People tend to perceive identical top halves (i.e., above the nose) of two face stimuli as being different when they are aligned with distinct bottom halves. This composite face illusion is generally considered as the most compelling evidence that facial features are integrated into a holistic representation. Here, we recorded eye-movements during the composite face illusion in a delayed matching task of top halves of faces. Behavioural results showed a strong composite face effect, participants making more mistakes and taking longer time to match two identical top halves of faces when they were aligned (vs. misaligned) with different bottom halves. Importantly, fixation sites and eye-movements were virtually identical when the top and bottom parts were aligned (composite illusion) or misaligned (no illusion), indicating that holistic face processing can be independent of gaze behaviour. These findings reinforce the view that holistic representations of individual faces can be extracted early on from information at a relatively coarse scale, independently of overt attention.

中文翻译：

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全面的面部处理可以独立于注视行为：复合面部错觉的证据。

人们将两个面部刺激的相同的上半部分（即，鼻子上方）对准不同的下半部分时，往往会感觉不同。这种综合的面部错觉通常被认为是最有说服力的证据，表明面部特征已集成到整体表示中。在这里，我们记录了上半部脸部延迟匹配任务中复合脸部错觉期间的眼睛运动。行为结果显示出很强的综合脸部效果，参与者将两个相同的上半部分对准（相对于未对准）不同的下半部分时犯了更多的错误，并且花费了更长的时间。重要的是，当顶部和底部对齐（错觉）或错位（无错觉）时，固定位置和眼球运动几乎是相同的，表示整体面部处理可以独立于注视行为。这些发现强化了这样一种观点，即可以从较粗略的信息中较早地从信息中提取出单个面孔的整体表示，而无需明显地注意。