing test designed to measure individual differences based on the part-whole paradigm, the Vanderbilt Part Whole Test (VPWT). Measurements in the part and whole conditions were reliable, but, surprisingly, there was no evidence for reliable individual differences in the part-whole index (how well a person can take advantage of a face part presented within a whole face context compared to the part presented without a whole face) because part and whole conditions were strongly correlated. The same result was obtained in a version of the original part-whole task that was modified to increase its reliability. Controlling for object recognition ability, we found that variance in the whole condition does not predict any additional variance in face recognition over what is already predicted by performance in the part condition.

General object recognition is specific: Evidence from novel and familiar objects.

In tests of object recognition, individual differences typically correlate modestly but nontrivially across familiar categories (e.g. cars, faces, shoes, birds, mushrooms). In theory, these correlations could reflect either global, non-specific mechanisms, such as general intelligence (IQ), or more specific mechanisms. Here, we introduce two separate methods for effectively capturing category-general performance variation, one that uses novel objects and one that uses familiar objects. In each case, we show that category-general performance variance is unrelated to IQ, thereby implicating more specific mechanisms. The first approach examines three newly developed novel object memory tests (NOMTs). We predicted that NOMTs would exhibit more shared, category-general variance than familiar object memory tests (FOMTs) because novel objects, unlike familiar objects, lack category-specific environmental influences (e.g. exposure to car magazines or botany classes). This prediction held, and remarkably, virtually none of the substantial shared variance among NOMTs was explained by IQ. Also, while NOMTs correlated nontrivially with two FOMTs (faces, cars), these correlations were smaller than among NOMTs and no larger than between the face and car tests themselves, suggesting that the category-general variance captured by NOMTs is specific not only relative to IQ, but also, to some degree, relative to both face and car recognition. The second approach averaged performance across multiple FOMTs, which we predicted would increase category-general variance by averaging out category-specific factors. This prediction held, and as with NOMTs, virtually none of the shared variance among FOMTs was explained by IQ. Overall, these results support the existence of object recognition mechanisms that, though category-general, are specific relative to IQ and substantially separable from face and car recognition. They also add sensitive, well-normed NOMTs to the tools available to study object recognition.