Universität zu Köln

Avargues-Weber, Aurore ORCID: 0000-0003-3160-6710, d'Amaro, Daniele, Metzler, Marita, Finke, Valerie, Baracchi, David and Dyer, Adrian G. (2018). Does Holistic Processing Require a Large Brain? Insights From Honeybees and Wasps in Fine Visual Recognition Tasks. Front. Psychol., 9. LAUSANNE: FRONTIERS MEDIA SA. ISSN 1664-1078

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Abstract

The expertise of humans for recognizing faces is largely based on holistic processing mechanism, a sophisticated cognitive process that develops with visual experience. The various visual features of a face are thus glued together and treated by the brain as a unique stimulus, facilitating robust recognition. Holistic processing is known to facilitate fine discrimination of highly similar visual stimuli, and involves specialized brain areas in humans and other primates. Although holistic processing is most typically employed with face stimuli, subjects can also learn to apply similar image analysis mechanisms when gaining expertise in discriminating novel visual objects, like becoming experts in recognizing birds or cars. Here, we ask if holistic processing with expertise might be a mechanism employed by the comparatively miniature brains of insects. We thus test whether honeybees (Apis mellifera) and/or wasps (Vespula vulgaris) can use holistic-like processing with experience to recognize images of human faces, or Navon-like parameterized-stimuli. These insect species are excellent visual learners and have previously shown ability to discriminate human face stimuli using configural type processing. Freely flying bees and wasps were consequently confronted with classical tests for holistic processing, the part-whole effect and the composite-face effect. Both species could learn similar faces from a standard face recognition test used for humans, and their performance in transfer tests was consistent with holistic processing as defined for studies on humans. Tests with parameterized stimuli also revealed a capacity of honeybees, but not wasps, to process complex visual information in a holistic way, suggesting that such sophisticated visual processing may be far more spread within the animal kingdom than previously thought, although may depend on ecological constraints.

Item Type:	Journal Article
Creators:	Creators Email ORCID ORCID Put Code Avargues-Weber, Aurore UNSPECIFIED orcid.org/0000-0003-3160-6710 UNSPECIFIED d'Amaro, Daniele UNSPECIFIED UNSPECIFIED UNSPECIFIED Metzler, Marita UNSPECIFIED UNSPECIFIED UNSPECIFIED Finke, Valerie UNSPECIFIED UNSPECIFIED UNSPECIFIED Baracchi, David UNSPECIFIED UNSPECIFIED UNSPECIFIED Dyer, Adrian G. UNSPECIFIED UNSPECIFIED UNSPECIFIED
URN:	urn:nbn:de:hbz:38-179314
DOI:	10.3389/fpsyg.2018.01313
Journal or Publication Title:	Front. Psychol.
Volume:	9
Date:	2018
Publisher:	FRONTIERS MEDIA SA
Place of Publication:	LAUSANNE
ISSN:	1664-1078
Language:	English
Faculty:	Unspecified
Divisions:	Unspecified
Subjects:	no entry
Uncontrolled Keywords:	Keywords Language INSECT MUSHROOM BODIES; INDIVIDUAL RECOGNITION; FACE PERCEPTION; EVOLUTION; HUMANS; DISCRIMINATION; MECHANISMS; EXPERTISE; COGNITION; FEATURES Multiple languages Psychology, Multidisciplinary Multiple languages
Refereed:	Yes
URI:	http://kups.ub.uni-koeln.de/id/eprint/17931