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The characteristics of face configural effect in illiterates and literates
Acta Psychologica 201 (2019) 102951
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The characteristics of face configural effect in illiterates and literates a,
Xiaohua Cao *, Qi Yang a b c
a,b
a
, Ping Zhong , Changming Chen
T
c
Department of Psychology, Zhejiang Normal University, Jinhua, 321004, China School of Humanities, Tongji University, Shanghai, 200092, China Department of Psychology, Xinyang Normal University, Xinyang, 464000, China
A R T I C LE I N FO
A B S T R A C T
Keywords: Literacy acquisition Face Configural processing
Literacy acquisition can modulate the way we process visual words and language. However, little is known about its function in reshaping how we process non-linguistic materials, like faces. In this study, we explored this question by comparing the facial recognition skills of illiterate and literate adults in China. Our results showed that illiterates were less sensitive to changes in spatial configuration among key features in upright faces when stimuli were presented simultaneously. The differences in sensitivity of spatial configuration between the literates and illiterates were also observed in house processing. These results thus provide evidence that literacy acquisition during childhood could reshape configural processing.
1. Introduction Literacy acquisition is one of the most important and long-lasting learning processes for human beings, and can lead to fundamental changes in our cognitive and neural systems (for a review, see: Ardila et al., 2010). Evidence shows that learning to read reshapes our ability to process linguistic material. After years of formal schooling, literates outdo their illiterate counterparts in pseudo-word repetition (Petersson, Reis, Askelöf, Castro-Caldas, & Ingvar, 2000) and phonemic awareness (Morais, Bertelson, Cary, & Alegria, 1986). Literates are also more sensitive to within-string position and identity alterations (Duñabeitia, Orihuela, & Carreiras, 2014; Yeh, Li, Takeuchi, Sun, & Liu, 2003). Literacy acquisition also modulates non-linguistic functions (Rosselli & Ardila, 2003). For instance, in the Cooper visual task, researchers found that literates use a more analytic approach, which suggests that literacy acquisition can alter the scanning path during target detection (Ostrosky-Solís, Ardila, & Rosselli, 1999). Moreover, neuroimaging studies have revealed that learning to read brings about fundamental changes in our neural response to linguistic stimuli (He et al., 2009; Thiebaut de Schotten, Cohen, Amemiya, Braga, & Dehaene, 2012), nonlinguistic stimuli (Pegado et al., 2014), and even the structure of the brain (Carreiras et al., 2009; Thiebaut de Schotten et al., 2012). Recent neuroimaging studies have shown that literacy acquisition reshapes the neural representation of facial stimuli. For example, compared to their illiterate counterparts, literate adults demonstrate a heightened response to written strings but a lowered response to faces in the visual region of the left hemisphere (Dehaene et al., 2010). As
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letter knowledge increases, young children show decreasing responses to faces in the left visual word form area (Cantlon, Pinel, Dehaene, & Pelphrey, 2010). Further, development of N170, an event-related potential (ERP) for facial processing, is delayed by the increase in reading experience of Chinese characters (Li et al., 2013). Relative to controls, dyslexic individuals performed more poorly on both word and face processing, and they also showed reduced hemispheric lateralization to words and faces (Gabay, Dundas, Plaut, & Behrmann, 2017). Additionally, face recognition impairments were more severe following bilateral than unilateral lesions (Gainotti & Marra, 2011) and a left occipital arteriovenous malformation resulted in both pure alexia and prosopagnosia (Liu, Wang, & Yen, 2011). Findings like this have led to a proposal that faces and words not only have differences but also share commonalities in their neural representation. There are cooperative and competitive interactions in the development of visual representations for these two categories (Plaut & Behrmann, 2011). Despite these accumulating findings from neuroimaging research, little is known about the behavioral implications of these neural functional changes, that is, how literacy behaviorally modulates face processing. A recent study by Ventura et al. (2013) investigated how holistic processing changed because of literacy acquisition. They used the ‘complete composite face paradigm’ (Gauthier & Bukach, 2007), and found that literates process faces less holistically than their illiterate counterparts do. Given that holistic processing is the cornerstone of facial processing research (Richler & Gauthier, 2014), this study helps understand the underlying mechanism of how face processing changes with literacy
Corresponding author. E-mail address: [email protected] (X. Cao).
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.actpsy.2019.102951 Received 29 September 2017; Received in revised form 25 October 2019; Accepted 30 October 2019 0001-6918/ © 2019 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/BY-NC-ND/4.0/).
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Fig. 1. The sample of configural change stimulus-pairs and the procedure of the task in Experiment 1 and 2.
configural face-processing (Le Grand et al., 2001). Despite knowing the effect of early childhood visual experience on holistic processing, it is still unknown if later experience from non-face domains (for example, literacy acquisition in primary school) could reshape holistic face-processing. To the best of our knowledge, changes in these measurements in the wake of literacy acquisition have not yet been explored. Therefore, we conducted the following study to gain knowledge about the effect of literacy on face processing. In this study, we explore if and how learning to read could reshape a critical hallmark of face processing - the configural processing - by comparing the performance of literate and illiterate Chinese adults. In the first experiment, we explored the differences in sensitivity to changes in the second-order relations of face components between the literates and illiterates. In the first experiment, we used upright faces and inverted faces as stimuli. Previous research demonstrated differences between upright face and inverted faces processing (Farah, Tanaka, & Drain, 1995; Tanaka & Sengco, 1997). The processing for inverted faces is thought to mainly use featural information, with the processing of upright faces using configural information. The face-inversion effect is believed to result mainly from a disruption to the processing of configuration information that is sensitive to facial orientation. By contrast, inversion does not
acquisition. However, literature on facial processing shows that holistic processing has varying meanings because of different methods of measurement used (Richler, Palmeri, & Isabel, 2012). The completedesign composite task, used by Ventura et al. (2013), is an important measure that assesses the failure of selective attention to a part of the face. Other measurements have also been used widely to investigate holistic facial processing. For example, inversion of faces is thought to tap an aspect of holistic processing called first-order configural processing, and the manipulation of the spatial layout of facial elements is thought to tap second-order configural processing (for a review, see: Maurer, Le Grand, & Mondloch, 2002). Since all faces share the same first-order properties (eyes are always above the noses, which are, in turn, above the mouth), second-order relations then become the main source of configural information (Tanaka & Sengco, 1997). Recognition of this property has been regarded as a major computation (Le Grand, Mondloch, Maurer, & Brent, 2001) and plays a critical role in facial identification (Rhodes, 1988). Studies also suggest that changing the spacing between features could alter the perception of facial stimuli (Rotshtein, Geng, Driver, & Dolan, 2007; Tanaka & Sengco, 1997). Developmental study has indicated that visual experience during the first few months of life is necessary for the normal development of 2
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affect processing of feature information because the latter has been found to undergo similar processing regardless of orientation (Farah et al., 1995; Tanaka & Sengco, 1997). We expected that the differences in sensitivity to configuration processing between the illiterate and literate can be found in upright facial processing, but not in inverted facial processing. In the second experiment, we explored whether the differences in sensitivity of configural processing can extend to non-face object (e.g. house). Based on the evidence from neuroimaging (literacy modulates face processing) and behavioral studies (literates process faces less holistically than illiterates) (Ventura et al., 2013), we hypothesized that illiterates used different method to process faces/houses and they processed them in a more holistic manner.
Table 1 The accuracy and response time (Mean ± SD) in Experiment 1. Literacy
Orientation
Accuracy
Response Time (ms)
Literate
Upright Inverted Upright Inverted
0.85 0.75 0.76 0.73
4633 4286 4230 4031
Illiterate
± ± ± ±
0.09 0.12 0.07 0.08
± ± ± ±
1509 1555 1250 1110
effect of group, F (1, 22) = 2.96, p = 0.099, ηp2 = 0.119, 1-β = 0.377. An interaction was also observed between these 2 factors, F (1, 22) = 5.86, p = 0.024, ηp2 = 0.210, 1-β = 0.639. Post hoc t-tests found that the literate participants responded more accurately than the illiterate participants to upright faces, t (11) = 2.922, p = 0.014; and both responded equally well to inverted faces. Meanwhile, the literate participants responded more accurately to upright than inverted faces, t (11) = 4.85, p = 0.001. The illiterate participants demonstrated no such inversion effect. As for the RT, there was only a significant main effect of orientation, F (1, 22) = 9.54, p = 0.005, ηp2 = 0.302, 1β = 0.839, with longer RT for upright faces than inverted faces. The RT of the illiterate group was similar to that of the literate group(F (1, 22) = 0.356, p = 0.557, ηp2 = 0.016, 1-β = 0.088), and no interaction was seen, F (1, 22) = 0.690, p = 0.415, ηp2 = 0.030, 1-β = 0.125. Given that greater accuracy may be related to longer response times for the upright face and inverted face, one may suspect that the speed/ accuracy tradeoff might play a role in the literacy effect. To explore this possibility, we also reran an ANOVA for mixed design based on the composite score (RT/ACC) in Experiment 1. The results showed that the average RT/accuracy in illiterates was 5612 ± 1647 for upright orientation and 5641 ± 1779 for inverted orientation; in literates the average RT/accuracy was 5434 ± 1665 for upright orientation and 5868 ± 2407 for inverted orientation. Neither of these sets of averages were found to be the main effect of orientation, F (1, 22) = 2.409, p = 0.166, ηp2 = 0.085, 1-β = 0.278, nor the main effect of the subject group, F (1, 22) = 0.001, p = 0.975, ηp2 < 0.001, 1-β = 0.050. Interactions between these two factors were also not observed, F (1, 22) = 1.572, p = 0.223, ηp2 = 0.067, 1-β = 0.224. The results in Experiment 1 showed that when presented with upright faces, the accuracy with which spaces between facial features were discerned was higher in literates than in illiterates, but when faces were inverted, no differences between groups were observed. This suggests that when stimuli are presented simultaneously, the literate process upright faces with greater configuration than the illiterate. However, since only facial stimuli were used in Experiment 1, it is unknown whether the literacy effect is specific to face processing or generalizable to non-face objects as well. We used faces and houses to explore this issue in Experiment 2.
2. Experiment 1 2.1. Methods 2.1.1. Participants Twelve illiterate and 12 literate adults were recruited for the study from a remote village in China, after a carefully planned filtering process (see supplementary material 1 for details). All of them were righthanded native Chinese, with normal or corrected-to-normal vision. Because of various social or economic reasons, the illiterate participants had never received the same schooling as the literate participants. Both groups were matched as closely as possible in terms of age, gender, and socio-economic status. Written or verbal consents were taken from all participants, and the study was approved by the ethical committee of Zhejiang Normal University. 2.1.2. Stimuli Two grayscale Chinese faces (1 man) were used as the prototype faces to create stimuli in the current experiment (Fig. 1). Three variants were created from each prototype by a 10-pixel movement of the body parts as follows: 1) moving the eyes apart and the mouth and nose up, 2) moving the eyes closer together and the mouth and nose up, and 3) moving only the eyes apart. An inverted version was also generated for each pair. From the variants in each gender, 18 pairs of stimuli were then created, and the 2 stimuli in each pair were either the same or different. Since all these variant faces were identical in the features, the ‘different pairs’ differed only in the distance between the features. All the stimuli were about 9.3°× 6.5°visual angles in size. 2.1.3. Procedure Each trial began with a fixation cross for 300 ms and a blank screen for 200 ms, followed by a pair of faces that remained on the screen until the participants responded. Participants were asked to decide as accurately and quickly as possible whether the two stimuli in each pair were from the same individuals or from the twins, from a distance of 60 cm away from the monitor. After the response, a blank screen appeared for 1000 ms, after which the next trial started (Fig. 1). There were 72 trials with the correct response as ‘same’ and 72 trials with the correct response as ‘different’, which resulted in 36 trials in each of the 2 (same/ different) × 2 (upright/inverted) conditions. Trials of each condition were randomized across 4 blocks.
3. Experiment 2 3.1. Methods 3.1.1. Participants A new cohort of 19 illiterates (2 men) and 19 literate adults (2 men) were recruited from another remote village in China (see supplementary material 2 for details). One illiterate and one literate, who performed at chance level (accuracy of 50 %) in at least one of the four conditions, were excluded from analyses. All of them were native Chinese, right-handed, with normal or corrected-to-normal vision, and had not participated in Experiment 1. The criteria for selecting participants were the same as in Experiment 1. Written or verbal consents were taken from all participants.
2.1.4. Data analysis The data were analyzed using a 2 orientation (upright/inverted) × 2 subject group (illiterates/literates) ANOVA, with display orientation as the within-subjects factor, and subject group as the between-subjects factor for accuracy and RT separately. 2.2. Results The results were shown in Table 1. Analysis on accuracy yielded a significant main effect of orientation, F (1, 22) = 17.67, p < 0.001, ηp2 = 0.445, 1-β = 0.980, as well as a marginally significant main
3.1.2. Stimuli Two types of stimulus-pairs were used in this experiment: Each pair 3
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We applied the Bayesian independent sample t-test to estimate the strength of evidence for significant differences in the stimulus category (H1) comparing to no significant differences in the stimulus category (H0) regardless of subject group. The results showed weak evidence for the alternative hypothesis (H1), BF10 = 0.204, but strong evidence for the null hypothesis (H0), BF01 = 4.905 (see Morey, Romeijn, & Rouder, 2016). Bayesian analyses on the interaction between stimulus category and subject group also showed very weak evidence for a significant interaction (H1), BF10 = 0.418, but moderate evidence for the null hypothesis (H0), BF01 = 2.437. These results, together those from conventional ANOVA analysis, establish that there are no differences in the configural processing of faces and houses. The analysis was performed with JASP (https://jasp-stats.org). Similar to Experiment 1, we also reran an ANOVA for mixed design based on the composite score (RT/ACC) in Experiment 2. The average RT/accuracy in illiterates was 5226 ± 1646 for face processing and 5651 ± 2304 for house processing; The average RT/accuracy in literates was 4541 ± 1539 for face processing and 5878 ± 2664 for house processing. Neither of these sets of averages were found to be the main effect in the stimulus category, F (1, 33) = 3.290, p = 0.079, ηp2 = 0.088, 1-β = 0.422, nor the main effect of the subject group, F (1, 2 33) = 0.881, p = 0.355, ηp = 0.025, 1-β = 0.149. Interactions between these two factors were not observed, F (1, 33) = 0.210, p = 0.650, ηp2 = 0.006, 1-β = 0.073. Thus, the possibility of a speed/accuracy tradeoff has to be discarded by the present results.
