Skip to main content

Thank you for visiting nature.com. You are using a browser version with limited support for CSS. To obtain the best experience, we recommend you use a more up to date browser (or turn off compatibility mode in Internet Explorer). In the meantime, to ensure continued support, we are displaying the site without styles and JavaScript.

  • Article
  • Published:

Perceptual interference supports a non-modular account of face processing

Abstract

The perception of faces and of nonface objects share common early visual processing stages. Some argue, however, that the brain eventually processes faces separately from other objects, within a domain-specific module dedicated to face perception. This apparent specialization for faces could, alternatively, result from people's expertise with this category of stimuli. Here we used behavioral and electrophysiological measures of interference to address the functional independence of face and object processing. If the expert processing of faces and cars depend on common mechanisms related to holistic perception (obligatory processing of all parts), then for human subjects who are presumed to be face experts, car perception should interfere with concurrent face perception. Furthermore, such interference should increase with greater expertise in car identification, and indeed this is what we found. Event-related potentials (ERPs) suggest that this interference arose from perceptual processes contributing to the holistic processing of both objects of expertise and faces.

This is a preview of subscription content, access via your institution

Access options

Buy this article

Purchase on Springer Link

Instant access to full article PDF

Prices may be subject to local taxes which are calculated during checkout

Figure 1: Experimental design.
Figure 2: Car expertise correlates with behavioral interference.
Figure 3: Expertise effects on the N170.
Figure 4: ERP interference effects.

Similar content being viewed by others

References

  1. Moscovitch, M., Winocur, G. & Behrmann, M. What is special about face recognition? Nineteen experiments on a person with visual object agnosia and dyslexia but normal face recognition. J. Cogn. Neurosci. 9, 555–604 (1997).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  2. Farah, M.-J., Wilson, K.-D., Drain, M. & Tanaka, J.-N. What is “special” about face perception? Psychol. Rev. 105, 482–498 (1998).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  3. Kanwisher, N., McDermott, J. & Chun, M.M. The fusiform face area: a module in human extrastriate cortex specialized for face perception. J. Neurosci. 17, 4302–4311 (1997).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  4. McCarthy, G., Puce, A., Gore, J.C. & Allison, T. Face-specific processing in the human fusiform gyrus. J. Cogn. Neurosci. 9, 605–610 (1997).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  5. Gauthier, I., Tarr, M.J., Anderson, A.W., Skudlarski, P. & Gore, J.C. Activation of the middle fusiform 'face area' increases with expertise in recognizing novel objects. Nat. Neurosci. 2, 568–573 (1999).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  6. Gauthier, I., Skudlarski, P., Gore, J.C. & Anderson, A.W. Expertise for cars and birds recruits brain areas involved in face recognition. Nat. Neurosci. 3, 191–197 (2000).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  7. Tanaka, J.W. & Curran, T. A neural basis for expert object recognition. Psychol. Sci. 12, 43–47 (2001).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  8. Rossion, B., Gauthier, I., Goffaux, V., Tarr, M.J. & Crommelinck, M. Expertise training with novel objects leads to left lateralized face-like electrophysiological responses. Psychol. Sci. 13, 250–257 (2002).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  9. Gauthier, I. & Tarr, M.J. Becoming a “Greeble” expert: exploring mechanisms for face recognition. Vision Res. 37, 1673–1682 (1997).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  10. Gauthier, I. & Tarr, M.J. Unraveling mechanisms for expert object recognition: Bridging brain activity and behavior. J. Exp. Psychol. Hum. Percept. Perform. 28, 431–446 (2002).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  11. Bentin, S. et al. Electrophysiological studies of face perception in humans. J. Cogn. Neurosci. 8, 551–565 (1996).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  12. Carmel, D. & Bentin, S. Domain specificity versus expertise: factors influencing distinct processing of faces. Cognition 83, 1–29 (2002).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  13. Rossion, B. et al. The N170 occipito-temporal component is delayed and enhanced to inverted faces but not to inverted objects: an electrophysiological account of face-specific processes in the human brain. Neuroreport 11, 69–74 (2000).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  14. Epstein, R. & Kanwisher, N. A cortical representation of the local visual environment. Nature 392, 598–601 (1998).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  15. Wenger, M.J. & Ingvalson, E.M. A decisional component of holistic encoding. J. Exp. Psychol. Learn. Mem. Cogn. 28, 872–892 (2002).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  16. Lavie, N. Perceptual load as a necessary condition for selective attention. J. Exp. Psychol. Hum. Percept. Perform. 21, 451–468 (1995).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  17. de Fockert, J.W., Rees, G., Frith, C.D. & Lavie, N. The role of working memory in visual selective attention. Science 291, 1803–1806 (2001).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  18. Diamond, R. & Carey, S. Why faces are and are not special: an effect of expertise. J. Exp. Psychol. Gen. 115, 107–117 (1986).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  19. Velleman, P.F. & Hoaglin, D.C. Applications, Basics and Computing of Exploratory Data Analysis (Duxbury Press, Boston, 1981).

    Google Scholar 

  20. Tucker, D.M. Spatial sampling of head electrical fields: the geodesic sensor net. Electroencephalogr. Clin. Neurophysiol. 87, 154–163 (1993).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

Download references

Acknowledgements

This research was supported by the James S. McDonnell Foundation, the National Institutes of Health (EY13441 to I.G. and MH64812 to T.C.) and the National Science Foundation (0091752 to I.G.) The authors thank M. Banich, A. Cleeremans, T. Ito, R. O'Reilly, and the members of the Perceptual Expertise Network for relevant discussions, and A. Henken, K. Moller, C. Piatt and B. Young for research assistance.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

Authors

Corresponding authors

Correspondence to Isabel Gauthier or Tim Curran.

Ethics declarations

Competing interests

The authors declare no competing financial interests.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Cite this article

Gauthier, I., Curran, T., Curby, K. et al. Perceptual interference supports a non-modular account of face processing. Nat Neurosci 6, 428–432 (2003). https://doi.org/10.1038/nn1029

Download citation

  • Received:

  • Accepted:

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/nn1029

This article is cited by

Search

Quick links

Nature Briefing

Sign up for the Nature Briefing newsletter — what matters in science, free to your inbox daily.

Get the most important science stories of the day, free in your inbox. Sign up for Nature Briefing