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Updated: Jun 6, 2026

Perceptual and Category Processing of the Uncanny Valley Hypothesis' Dimension of Human Likeness: Some Methodological Issues
Published on: June 3, 2013
Differences between perception of human faces and body shapes: evidence from the composite illusion
Denise A Soria Bauser1, Boris Suchan, Irene Daum
1Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience, Dept. of Neuropsychology, Ruhr University Bochum, Germany. Denise.Soria-Bauser@rub.de
Abstract:
The present study aimed to investigate whether human body forms--like human faces--undergo holistic processing. Evidence for holistic face processing comes from the face composite effect: two identical top halves of a face are perceived as being different if they are presented with different bottom parts. This effect disappears if both bottom halves are shifted laterally (misaligned) or if the stimulus is rotated by 180°. We investigated whether comparable composite effects are observed for human faces and human body forms. Matching of upright faces was more accurate and faster for misaligned compared to aligned presentations. By contrast, there were no processing differences between aligned and misaligned bodies. An inversion effect emerged, with better recognition performance for upright compared to inverted bodies but not faces. The present findings provide evidence for the assumption that holistic processing--investigated with the composite illusion--is not involved in the perception of human body forms.
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