When two faces are not better than one: Serial limited-capacity processing with redundant-target faces

Area of Science:

• Cognitive Psychology
• Neuroscience
• Visual Perception

Background:

• The automaticity of face perception is a widely held belief in cognitive science.
• It is hypothesized that face detection is resource-free and attention-independent.
• Furthermore, visual search for faces is presumed to occur in parallel.

Purpose of the Study:

• To rigorously test the hypotheses of automatic face processing.
• To investigate whether face detection requires attentional resources.
• To determine if visual search for faces operates in parallel.

Main Methods:

• Employed the system factorial technology (SFT) methodology for a redundant target-detection task.
• Assessed architecture (serial vs. parallel), stopping rule (exhaustive vs. self-terminating), and capacity (limited, unlimited, supercapacity).
• Analyzed both mean reaction times (RTs) and RT distributions.

Main Results:

• Conclusive evidence for a serial self-terminating architecture in face detection.
• Demonstrated limited capacity in the face processing system.
• Reaction time analyses supported a non-parallel processing model.

Conclusions:

• The findings cast significant doubt on the automaticity of face perception.
• Face detection is not a resource-free or purely parallel process.
• This challenges established models of automatic visual processing.