a neurocomputational account of the face configural...
TRANSCRIPT
Manan P. Shah2*, Xiaokun Xu1, Sarah B. Herald2, Irving Biederman1,2
1Department of Psychology, 2Neuroscience Program, University of Southern California
http://geon.usc.edu/
Part-Whole Effect
A neurocomputational account of the face configural effect
Gabor-Jet Models
Conclusions
Illustration of overlap of medium-
sized receptor fields of two Gabor
“jets” with five scales and eight
orientations. A jet models aspects of
the tuning of a V1 hypercolumn.
A difference in a
single part
appears more
distinct in the
context of a face
than it does by
itself.
Experiment 3: Can the same theory
account for the Face Composite Effect?
Yes
Experiment 2: Is it large RFs or low SFs?
Large RFsFace Composite EffectExperiment 1: Is the configural effect largely produced by cells
with large RFs (low SFs)? Yes
Identical top halves of two faces look different
when their different bottom halves are aligned
rather than offset.
The face configural and composite effects can be derived from models composed of overlapping
receptive fields (RFs) characteristic of early cortical simple-cell tuning but also present in face-
selective areas.
Because of the overlap in RFs, variation in a single face part or half is propagated to the
activation values of large RFs throughout the face.
References
Face parts (a) and
composite target
faces (b) created
from these parts
for the current
replication of the
part-whole
identification
experiment of
Tanaka and Farah
(1993).
(c) Predicting response accuracy
from large RFs (low SF) versus
small RFs (high SF) components in
the Gabor-jet representation (via
model 1) of faces. A greater
proportion of the variance is
predictable from the large RF (low
SF) components.
(a)
(b)
(c)
The configural effect (isolated part vs.
composite) as a function of spatial frequency
(all SF, high, and low pass). There is only a
minimal effect of SF. Therefore the configural
effect is produced by large RFs, not by low SFs.
Spatial filtering of the part and whole face stimuli in
Experiment 2. RF held constant, SF varied.
Version 1. Illustration of the computation of
dissimilarity for a corresponding pair of jets positioned
at nodes in a rectangular grid for a pair of face images.
Version 2. Fiducial point version of
the Gabor-jet model. Particular jets
automatically center themselves on
landmark features of a face like the
pupil of the right eye.
This effect—an influence of differences in the
lower halves of the faces—can be produced by
the fiducial point model. Because of a reduction
in the overlap of the RFs (perhaps also
requiring the context of a face template) from
the shift, the influence of the lower half is
reduced when it is no longer aligned with the
upper half. Above: Dissimilarity computed via
Gabor-jet model version 2.
Hypothesis
The representation of faces (but not objects)
retains aspects of the initial multiscale,
multiorientation tuning of early cortical visual
stages and the configural effect is produced
by the overlap of large receptive fields in
which a change in the shape of one face part
will affect the activation of many cells with
large RFs not centered on that face part.
Tanaka and Farah 1993
Xu et al., 2014
Xu et al., 2014
Xu et al., 2014
Xu et al., 201
Xu et al., 2012
Xu et al., 2014
Xu et al., 2014
(Nishimura, 2008)
(Biederman 2014)
(Biederman, 2014)
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