Body Inversion Effects With Photographic Images of Body Postures: Is It About Faces?

As with faces, participants are better at discriminating upright bodies than inverted bodies. This inversion effect is reliable for whole figures, namely, bodies with heads, but it is less reliable for headless bodies. This suggests that removal of the head disrupts typical processing of human figures, and raises questions about the role of faces in efficient body discrimination. In most studies, faces are occluded, but the aim here was to exclude faces in a more ecologically valid way by presenting photographic images of human figures from behind (about-facing), as well as measuring gaze to different parts of the figures. Participants determined whether pairs of sequentially presented body postures were the same or different for whole and headless figures. Presenting about-facing figures (heads seen from behind) and forward-facing figures with faces enabled a comparison of the effect of the presence or absence of faces. Replicating previous findings, there were inversion effects for forward-facing whole figures, but less reliable effects for headless images. There were also inversion effects for about-facing whole figures, but not about-facing headless figures. Accuracy was higher in the forward- compared to the about-facing conditions, but proportional dwell time was greater to bodies in about-facing images. Likewise, despite better discrimination of forward-facing upright compared to inverted whole figures, participants focused more on the heads and less on the bodies in upright compared to inverted images. However, there was no clear relationship between performance and dwell time proportions to heads. Body inversion effects (BIEs) were found with about-facing whole figures and headless forward-facing figures, despite the absence of faces. With inverted whole figures, there was a significant relationship between performance and greater looking at bodies, and less at heads suggesting that in more difficult conditions a focus on bodies is associated with better discrimination. Overall, the findings suggest that the visual system has greater sensitivity to bodies in their most experienced form, which is typically upright and with a head. Otherwise, the more a face is implied by the context, as in whole figures or forward- rather than about-facing headless bodies, the better the performance as holistic/configural processing is likely stronger.