| Evidence suggests that expert object recognition usually involves more holistic styles of processing. Holistic processing is thought to play a vital role in face recognition. Whether such holistic processing for other objects of expertise and holistic processing for faces relies on shared mechanisms, however, remains unclear. One hallmark of face recognition is the extent to which holistic processing is disrupted when faces are inverted, making recognition more difficult. Effects of inversion seem to be related to face expertise, as those who are very adept at face recognition experience larger negative effects of inversion. Rossion's Perceptual Field Hypothesis suggests that extensive experience with face recognition broadens the perceptual field, allowing more efficient recognition across broad areas of the face and improved recognition at the edges of the visual field. When faces are inverted, access to these mechanisms is impaired due to a narrowed perceptual field, leading to less holistic, more serial recognition processes. Evaluating chess positions shares some characteristics with face recognition, in that both individual pieces (parts) must be recognized and the configuration of the parts must be processed. However, while face recognition relies on both innate resources and experience, chess expertise develops almost exclusively through experience. In the present study, chess players were tested to evaluate (1) whether template-based systems believed to play a role in expert chess mechanisms function differently when viewing typically and atypically oriented chess games; (2) whether expert chess players process faces differently than less skilled players; and (3) whether evidence exists for shared perceptual processes involved in face recognition and expert evaluation of chess displays. Chess players ranging in expertise from hobby players to International Grandmasters, among the most elite players in the world, were tested using several measures of face expertise and a naturalistic chess task, a check categorization task. By manipulating chessboard orientation, the number of attacking pieces on the board, and whether a single piece was cued, qualitative perceptual differences among Masters were demonstrated. Better understanding the role of experience in visual expertise is important, so that such effects can be dissociated, where possible, from unchangeable, innate factors such as intelligence. |
