TY - JOUR
T1 - Seeing objects as faces enhances object detection
AU - Takahashi, Kohske
AU - Watanabe, Katsumi
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© The Author(s) 2015.
PY - 2015/10/27
Y1 - 2015/10/27
N2 - The face is a special visual stimulus. Both bottom-up processes for low-level facial features and top-down modulation by face expectations contribute to the advantages of face perception. However, it is hard to dissociate the top-down factors from the bottom-up processes, since facial stimuli mandatorily lead to face awareness. In the present study, using the face pareidolia phenomenon, we demonstrated that face awareness, namely seeing an object as a face, enhances object detection performance. In face pareidolia, some people see a visual stimulus, for example, three dots arranged in V shape, as a face, while others do not. This phenomenon allows us to investigate the effect of face awareness leaving the stimulus per se unchanged. Participants were asked to detect a face target or a triangle target. While target per se was identical between the two tasks, the detection sensitivity was higher when the participants recognized the target as a face. This was the case irrespective of the stimulus eccentricity or the vertical orientation of the stimulus. These results demonstrate that seeing an object as a face facilitates object detection via top-down modulation. The advantages of face perception are, therefore, at least partly, due to face awareness.
AB - The face is a special visual stimulus. Both bottom-up processes for low-level facial features and top-down modulation by face expectations contribute to the advantages of face perception. However, it is hard to dissociate the top-down factors from the bottom-up processes, since facial stimuli mandatorily lead to face awareness. In the present study, using the face pareidolia phenomenon, we demonstrated that face awareness, namely seeing an object as a face, enhances object detection performance. In face pareidolia, some people see a visual stimulus, for example, three dots arranged in V shape, as a face, while others do not. This phenomenon allows us to investigate the effect of face awareness leaving the stimulus per se unchanged. Participants were asked to detect a face target or a triangle target. While target per se was identical between the two tasks, the detection sensitivity was higher when the participants recognized the target as a face. This was the case irrespective of the stimulus eccentricity or the vertical orientation of the stimulus. These results demonstrate that seeing an object as a face facilitates object detection via top-down modulation. The advantages of face perception are, therefore, at least partly, due to face awareness.
KW - Face awareness
KW - Face detection
KW - Face inversion effect
KW - Face perception
KW - Signal detection theory
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=84952669416&partnerID=8YFLogxK
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/citedby.url?scp=84952669416&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1177/2041669515606007
DO - 10.1177/2041669515606007
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:84952669416
VL - 6
SP - 1
EP - 14
JO - i-Perception
JF - i-Perception
SN - 2041-6695
IS - 5
ER -