was either 2 faces with identical features (e.g. eyes, noses, mouth) but with different spacing between features, or 2 houses with identical features (the roof, windows, doors) but with different spacing between features. The stimuli for faces with configural changes were taken from Experiment 1. Two grayscale houses were used as a prototype to create 24 configural stimuli for experiment 2 (Fig 1). Three variants were created from by a 10-pixel movement of structures of each house prototype as follows: 1) moving the windows apart and the door up, 2) moving the windows closer together and the door up, and 3) moving only the windows apart. Since all these variant houses were identical contained exactly the same features (windows and door), the ‘different pairs’ differed only in the distance between the features. All stimuli were presented upright in grayscale, equal luminance, and had the same visual viewing angle of 9.3° × 6.5°. The tasks for participants were the same as in Experiment 1. 3.1.3. Procedure The procedure of each trial was the same as Experiment 1. Participants were asked to decide as accurately and quickly as possible whether the two stimuli in each pair were the same individuals or twins in face trials, and the same houses or the similar houses in the house trials. There were 72 trials with the correct response as ‘same’ and 72 trials with the correct response as ‘different’, which resulted in 36 trials in each of the 2 (same/different) × 2 (face/house) conditions. Trials in each condition were randomized across the two blocks.
4. Discussion
3.1.4. Data analysis The data were analyzed using 2 stimulus category (face and house) ×2 subject group (illiterates and literates) ANOVA, with stimulus category as within-subjects factors, and subject group as a between-subjects factor for RT and accuracy separately.
In the current study, we investigated whether face processing is affected by literacy acquisition. To answer this question, we investigated whether the face configural effect, one of the most well documented hallmarks of face processing, could be modulated by literacy acquisition. In our two experiments, we found that literate Chinese adults were significantly better at detecting the spatial relation between face components than the illiterate group. These results suggested that literacy acquisition, a type of experience outside of the face domain, increases the sensitivity to second-order relations in face processing. The interplay between facial processing and non-facial experience suggested that facial processing, at least some aspects revealed by the second-order facial configuration, involves some domain-general computations of non-facial object-processing such as Chinese characters. This is consistent with our previous ERP study that revealed some overlaps of neural selectivity between faces and words in the early stages of perceptual processing (Cao, Jiang, Li, Xia, & Floyd, 2015). In that study, we found that faces can affect the N170 response elicited by words, and can also decrease the N170 response to the trained Greeble stimuli. This is also consistent with a few case studies which found more severe face recognition impairments in patients with bilateral lesions (Gainotti & Marra, 2011), and both pure alexia and prosopagnosia in patients with a left occipital arteriovenous malformation (Liu et al., 2011). Although we revealed an association between the literacy variable and the group differences found in Experiment 1 and 2, extreme caution must be taken while making causal statements. Socialization may be a possible alternative explanation for these results. Although participants were matched as closely as possible on socio-economic status, neurological functioning, and intelligence, there may have been differences in amount of exposure they received to faces. For example, the literate group attended school during their childhood, therefore, they likely encountered many more individuals over the years than the illiterate group. The literate group may also have used public transportation independently more often than the illiterate group. Hence, it is reasonable to assume that this led to the literate group being exposed to more people and therefore, more faces. A recent study demonstrated that the sheer number of faces one can interact with during their upbringing shapes their behavioral abilities and the functional
3.2. Results The results were shown in Table 2. Analysis of accuracy yielded only a significant main effect of subject group, F (1, 33) = 4.162, p = 0.049, ηp2 = 0.109, 1-β = 0.509, due to higher accuracy in literates than in illiterates. There were no main effect of stimulus category, F (1, 33) = 0.272, p = 0.605, ηp2 = 0.008, 1-β = 0.080, or the interaction, F (1, 2 33) = 0.576, p = 0.453, ηp = 0.017, 1-β = 0.114. The analysis of the RT yielded only a marginally significant main effect for the stimulus category, F (1, 33) = 4.057, p = 0.052, ηp2 = 0.107, 1-β = 0.499; There were no main effect of subject group, F (1, 33) = 0.015, p = 0.904, ηp2 < 0.01, 1-β = 0.052, or the interaction, F (1, 33) = 0.528, p = 0.472, ηp2 = 0.015, 1-β = 0.109. Meanwhile, the index for house processing (0.79) seemed larger than that for face processing (0.75) but the difference did not reach significance in the illiterate group, t(17) = 0.813, p = 0.427. And in the literates the performance for face processing (0.82) was similar with that for house processing (0.81), t(17) = 0.192, p = 0.850. The results suggested that the group effect was driven by a domain-general difference sensitivity to configural processing, instead of a face-specific deficit in illiterates. Due to the small sample size in the present experiment, we turned to Bayesian analyses to provide an index of the strength of evidence for the absence of differences in configural processing of faces and houses. Table 2 The mean accuracy and response time (Mean ± SD) in Experiment 2. Stimuli
Literacy
Accuracy
Response Time (ms)
Face
Literate Illiterate Literate Illiterate
0.82 0.75 0.81 0.79
3695 3917 4714 4555
House
± ± ± ±
0.07 0.08 0.09 0.13
± ± ± ±
1221 1128 2034 1934
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while processing the houses. The results of Experiment 2 demonstrated that the differences in configural processing between the two groups were not specific to faces but extended to houses. To evaluate this effect, a Bayesian paired samples t-test was conducted to reveal little evidence in support of differences within the stimulus category. In addition, caution must be taken when considering this statement. Firstly, given the small sample size in Experiment 2, we believe future studies might better replicate these findings with a larger sample. Further caution must be taken in light of our method of analyzing the data for face and house processing respectively. The results showed that the literate group only performed better than the illiterate group in face processing and not in house processing (please see supplemental information), suggesting that the stronger performance of literates in Experiment 2 might be due to the effects of the differences in face processing between literates and illiterates. In conclusion, our results revealed that, compared with illiterates, literates showed higher sensitivity to configural processing when faces had the same key facial features but different spacing distance between them. These results offer new insights into how literacy acquisition during childhood can reshape the later specialization of configural processing of faces.
