The face‐mind link: Why we see minds behind faces,and how others' minds change how we see their face

Understanding others' minds has puzzled philosophers for centuries. Psychologists, too, have recently begun asking questions about what causes us to see another person as having complex or simple mental faculties. Here, we review recent evidence linking how we perceive others' faces with how we perceive others' minds—the face‐mind link. We first discuss research demonstrating a face‐to‐mind effect, showing that both certain facial features (e.g., eyes) and face perception processes (e.g., configural processing) can trigger the perception that a face has a mind. We then discuss recent evidence demonstrating a mind‐to‐face effect, showing that believing a person is inhumane (i.e., their mind) leads their face to be processed less like a face and more like an object. Finally, we consider both the consequences of this bidirectional face‐mind link, and what the next steps may be in understanding how and why we infer minds from faces, and how and why beliefs about others' minds affects how we see their face.     

Look into my eyes: Gaze direction and person memory

The current research considered the effects of gaze direction on a fundamental aspect of social cogition: person memory. It was anticipated that a person's direction of gaze (i.e., direct or averted) would impact his or her subsequent memorability, such that recognition would be enhanced for targets previously displaying direct gaze. In Experiment 1, participants were presented with faces displaying either direct or averted gaze in a person‐classification (i.e., conceptual) task. Then, in a surprise memory test, they were required to report whether a presented face had been seen before. As expected, a recognition advantage was observed for targets displaying direct gaze during the initial classification task. This finding was replicated and extended in a second experiment in which participants initially reported the spatial location (i.e., perceptual task) of each face. We consider the implications of these findings for basic aspects of social‐cognitive functioning and person perception.     

Neural and genetic foundations of face recognition and prosopagnosia

Faces are of essential importance for human social life. They provide valuable information about the identity, expression, gaze, health, and age of a person. Recent face‐processing models assume highly interconnected neural structures between different temporal, occipital, and frontal brain areas with several feedback loops. A selective deficit in the visual learning and recognition of faces is known as prosopagnosia, which can be found both in acquired and congenital form. Recently, a hereditary sub‐type of congenital prosopagnosia with a very high prevalence rate of 2.5% has been identified. Recent research results show that hereditary prosopagnosia is a clearly circumscribed face‐processing deficit with a characteristic set of clinical symptoms. Comparing face processing of people of prosopagnosia with that of controls can help to develop a more conclusive and integrated model of face processing. Here, we provide a summary of the current state of face processing research. We also describe the different types of prosopagnosia and present the set of typical symptoms found in the hereditary type. Finally, we will discuss the implications for future face recognition research.     

Cognitive neuroscience in China

In the last decade, cognitive neuroscience in China has advanced in at least four aspects: first, specialized research institutes and bodies have been set up throughout the nation; second, more and more high‐tech research facilities and approaches have been adopted by domestic researchers; third, international conferences on cognitive neuroscience have been held in Mainland China; and finally, publications relating cognitive processes to neural activation and functioning have increased. This paper selectively reviews research on perception and face recognition, attention, language, memory, and disorders in cognitive brain functions carried out by scientists in Mainland China. For visual perception, some excellent work has been carried out to investigate the neural mechanisms of perceptual priming, perceptual grouping, and perception of global/local properties in compound stimuli. For attention, much work is on issues such as the time course of brain activation in selective attention, the patterns of event‐related potentials in visual and auditory selective attention, and the effect of pre‐cueing on spatial attention. Because the Chinese language has many unique characteristics in phonological and syntactic systems and in the writing system, much research carried out in China takes advantage of these characteristics, trying to separate the universal and language‐specific aspects of language processing and their neural correlates. Memory research is mainly at neuropsychological and neurobiological levels. Disorders of cognitive functioning and their underlying impairments in the brain are attracting more and more attention. The paper concludes that as the Chinese economy is growing fast, more resources will be poured into basic research. Thus, systematic research in various fields of cognitive neuroscience by Chinese scientists is no longer a dream. It is reasonable to expect that research in this field will be accelerated in China and become an important force in the world in the near future.     

