Individual Differences in Holistic processing

Holistic processing is thought of as the hallmark of face recognition (Maurer et al., 2002). However, results from studies with neurotypical and special populations vary, with some showing moderate relationship between holistic and face processing (Taubert et al., 2011), while others failing to find any (Duchaine, 2000). These inconsistencies may be attributed to the poor definition of the concept and different measures favoured by researchers (eg., the Composite Face Effect (CFE), Inversion Effect (IE), Part-Whole task (PW), the Garner test). These measures are likely to reflect different underlying mechanisms (or theoretical constructs), such as failure in selective attention, sensitivity to spatial relationships, or integration of featural information (Richler et al., 2012). To date, no attempts have been made to examine the mappings between the theoretical constructs and measured effects related to holistic processing.