Effects of age on face perception: Reduced eye region discrimination ability but intact holistic processing.

ABSTRACT: While age-related decline in face recognition memory is well-established, the degree of decline in face perceptual abilities across the lifespan and the underlying mechanisms are incompletely characterized. In the present study, we used the part-whole task to examine lifespan changes in holistic and featural processing. After studying an intact face, participants are tested for memory of a face part (eyes, nose, mouth) with the target and foil part presented either in isolation or in the context of the whole face. To the extent that parts are encoded into a holistic face representation, an advantage is expected for part recognition when tested in the whole face condition. The task therefore provides measures of holistic processing (whole-over-isolated-part trial advantage) and featural pro

SUBMITTER: Fry R 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC10521214 | biostudies-literature | 2023 Sep

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature