Holistic processing of faces happens at a glance.

Holistic processing (HP) of faces can be inferred from failure to selectively attend to part of a face. We explored how encoding time affects HP of faces by manipulating exposure duration of the study or test face in a sequential matching composite task. HP was observed for exposure as rapid as 50 ms, and was unaffected by whether exposure of the study or test face was limited. Holistic effects emerge as soon as performance is above chance, and are not larger at rapid exposure durations. Limiting exposure at study vs. test did have differential effects on response biases at the fastest exposure durations. These findings provide key constraints for understanding mechanisms of face recognition. These results are first to demonstrate that HP of faces emerges for very briefly presented faces, and that limited perceptual encoding time affects response biases and overall level of performance but not whether faces are processed holistically.