Holistic processing is robust in the face of task-context-induced spatial attention biases

One account of the characteristic holistic processing of faces and objects of expertise posits that it arises from a learned attention to the whole, rendering it difficult to attend only to parts of stimuli. We tested whether task-context-induced attentional biases for the top or bottom part of a stimulus alter holistic processing of faces. We induced attentional biases by manipulating the probability (75% or 25%) that the top or bottom part would be task-relevant in a modified composite part-judgement task. Manipulating the proportion of trials in which the top/bottom region was task-relevant (i.e., whether the top/bottom was cued) induced the expected attention bias, with increased sensitivity for the part more likely to be cued. Despite this, there was limited evidence of an impact on holistic face processing, with the probabilistic cueing manipulation failing to impact the congruency effect. In a second experiment, we investigated whether this finding extends to stimulus-driven holistic processing of line patterns rich in Gestalt cues. Here, the only evidence of an impact on holistic processing was the attenuation of a greater congruency effect for bottom, over top, judgements in the bottom-bias condition. However, this was primarily the result of a reduction in a general bias to process the top region, present for face and non-face stimuli, rather than a direct impact on holistic processing. Thus, holistic processing for both stimulus types was relatively robust to the influence of task context-based attentional biases. However, there was some evidence of greater flexibility in stimulus-driven, compared to more experience-driven, processing more generally.