Perception of configural and component information in own-race and other-race faces: an fMRI study

Abstract

INTRODUCTION: We studied the degree to which face-selective regions FFA, OFA, and STS are activated by configural information (that is, the overall positions of features within a face) and by component information (that is, the shape of individual components). Specifically, scrambled images were used to isolate component information by depicting key face features (eyes, eyebrows, nose, mouth) in a scrambled configuration, and blurred images were used to isolate configural information by removing information about the shape of individual components (see Hayward et al 2008). Participants were then scanned as they conducted a one-back location task to scrambled, blurred, or original Chinese and Caucasian fac...