When the whole is equal to the sum of its parts: A new approach to study face and body perception and representation

Abstract

In this paper, a new approach and a novel method to study face perception is proposed and tested using several qualitative experiments. This method is based on three main tasks: a description task (subjects were asked to freely describe the target stimulus), a free pictorial task (free drawing/painting of what subjects were asked), and a pictorial reproduction task (making a copy of what subjects perceived). These tasks were carried out with children and adults and extended to conditions related to visual arts. The starting points of this work were the canonical perspective and the holistic processes involved in face perception. The aim of this work was to answer the two following basic questions: Are canonical perspective and holistic processes really effective for face perception? Is face perception other than the sum of its parts? The outcomes of the experiments clearly refuted the role of canonical perspective and weaken the holistic approach to face and body perception. The whole human body has been shown instead to appear as if built starting from every single component, therefore body and faces are like wholes, decomposable in a mosaic of juxtaposed independent components reduced to a reference image. In short, the whole is equal to the sum of its parts. Finally, our results also show evidence supporting the introduction of the notion of icon.

Keywords: Canonical perspective; Face perception; Gestalt psychology; Perceptual organization; Visual perception.