architecture of face processing in the brain (Balas & Saville, 2015). Therefore, it could be possible that experience with faces may contribute to the differences in configural processing found in present study, and not the ability to read per se. Future studies should be designed to examine this hypothesis. The results of Experiment 1 showed that accuracy is higher in literates than illiterates for upright faces and is equal for inverted faces. This demonstrated that literates show stronger configuration processing than illiterates because inverted faces disrupt configuration processing (Farah et al., 1995). These findings indicated that literacy can reshape upright facial configuration processing (Ventura et al., 2013). By observing changes in configural face processing after literacy acquisition, the current study added to findings in previous studies and underscored the effect of non-facial experiences, such as literacy acquisition, on facial processing. In an early study using the complete composite face paradigm, Ventura et al. (2013) found that literate adults processed both faces and houses less holistically than their illiterate counterparts did. Our results were partly consistent with this finding. Our results, like those of Ventura et al., indicated differences in configural processing between literates and illiterates. These differences were not specific to faces, but also extended to houses. However, Ventura et al. found that literates process facial images less holistically than illiterates. Our findings, however, suggest that face processing by literates is more configuration than that by illiterates. Many factors may contribute to this inconsistency, including the paradigm used and the method of object presentation. Specifically, the paradigm may be an important factor that explains this inconsistency. Ventura et al. used the complete composite face paradigm, which is proposed to reflect the failure of selective attention, whereas in our study, we used another popular measurement of configural facial processing, which examined the sensitivity to second-order relations in face processing. There have debates on whether the ‘holistic processing’ tapped by these paradigms are identical to each other (Richler et al., 2012; Richler & Gauthier, 2014). Despite this, our results, together with those of Ventura et al., seem to echo the view that not all measurements of ‘holistic processing’ tap the same method of processing (Richler et al., 2012). Therefore, from a methodological perspective, when different measurements are used to investigate ‘holistic face processing’, the result observed in one measurement should not be equal to that in another, and findings among these measurements should not be directly correlated. Presentation methods may be another factor. Ventura et al. (2013) used a sequential method for presentation, whereas in our Experiments, we used simultaneous presentation. In literates, sequential presentations have been reported to favor performance in speeded same-different comparisons (Egeth, 1966; Nickerson, 1967; Palmer, 1978), probably by triggering a fast holistic comparison process. On the contrary, simultaneous presentations could favor a slower process of analysis into components (Bamber, 1969). In illiterates, simultaneous presentations of stimuli may put them at a disadvantage because such presentations run against their poor analytic visual skills (Kolinsky, Morais, & Brito Mendes, 1990; Kolinsky, Morais, Content, & Cary, 1987; Kolinsky & Régine, 2011). Moreover, the holistic process involved in sequential presentations is relatively automatic, whereas the slower and serial process involved in simultaneous comparisons could be controlled by more flexible strategies (Palmer, 1978). Therefore, literates, who have more flexible processing strategies (Ventura et al., 2013), may perform better than illiterates on experiments that use simultaneous comparisons. This could explain the inconsistency observed between our results and those of Ventura et al. In their study, literates use a less holistic approach for processing because using holistic processing hurts their performance in the composite task; in our Experiments, participants are able to process faces in a configural manner because that helps them complete the task. In both cases, literates perform better, suggesting that literates use more flexible strategies (using more or less holistic processing to suit the task), though both studies indicated that this ability was not limited only to faces, as similar results were seen
Author contributions X. Cao developed the study concept. All authors contributed to the study design. Testing and data collection were performed by P.Zhong and Q.Yang. X.Cao and P. Zhong analyzed and interpreted the data. X.Cao drafted the manuscript, and C.Chen provided critical revisions. All authors approved the final version of the manuscript for submission Acknowledgments This study was supported by the National Social Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 14BYY064) and the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 31571159, 31871110). Appendix A. Supplementary data Supplementary material related to this article can be found, in the online version, at doi:https://doi.org/10.1016/j.actpsy.2019.102951. References Ardila, A., Bertolucci, P. H., Braga, L. W., Castro-Caldas, A., Judd, T., Kosmidis, M. H., & Rosselli, M. (2010). Illiteracy: The neuropsychology of cognition without reading. Archives of Clinical Neuropsychology, 25(8), 689–712. Bamber, D. (1969). Reaction times and error rates for “same”-“different” judgments of multidimensional stimuli. Attention, Perception & Psychophysics, 6(3), 169–174. Balas, B., & Saville, A. (2015). N170 face specificity and face memory depend on hometown size. Neuropsychologia, 69, 211–217. Cantlon, J. F., Pinel, P., Dehaene, S., & Pelphrey, K. A. (2010). Cortical representations of symbols, objects, and faces are pruned back during early childhood. Cerebral Cortex, 21(1), 191–199. Cao, X., Jiang, B., Li, C., Xia, N., & Floyd, R. J. (2015). The commonality between the perceptual adaptation mechanisms involved in processing faces and nonface objects of expertise. Neuropsychology, 29(5), 715–725. Carreiras, M., Seghier, M. L., Baquero, S., Estévez, A., Lozano, A., Devlin, J. T., ... Price, C. J. (2009). An anatomical signature for literacy. Nature, 461(7266), 983–986. Dehaene, S., Pegado, F., Braga, L. W., Ventura, P., Nunes Filho, G., Jobert, A., ... Cohen, L. (2010). How learning to read changes the cortical networks for vision and language. Science, 330(6099), 1359–1364. Duñabeitia, J. A., Orihuela, K., & Carreiras, M. (2014). Orthographic coding in illiterates and literates. Psychological Science, 25(6), 1275–1280. Egeth, H. E. (1966). Parallel versus serial processes in multidimensional stimulus discrimination. Attention, Perception & Psychophysics, 1(4), 245–252. Farah, M. J., Tanaka, J. W., & Drain, H. M. (1995). What causes the face inversion effect? Journal of Experimental Psychology Human Perception and Performance, 21(3), 628–634. Gabay, Y., Dundas, E., Plaut, D., & Behrmann, M. (2017). Atypical perceptual processing of faces in developmental dyslexia. Brain and Language, 173, 41–51. Gainotti, G., & Marra, C. (2011). Differential contribution of right and left temporo-
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occipital and anterior temporal lesions to face recognition disorders. Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, 5, 55. Gauthier, I., & Bukach, C. (2007). Should we reject the expertise hypothesis? Cognition, 103(2), 322–330. He, S., Liu, H., Jiang, Y., Chen, C., Gong, Q., & Weng, X. (2009). Transforming a left lateral fusiform region into VWFA through training in illiterate adults. Journal of Vision, 9(8), 853–859. Kolinsky, R., Morais, J., Content, A., & Cary, L. (1987). Finding parts within figures: A developmental study. Perception, 16(3), 399–407. Kolinsky, R., Morais, J., & Brito Mendes, C. (1990). Embeddedness effects on part verification in children and unschooled adults. Psychologica Belgica, 30(1-2), 49–64. Kolinsky, & Régine (2011). Enantiomorphy through the looking glass: Literacy effects on mirror-image discrimination. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 140(2), 210–238. Le Grand, R., Mondloch, C. J., Maurer, D., & Brent, H. P. (2001). Neuroperception: Early visual experience and face processing. Nature, 410(6831), 890. Li, S., Kang, L., Zhao, J., Yang, Z., He, S., & Weng, X. (2013). Neural competition as a developmental process: Early hemispheric specialization for word processing delays specialization for face processing. Neuropsychologia, 51(5), 950–959. Liu, Y. C., Wang, A. G., & Yen, M. Y. (2011). “Seeing but not identifying”: Pure alexia coincident with prosopagnosia in occipital arteriovenous malformation. Graefe’s Archive for Clinical and Experimental Ophthalmology, 249(7), 1087–1089. Maurer, D., Le Grand, R., & Mondloch, C. J. (2002). The many faces of configural processing. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 6(6), 255–260. Morais, J., Bertelson, P., Cary, L., & Alegria, J. (1986). Literacy training and speech segmentation. Cognition, 24(1–2), 45–64. Morey, R. D., Romeijn, J. W., & Rouder, J. N. (2016). The philosophy of Bayes factors and the quantification of statistical evidence. Journal of Mathematical Psychology, 72, 6–18. Nickerson, R. S. (1967). "Same"- "different" response times with multi-attribute stimulus differences. Perceptual and Motor Skills, 24(2), 543–554. Ostrosky-Solís, F., Ardila, A., & Rosselli, M. (1999). NEUROPSI: A brief neuropsychological test battery in Spanish with norms by age and educational level. Journal of the International Neuropsychological Society, 5(5), 413–433.
