Introduction: Analytic and Holistic Processing-The View Through Different Lenses

People readily recognize the faces of friends and the objects around them. They do so effortlessly, but these cannot just be part of a simple task for the visual system. Faces are all extremely similar as visual patterns. People see objects from different viewpoints and in different arrangements. How does the visual system solve these problems? This book attempts to answer this question by considering how analytic and holistic processes contribute to the perception of faces, objects, and scenes. This volume brings together 21st-century views. The contributors to this volume ask whether analytic and holistic processes contribute differently to the perception of faces and objects. They also consider whether different mechanisms code holistic and analytic information or whether a single universal system can suffice.