The composite face effect in six-year-old children: Evidence of adult-like holistic face processing

Holistic processing (i.e., gluing facial features together into a gestalt) is a hallmark of adults’ expert face recognition. Children make more errors than adults on a variety of face processing tasks even during adolescence. To determine whether this slow development can be attributed to immature holistic processing of unfamiliar faces, we tested 6-year-old children (n=24) with a classic measure of adults’ holistic processing, the composite face effect: They made same/different judgements about the top halves of face pairs when each top half was combined with a different bottom half, with which it was aligned (so that holistic processing creates the impression of a different face) or misaligned (a manipulation that disrupts holistic processing). Six-year-olds showed an adult-like composite face effect: Like adults, they made 26% more errors on aligned trials than on misaligned trials. These results suggest that the improvements after age 6 in the recognition of the facial identity are not caused by the onset or increasing strength of holistic face processing.