Faces and bodies in person perception

Faces and bodies in person perception | Research Square window.SnipcartSettings = { analytics: { enabled: false } }; (function() { var accessVector = localStorage.getItem('access_vector') || ''; window.dataLayer = window.dataLayer || []; if (accessVector) { window.dataLayer.push({ user: { profile: { profileInfo: { snid: accessVector } } } }); } })(); (function(w,d,s,l,i){w[l]=w[l]||[];w[l].push({'gtm.start':new Date().getTime(),event:'gtm.js'});var f=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0],j=d.createElement(s),dl=l!='dataLayer'?'&l='+l:'';j.async=true;j.src='https://www.googletagmanager.com/gtm.js?id='+i+dl;f.parentNode.insertBefore(j,f);})(window,document,'script','dataLayer','GTM-K279D39R'); Browse Preprints In Review Journals COVID-19 Preprints AJE Video Bytes Research Tools Research Promotion AJE Professional Editing AJE Rubriq About Preprint Platform In Review Editorial Policies Our Team Advisory Board Help Center Sign In Submit a Preprint Cite Share Download PDF Research Article Faces and bodies in person perception Katelyn Forner, James W. Tanaka This is a preprint; it has not been peer reviewed by a journal. https://doi.org/ 10.21203/rs.3.rs-3280406/v2 This work is licensed under a CC BY 4.0 License Status: Posted Version 2 posted You are reading this latest preprint version Show more versions Abstract When we see a person approaching us on the street, can we attend to their face independently of the body and conversely, can we attend to their body, independently of their face? Or, is face and body information combined to form a whole person percept? To test these questions, we constructed a whole-person composite stimulus by aligning or misaligning the face from one person with the body from another. Pairs of aligned or misaligned face-body composites were presented sequentially to participants in a “same/different” task and discrimination difficulty was parametrically manipulated via a morphing procedure. In Experiment 1, participants were asked to judge the identity of the face and ignore the body. In Experiment 2, participants were asked to judge the identity of the body and ignore the face. In both experiments, we found a congruency effect where “same/different” discriminations to the cued portion (Experiment 1: face; Experiment 2: body) were influenced by information in the to-be-ignored uncued portion. The magnitude of the congruency effect increased as the discrimination decisions became more difficult. Critically, spatial alignment between the face and body did not affect the congruency effect; indicating that the integration of face and body information occurs at the decisional stage of processing rather than at the perceptual holistic encoding stage. Together, our results indicate that it is difficult to selectively attend to just the face or the body in person perception. Full Text Additional Declarations The authors declare no competing interests. Cite Share Download PDF Status: Posted Version 2 posted You are reading this latest preprint version Show more versions Research Square lets you share your work early, gain feedback from the community, and start making changes to your manuscript prior to peer review in a journal. As a division of Research Square Company, we’re committed to making research communication faster, fairer, and more useful. We do this by developing innovative software and high quality services for the global research community. Our growing team is made up of researchers and industry professionals working together to solve the most critical problems facing scientific publishing. Also discoverable on Platform About Our Team In Review Editorial Policies Advisory Board Help Center Resources Author Services Accessibility API Access RSS feed Manage Cookie Preferences © Research Square 2026 | ISSN 2693-5015 (online) Privacy Policy Terms of Service Do Not Sell My Personal Information {"props":{"pageProps":{"initialData":{"identity":"rs-3280406","acceptedTermsAndConditions":true,"allowDirectSubmit":true,"archivedVersions":[],"articleType":"Research Article","associatedPublications":[],"authors":[{"id":229982365,"identity":"463b7911-4e46-4899-9ec6-19767440d8c9","order_by":0,"name":"Katelyn Forner","email":"","orcid":"","institution":"University of Victoria Victoria, British Columbia","correspondingAuthor":false,"prefix":"","firstName":"Katelyn","middleName":"","lastName":"Forner","suffix":""},{"id":229982366,"identity":"d2f5f414-a9d6-4fb3-a934-e4ce9b7bdd03","order_by":1,"name":"James W. 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