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Acta Psychologica journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/actpsy
The characteristics of face configural effect in illiterates and literates a,
Xiaohua Cao *, Qi Yang a b c
a,b
a
, Ping Zhong , Changming Chen
T
c
Department of Psychology, Zhejiang Normal University, Jinhua, 321004, China School of Humanities, Tongji University, Shanghai, 200092, China Department of Psychology, Xinyang Normal University, Xinyang, 464000, China
A R T I C LE I N FO
A B S T R A C T
Keywords: Literacy acquisition Face Configural processing
Literacy acquisition can modulate the way we process visual words and language. However, little is known about its function in reshaping how we process non-linguistic materials, like faces. In this study, we explored this question by comparing the facial recognition skills of illiterate and literate adults in China. Our results showed that illiterates were less sensitive to changes in spatial configuration among key features in upright faces when stimuli were presented simultaneously. The differences in sensitivity of spatial configuration between the literates and illiterates were also observed in house processing. These results thus provide evidence that literacy acquisition during childhood could reshape configural processing.
1. Introduction Literacy acquisition is one of the most important and long-lasting learning processes for human beings, and can lead to fundamental changes in our cognitive and neural systems (for a review, see: Ardila et al., 2010). Evidence shows that learning to read reshapes our ability to process linguistic material. After years of formal schooling, literates outdo their illiterate counterparts in pseudo-word repetition (Petersson, Reis, Askelöf, Castro-Caldas, & Ingvar, 2000) and phonemic awareness (Morais, Bertelson, Cary, & Alegria, 1986). Literates are also more sensitive to within-string position and identity alterations (Duñabeitia, Orihuela, & Carreiras, 2014; Yeh, Li, Takeuchi, Sun, & Liu, 2003). Literacy acquisition also modulates non-linguistic functions (Rosselli & Ardila, 2003). For instance, in the Cooper visual task, researchers found that literates use a more analytic approach, which suggests that literacy acquisition can alter the scanning path during target detection (Ostrosky-Solís, Ardila, & Rosselli, 1999). Moreover, neuroimaging studies have revealed that learning to read brings about fundamental changes in our neural response to linguistic stimuli (He et al., 2009; Thiebaut de Schotten, Cohen, Amemiya, Braga, & Dehaene, 2012), nonlinguistic stimuli (Pegado et al., 2014), and even the structure of the brain (Carreiras et al., 2009; Thiebaut de Schotten et al., 2012). Recent neuroimaging studies have shown that literacy acquisition reshapes the neural representation of facial stimuli. For example, compared to their illiterate counterparts, literate adults demonstrate a heightened response to written strings but a lowered response to faces in the visual region of the left hemisphere (Dehaene et al., 2010). As
⁎
letter knowledge increases, young children show decreasing responses to faces in the left visual word form area (Cantlon, Pinel, Dehaene, & Pelphrey, 2010). Further, development of N170, an event-related potential (ERP) for facial processing, is delayed by the increase in reading experience of Chinese characters (Li et al., 2013). Relative to controls, dyslexic individuals performed more poorly on both word and face processing, and they also showed reduced hemispheric lateralization to words and faces (Gabay, Dundas, Plaut, & Behrmann, 2017). Additionally, face recognition impairments were more severe following bilateral than unilateral lesions (Gainotti & Marra, 2011) and a left occipital arteriovenous malformation resulted in both pure alexia and prosopagnosia (Liu, Wang, & Yen, 2011). Findings like this have led to a proposal that faces and words not only have differences but also share commonalities in their neural representation. There are cooperative and competitive interactions in the development of visual representations for these two categories (Plaut & Behrmann, 2011). Despite these accumulating findings from neuroimaging research, little is known about the behavioral implications of these neural functional changes, that is, how literacy behaviorally modulates face processing. A recent study by Ventura et al. (2013) investigated how holistic processing changed because of literacy acquisition. They used the ‘complete composite face paradigm’ (Gauthier & Bukach, 2007), and found that literates process faces less holistically than their illiterate counterparts do. Given that holistic processing is the cornerstone of facial processing research (Richler & Gauthier, 2014), this study helps understand the underlying mechanism of how face processing changes with literacy
Corresponding author. E-mail address: [email protected] (X. Cao).
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.actpsy.2019.102951 Received 29 September 2017; Received in revised form 25 October 2019; Accepted 30 October 2019 0001-6918/ © 2019 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/BY-NC-ND/4.0/).
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Fig. 1. The sample of configural change stimulus-pairs and the procedure of the task in Experiment 1 and 2.
