The ability to recognize a face is crucial for the success of social interactions. Understanding the visual processes underlying this ability has been the focus of a long tradition of research. Recent advances in the field have revealed that individuals having different cultural backgrounds differ in the type of visual information they use for face processing. However, the mechanisms that underpin these differences remain unknown. Here, we revisit recent findings highlighting group differences in face processing. Then, we integrate these results in a model of visual categorization developed in the field of psychophysics: the RAP framework. On the basis of this framework, we discuss potential mechanisms, whether face-specific or not, that may underlie cross-cultural differences in face perception.

识别面孔的能力对于社交互动的成功至关重要。理解这种能力的视觉过程一直是长期研究的重点。该领域的最新进展表明，具有不同文化背景的个人在面部处理中使用的视觉信息类型有所不同。但是，支持这些差异的机制仍然未知。在这里，我们回顾了最近的发现，这些发现突出了面部处理中的群体差异。然后，我们将这些结果整合到在心理物理学领域开发的视觉分类模型：RAP框架中。在此框架的基础上，我们讨论了可能构成面部感知的跨文化差异的潜在机制（无论是否特定于面部）。