Mahlet Kassa

New York University | NYU · Department of Psychology

We recognize faces better than other non-face objects, and we also recognize faces from our own social group (e.g., same race, same age) better than faces from other social groups (e.g., Malpass and Kravitz, 1969). High recognition performance for faces, and for faces from our own social group, may be due to extensive experience with the specific group of faces (e.g., Sporer, 2001) that results in holistic processing. Holistic processing suggests that all parts of a face or object are processed as a whole as opposed to individual parts. Previous research has found larger holistic processing for own age faces compared to faces from other groups (Susilo et al., 2009). However, implicit and explicit social biases also change with experience: for example, more experience is associated with more positive biases (Bronstein, 1989). In this study we re-examined 1) whether own age faces are processed more holistically than other age faces, and 2) whether implicit and explicit social biases towards other age groups, or experience with the age groups influence the degree of holistic processing of faces of different age groups.

This master degree project aimed to identify where in the visual processing stream duration adaptation after-effect takes place using a combination of behavioural and fMRI MVPA techniques.