configural face-processing (Le Grand et al., 2001). Despite knowing the effect of early childhood visual experience on holistic processing, it is still unknown if later experience from non-face domains (for example, literacy acquisition in primary school) could reshape holistic face-processing. To the best of our knowledge, changes in these measurements in the wake of literacy acquisition have not yet been explored. Therefore, we conducted the following study to gain knowledge about the effect of literacy on face processing. In this study, we explore if and how learning to read could reshape a critical hallmark of face processing - the configural processing - by comparing the performance of literate and illiterate Chinese adults. In the first experiment, we explored the differences in sensitivity to changes in the second-order relations of face components between the literates and illiterates. In the first experiment, we used upright faces and inverted faces as stimuli. Previous research demonstrated differences between upright face and inverted faces processing (Farah, Tanaka, & Drain, 1995; Tanaka & Sengco, 1997). The processing for inverted faces is thought to mainly use featural information, with the processing of upright faces using configural information. The face-inversion effect is believed to result mainly from a disruption to the processing of configuration information that is sensitive to facial orientation. By contrast, inversion does not
acquisition. However, literature on facial processing shows that holistic processing has varying meanings because of different methods of measurement used (Richler, Palmeri, & Isabel, 2012). The completedesign composite task, used by Ventura et al. (2013), is an important measure that assesses the failure of selective attention to a part of the face. Other measurements have also been used widely to investigate holistic facial processing. For example, inversion of faces is thought to tap an aspect of holistic processing called first-order configural processing, and the manipulation of the spatial layout of facial elements is thought to tap second-order configural processing (for a review, see: Maurer, Le Grand, & Mondloch, 2002). Since all faces share the same first-order properties (eyes are always above the noses, which are, in turn, above the mouth), second-order relations then become the main source of configural information (Tanaka & Sengco, 1997). Recognition of this property has been regarded as a major computation (Le Grand, Mondloch, Maurer, & Brent, 2001) and plays a critical role in facial identification (Rhodes, 1988). Studies also suggest that changing the spacing between features could alter the perception of facial stimuli (Rotshtein, Geng, Driver, & Dolan, 2007; Tanaka & Sengco, 1997). Developmental study has indicated that visual experience during the first few months of life is necessary for the normal development of 2
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affect processing of feature information because the latter has been found to undergo similar processing regardless of orientation (Farah et al., 1995; Tanaka & Sengco, 1997). We expected that the differences in sensitivity to configuration processing between the illiterate and literate can be found in upright facial processing, but not in inverted facial processing. In the second experiment, we explored whether the differences in sensitivity of configural processing can extend to non-face object (e.g. house). Based on the evidence from neuroimaging (literacy modulates face processing) and behavioral studies (literates process faces less holistically than illiterates) (Ventura et al., 2013), we hypothesized that illiterates used different method to process faces/houses and they processed them in a more holistic manner.
Table 1 The accuracy and response time (Mean ± SD) in Experiment 1. Literacy
Orientation
Accuracy
Response Time (ms)
Literate
Upright Inverted Upright Inverted
0.85 0.75 0.76 0.73
4633 4286 4230 4031
Illiterate
± ± ± ±
0.09 0.12 0.07 0.08
± ± ± ±
1509 1555 1250 1110
effect of group, F (1, 22) = 2.96, p = 0.099, ηp2 = 0.119, 1-β = 0.377. An interaction was also observed between these 2 factors, F (1, 22) = 5.86, p = 0.024, ηp2 = 0.210, 1-β = 0.639. Post hoc t-tests found that the literate participants responded more accurately than the illiterate participants to upright faces, t (11) = 2.922, p = 0.014; and both responded equally well to inverted faces. Meanwhile, the literate participants responded more accurately to upright than inverted faces, t (11) = 4.85, p = 0.001. The illiterate participants demonstrated no such inversion effect. As for the RT, there was only a significant main effect of orientation, F (1, 22) = 9.54, p = 0.005, ηp2 = 0.302, 1β = 0.839, with longer RT for upright faces than inverted faces. The RT of the illiterate group was similar to that of the literate group(F (1, 22) = 0.356, p = 0.557, ηp2 = 0.016, 1-β = 0.088), and no interaction was seen, F (1, 22) = 0.690, p = 0.415, ηp2 = 0.030, 1-β = 0.125. Given that greater accuracy may be related to longer response times for the upright face and inverted face, one may suspect that the speed/ accuracy tradeoff might play a role in the literacy effect. To explore this possibility, we also reran an ANOVA for mixed design based on the composite score (RT/ACC) in Experiment 1. The results showed that the average RT/accuracy in illiterates was 5612 ± 1647 for upright orientation and 5641 ± 1779 for inverted orientation; in literates the average RT/accuracy was 5434 ± 1665 for upright orientation and 5868 ± 2407 for inverted orientation. Neither of these sets of averages were found to be the main effect of orientation, F (1, 22) = 2.409, p = 0.166, ηp2 = 0.085, 1-β = 0.278, nor the main effect of the subject group, F (1, 22) = 0.001, p = 0.975, ηp2 < 0.001, 1-β = 0.050. Interactions between these two factors were also not observed, F (1, 22) = 1.572, p = 0.223, ηp2 = 0.067, 1-β = 0.224. The results in Experiment 1 showed that when presented with upright faces, the accuracy with which spaces between facial features were discerned was higher in literates than in illiterates, but when faces were inverted, no differences between groups were observed. This suggests that when stimuli are presented simultaneously, the literate process upright faces with greater configuration than the illiterate. However, since only facial stimuli were used in Experiment 1, it is unknown whether the literacy effect is specific to face processing or generalizable to non-face objects as well. We used faces and houses to explore this issue in Experiment 2.
2. Experiment 1 2.1. Methods 2.1.1. Participants Twelve illiterate and 12 literate adults were recruited for the study from a remote village in China, after a carefully planned filtering process (see supplementary material 1 for details). All of them were righthanded native Chinese, with normal or corrected-to-normal vision. Because of various social or economic reasons, the illiterate participants had never received the same schooling as the literate participants. Both groups were matched as closely as possible in terms of age, gender, and socio-economic status. Written or verbal consents were taken from all participants, and the study was approved by the ethical committee of Zhejiang Normal University. 2.1.2. Stimuli Two grayscale Chinese faces (1 man) were used as the prototype faces to create stimuli in the current experiment (Fig. 1). Three variants were created from each prototype by a 10-pixel movement of the body parts as follows: 1) moving the eyes apart and the mouth and nose up, 2) moving the eyes closer together and the mouth and nose up, and 3) moving only the eyes apart. An inverted version was also generated for each pair. From the variants in each gender, 18 pairs of stimuli were then created, and the 2 stimuli in each pair were either the same or different. Since all these variant faces were identical in the features, the ‘different pairs’ differed only in the distance between the features. All the stimuli were about 9.3°× 6.5°visual angles in size. 2.1.3. Procedure Each trial began with a fixation cross for 300 ms and a blank screen for 200 ms, followed by a pair of faces that remained on the screen until the participants responded. Participants were asked to decide as accurately and quickly as possible whether the two stimuli in each pair were from the same individuals or from the twins, from a distance of 60 cm away from the monitor. After the response, a blank screen appeared for 1000 ms, after which the next trial started (Fig. 1). There were 72 trials with the correct response as ‘same’ and 72 trials with the correct response as ‘different’, which resulted in 36 trials in each of the 2 (same/ different) × 2 (upright/inverted) conditions. Trials of each condition were randomized across 4 blocks.
3. Experiment 2 3.1. Methods 3.1.1. Participants A new cohort of 19 illiterates (2 men) and 19 literate adults (2 men) were recruited from another remote village in China (see supplementary material 2 for details). One illiterate and one literate, who performed at chance level (accuracy of 50 %) in at least one of the four conditions, were excluded from analyses. All of them were native Chinese, right-handed, with normal or corrected-to-normal vision, and had not participated in Experiment 1. The criteria for selecting participants were the same as in Experiment 1. Written or verbal consents were taken from all participants.
2.1.4. Data analysis The data were analyzed using a 2 orientation (upright/inverted) × 2 subject group (illiterates/literates) ANOVA, with display orientation as the within-subjects factor, and subject group as the between-subjects factor for accuracy and RT separately. 2.2. Results The results were shown in Table 1. Analysis on accuracy yielded a significant main effect of orientation, F (1, 22) = 17.67, p < 0.001, ηp2 = 0.445, 1-β = 0.980, as well as a marginally significant main
3.1.2. Stimuli Two types of stimulus-pairs were used in this experiment: Each pair 3
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We applied the Bayesian independent sample t-test to estimate the strength of evidence for significant differences in the stimulus category (H1) comparing to no significant differences in the stimulus category (H0) regardless of subject group. The results showed weak evidence for the alternative hypothesis (H1), BF10 = 0.204, but strong evidence for the null hypothesis (H0), BF01 = 4.905 (see Morey, Romeijn, & Rouder, 2016). Bayesian analyses on the interaction between stimulus category and subject group also showed very weak evidence for a significant interaction (H1), BF10 = 0.418, but moderate evidence for the null hypothesis (H0), BF01 = 2.437. These results, together those from conventional ANOVA analysis, establish that there are no differences in the configural processing of faces and houses. The analysis was performed with JASP (https://jasp-stats.org). Similar to Experiment 1, we also reran an ANOVA for mixed design based on the composite score (RT/ACC) in Experiment 2. The average RT/accuracy in illiterates was 5226 ± 1646 for face processing and 5651 ± 2304 for house processing; The average RT/accuracy in literates was 4541 ± 1539 for face processing and 5878 ± 2664 for house processing. Neither of these sets of averages were found to be the main effect in the stimulus category, F (1, 33) = 3.290, p = 0.079, ηp2 = 0.088, 1-β = 0.422, nor the main effect of the subject group, F (1, 2 33) = 0.881, p = 0.355, ηp = 0.025, 1-β = 0.149. Interactions between these two factors were not observed, F (1, 33) = 0.210, p = 0.650, ηp2 = 0.006, 1-β = 0.073. Thus, the possibility of a speed/accuracy tradeoff has to be discarded by the present results.
was either 2 faces with identical features (e.g. eyes, noses, mouth) but with different spacing between features, or 2 houses with identical features (the roof, windows, doors) but with different spacing between features. The stimuli for faces with configural changes were taken from Experiment 1. Two grayscale houses were used as a prototype to create 24 configural stimuli for experiment 2 (Fig 1). Three variants were created from by a 10-pixel movement of structures of each house prototype as follows: 1) moving the windows apart and the door up, 2) moving the windows closer together and the door up, and 3) moving only the windows apart. Since all these variant houses were identical contained exactly the same features (windows and door), the ‘different pairs’ differed only in the distance between the features. All stimuli were presented upright in grayscale, equal luminance, and had the same visual viewing angle of 9.3° × 6.5°. The tasks for participants were the same as in Experiment 1. 3.1.3. Procedure The procedure of each trial was the same as Experiment 1. Participants were asked to decide as accurately and quickly as possible whether the two stimuli in each pair were the same individuals or twins in face trials, and the same houses or the similar houses in the house trials. There were 72 trials with the correct response as ‘same’ and 72 trials with the correct response as ‘different’, which resulted in 36 trials in each of the 2 (same/different) × 2 (face/house) conditions. Trials in each condition were randomized across the two blocks.
4. Discussion
3.1.4. Data analysis The data were analyzed using 2 stimulus category (face and house) ×2 subject group (illiterates and literates) ANOVA, with stimulus category as within-subjects factors, and subject group as a between-subjects factor for RT and accuracy separately.
In the current study, we investigated whether face processing is affected by literacy acquisition. To answer this question, we investigated whether the face configural effect, one of the most well documented hallmarks of face processing, could be modulated by literacy acquisition. In our two experiments, we found that literate Chinese adults were significantly better at detecting the spatial relation between face components than the illiterate group. These results suggested that literacy acquisition, a type of experience outside of the face domain, increases the sensitivity to second-order relations in face processing. The interplay between facial processing and non-facial experience suggested that facial processing, at least some aspects revealed by the second-order facial configuration, involves some domain-general computations of non-facial object-processing such as Chinese characters. This is consistent with our previous ERP study that revealed some overlaps of neural selectivity between faces and words in the early stages of perceptual processing (Cao, Jiang, Li, Xia, & Floyd, 2015). In that study, we found that faces can affect the N170 response elicited by words, and can also decrease the N170 response to the trained Greeble stimuli. This is also consistent with a few case studies which found more severe face recognition impairments in patients with bilateral lesions (Gainotti & Marra, 2011), and both pure alexia and prosopagnosia in patients with a left occipital arteriovenous malformation (Liu et al., 2011). Although we revealed an association between the literacy variable and the group differences found in Experiment 1 and 2, extreme caution must be taken while making causal statements. Socialization may be a possible alternative explanation for these results. Although participants were matched as closely as possible on socio-economic status, neurological functioning, and intelligence, there may have been differences in amount of exposure they received to faces. For example, the literate group attended school during their childhood, therefore, they likely encountered many more individuals over the years than the illiterate group. The literate group may also have used public transportation independently more often than the illiterate group. Hence, it is reasonable to assume that this led to the literate group being exposed to more people and therefore, more faces. A recent study demonstrated that the sheer number of faces one can interact with during their upbringing shapes their behavioral abilities and the functional
3.2. Results The results were shown in Table 2. Analysis of accuracy yielded only a significant main effect of subject group, F (1, 33) = 4.162, p = 0.049, ηp2 = 0.109, 1-β = 0.509, due to higher accuracy in literates than in illiterates. There were no main effect of stimulus category, F (1, 33) = 0.272, p = 0.605, ηp2 = 0.008, 1-β = 0.080, or the interaction, F (1, 2 33) = 0.576, p = 0.453, ηp = 0.017, 1-β = 0.114. The analysis of the RT yielded only a marginally significant main effect for the stimulus category, F (1, 33) = 4.057, p = 0.052, ηp2 = 0.107, 1-β = 0.499; There were no main effect of subject group, F (1, 33) = 0.015, p = 0.904, ηp2 < 0.01, 1-β = 0.052, or the interaction, F (1, 33) = 0.528, p = 0.472, ηp2 = 0.015, 1-β = 0.109. Meanwhile, the index for house processing (0.79) seemed larger than that for face processing (0.75) but the difference did not reach significance in the illiterate group, t(17) = 0.813, p = 0.427. And in the literates the performance for face processing (0.82) was similar with that for house processing (0.81), t(17) = 0.192, p = 0.850. The results suggested that the group effect was driven by a domain-general difference sensitivity to configural processing, instead of a face-specific deficit in illiterates. Due to the small sample size in the present experiment, we turned to Bayesian analyses to provide an index of the strength of evidence for the absence of differences in configural processing of faces and houses. Table 2 The mean accuracy and response time (Mean ± SD) in Experiment 2. Stimuli
Literacy
Accuracy
Response Time (ms)
Face
Literate Illiterate Literate Illiterate
0.82 0.75 0.81 0.79
3695 3917 4714 4555
House
± ± ± ±
0.07 0.08 0.09 0.13
± ± ± ±
1221 1128 2034 1934
4
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while processing the houses. The results of Experiment 2 demonstrated that the differences in configural processing between the two groups were not specific to faces but extended to houses. To evaluate this effect, a Bayesian paired samples t-test was conducted to reveal little evidence in support of differences within the stimulus category. In addition, caution must be taken when considering this statement. Firstly, given the small sample size in Experiment 2, we believe future studies might better replicate these findings with a larger sample. Further caution must be taken in light of our method of analyzing the data for face and house processing respectively. The results showed that the literate group only performed better than the illiterate group in face processing and not in house processing (please see supplemental information), suggesting that the stronger performance of literates in Experiment 2 might be due to the effects of the differences in face processing between literates and illiterates. In conclusion, our results revealed that, compared with illiterates, literates showed higher sensitivity to configural processing when faces had the same key facial features but different spacing distance between them. These results offer new insights into how literacy acquisition during childhood can reshape the later specialization of configural processing of faces.
architecture of face processing in the brain (Balas & Saville, 2015). Therefore, it could be possible that experience with faces may contribute to the differences in configural processing found in present study, and not the ability to read per se. Future studies should be designed to examine this hypothesis. The results of Experiment 1 showed that accuracy is higher in literates than illiterates for upright faces and is equal for inverted faces. This demonstrated that literates show stronger configuration processing than illiterates because inverted faces disrupt configuration processing (Farah et al., 1995). These findings indicated that literacy can reshape upright facial configuration processing (Ventura et al., 2013). By observing changes in configural face processing after literacy acquisition, the current study added to findings in previous studies and underscored the effect of non-facial experiences, such as literacy acquisition, on facial processing. In an early study using the complete composite face paradigm, Ventura et al. (2013) found that literate adults processed both faces and houses less holistically than their illiterate counterparts did. Our results were partly consistent with this finding. Our results, like those of Ventura et al., indicated differences in configural processing between literates and illiterates. These differences were not specific to faces, but also extended to houses. However, Ventura et al. found that literates process facial images less holistically than illiterates. Our findings, however, suggest that face processing by literates is more configuration than that by illiterates. Many factors may contribute to this inconsistency, including the paradigm used and the method of object presentation. Specifically, the paradigm may be an important factor that explains this inconsistency. Ventura et al. used the complete composite face paradigm, which is proposed to reflect the failure of selective attention, whereas in our study, we used another popular measurement of configural facial processing, which examined the sensitivity to second-order relations in face processing. There have debates on whether the ‘holistic processing’ tapped by these paradigms are identical to each other (Richler et al., 2012; Richler & Gauthier, 2014). Despite this, our results, together with those of Ventura et al., seem to echo the view that not all measurements of ‘holistic processing’ tap the same method of processing (Richler et al., 2012). Therefore, from a methodological perspective, when different measurements are used to investigate ‘holistic face processing’, the result observed in one measurement should not be equal to that in another, and findings among these measurements should not be directly correlated. Presentation methods may be another factor. Ventura et al. (2013) used a sequential method for presentation, whereas in our Experiments, we used simultaneous presentation. In literates, sequential presentations have been reported to favor performance in speeded same-different comparisons (Egeth, 1966; Nickerson, 1967; Palmer, 1978), probably by triggering a fast holistic comparison process. On the contrary, simultaneous presentations could favor a slower process of analysis into components (Bamber, 1969). In illiterates, simultaneous presentations of stimuli may put them at a disadvantage because such presentations run against their poor analytic visual skills (Kolinsky, Morais, & Brito Mendes, 1990; Kolinsky, Morais, Content, & Cary, 1987; Kolinsky & Régine, 2011). Moreover, the holistic process involved in sequential presentations is relatively automatic, whereas the slower and serial process involved in simultaneous comparisons could be controlled by more flexible strategies (Palmer, 1978). Therefore, literates, who have more flexible processing strategies (Ventura et al., 2013), may perform better than illiterates on experiments that use simultaneous comparisons. This could explain the inconsistency observed between our results and those of Ventura et al. In their study, literates use a less holistic approach for processing because using holistic processing hurts their performance in the composite task; in our Experiments, participants are able to process faces in a configural manner because that helps them complete the task. In both cases, literates perform better, suggesting that literates use more flexible strategies (using more or less holistic processing to suit the task), though both studies indicated that this ability was not limited only to faces, as similar results were seen
Author contributions X. Cao developed the study concept. All authors contributed to the study design. Testing and data collection were performed by P.Zhong and Q.Yang. X.Cao and P. Zhong analyzed and interpreted the data. X.Cao drafted the manuscript, and C.Chen provided critical revisions. All authors approved the final version of the manuscript for submission Acknowledgments This study was supported by the National Social Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 14BYY064) and the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 31571159, 31871110). Appendix A. Supplementary data Supplementary material related to this article can be found, in the online version, at doi:https://doi.org/10.1016/j.actpsy.2019.102951. References Ardila, A., Bertolucci, P. H., Braga, L. W., Castro-Caldas, A., Judd, T., Kosmidis, M. H., & Rosselli, M. (2010). Illiteracy: The neuropsychology of cognition without reading. Archives of Clinical Neuropsychology, 25(8), 689–712. Bamber, D. (1969). Reaction times and error rates for “same”-“different” judgments of multidimensional stimuli. Attention, Perception & Psychophysics, 6(3), 169–174. Balas, B., & Saville, A. (2015). N170 face specificity and face memory depend on hometown size. Neuropsychologia, 69, 211–217. Cantlon, J. F., Pinel, P., Dehaene, S., & Pelphrey, K. A. (2010). Cortical representations of symbols, objects, and faces are pruned back during early childhood. Cerebral Cortex, 21(1), 191–199. Cao, X., Jiang, B., Li, C., Xia, N., & Floyd, R. J. (2015). The commonality between the perceptual adaptation mechanisms involved in processing faces and nonface objects of expertise. Neuropsychology, 29(5), 715–725. Carreiras, M., Seghier, M. L., Baquero, S., Estévez, A., Lozano, A., Devlin, J. T., ... Price, C. J. (2009). An anatomical signature for literacy. Nature, 461(7266), 983–986. Dehaene, S., Pegado, F., Braga, L. W., Ventura, P., Nunes Filho, G., Jobert, A., ... Cohen, L. (2010). How learning to read changes the cortical networks for vision and language. Science, 330(6099), 1359–1364. Duñabeitia, J. A., Orihuela, K., & Carreiras, M. (2014). Orthographic coding in illiterates and literates. Psychological Science, 25(6), 1275–1280. Egeth, H. E. (1966). Parallel versus serial processes in multidimensional stimulus discrimination. Attention, Perception & Psychophysics, 1(4), 245–252. Farah, M. J., Tanaka, J. W., & Drain, H. M. (1995). What causes the face inversion effect? Journal of Experimental Psychology Human Perception and Performance, 21(3), 628–634. Gabay, Y., Dundas, E., Plaut, D., & Behrmann, M. (2017). Atypical perceptual processing of faces in developmental dyslexia. Brain and Language, 173, 41–51. Gainotti, G., & Marra, C. (2011). Differential contribution of right and left temporo-
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