Integration of faces and voices, but not faces and names, in person recognition

Recent studies on cross-modal recognition suggest that face and voice information are linked for the purpose of person identification. We tested whether congruent associations between familiarized faces and voices facilitated subsequent person recognition relative to incongruent associations. Furthermore, we investigated whether congruent face and name associations would similarly benefit person identification relative to incongruent face and name associations. Participants were familiarized with a set of talking video-images of actors, their names, and their voices. They were then tested on their recognition of either the face, voice, or name of each actor from bimodal stimuli which were either congruent or novel (incongruent) associations between the familiarized face and voice or face and name. We found that response times to familiarity decisions based on congruent face and voice stimuli were facilitated relative to incongruent associations. In contrast, we failed to find a benefit for congruent face and name pairs. Our findings suggest that faces and voices, but not faces and names, are integrated in memory for the purpose of person recognition. These findings have important implications for current models of face perception and support growing evidence for multisensory effects in face perception areas of the brain for the purpose of person recognition.     

从面孔模块到马赛克──视觉特异性加工的脑机制

“脑功能的模块性”是视觉乃至整个认知神经科学的研究热点。特异性的面孔加工模块被当作是认知模块假说的最好证据。但综述跨学科的正反两方面实验证据表明,视觉加工存在特异性,并没有普遍的模块式的亚单元,而是“马赛克”镶嵌式的组构。     

Four themes from 20 years of research on infant perception and cognition

This paper reviews progress over the past 20 years in four areas of research on infant perception and cognition. Work on perception of dynamic events has identified perceptual constraints on perception of object unity and object trajectory continuity that have led to a perceptual account of early development that supplements Nativist accounts. Work on face processing has charted developmental changes that clarify the way innate systems are modified by experience. Research on perception of goal‐directed action and animacy has made significant progress in uncovering the roots of social cognition from 6 months onwards. New methods such as eye tracking and measures of brain activity have done much to confirm and clarify conclusions arising from more conventional looking preference methods. It is likely that future progress in theory and understanding will be made increasingly as a result of triangulation between data arising from conventional and newer methods. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The role of Funktionswandel in metamorphopsia

Patients with metamorphopsia perceive objects or faces as being distorted and/or different in size. In most cases, recognition is not impaired. The stimulus specificity, particularly in the case of face perception, has led to the suggestion that metamorphopsia is a deficit at the entry level of category‐specific recognition systems; in this case, the face processing system. An explanation in terms of a visuosensory deficit (i.e. Funktionswandel) that affects the perception of specific stimulus categories has not been systematically evaluated. In this study, we report two patients (MZ and CM) who experienced hemi‐metamorphopsia for faces after a stroke in the posterior part of the brain. Despite the distortions, they could still match and recognize faces. We carried out a detailed evaluation of their visual‐sensory status and found that both MZ and CM had specific problems with discriminating and estimating sizes and shapes, especially in the contralesional visual field. It was concluded that these cases, metamorphopsia was not due to a higher‐order perception impairment specific for faces, but rather of a specific impairment in shape perception in the contralesional visual field that proportionally affects the perception of faces.     

Visual space perception and action: Introductory remarks

Vision evolved from the vital necessity to act in a dynamic environment. Following this view it is clear that perceptual processes and action planning are much more interlocked than is evident at first sight. This is especially evident in visual space perception; actions are performed in space and are guided and controlled by objects in spatial positions. Here we shortly introduce the three research camps dealing with the relationship between space perception and action: the ecological camp, the two‐visual‐systems camp, and the constructivist camp. We show that these camps emphasize and open different theoretical and empirical perspectives, but that they can be seen to complement each other. We end with an overview of the papers in this special issue.     

Strengthening the Child‐ and Youth‐Serving Workforce: Surveying the Landscape,Overcoming Challenges

This special issue addresses a neglected but important topic in our field: strengthening the child‐ and youth‐serving workforce. Investing in this workforce should be a national priority because considerable evidence has shown that investments in early childhood education and development, particularly in low‐resource contexts, that are reinforced through skills‐based programs in adolescence and adulthood, have beneficial impacts throughout life. Investing in quality child‐ and youth‐serving programs also has the additional benefit of creating a productive and capable future workforce. The editors and authors of the special issue should be commended for producing the first special issue on this topic in our field or in related fields, one that is long overdue. Articles in this issue survey the landscape of an amorphous and complex area of practice and research and describe key challenges for the field. In this commentary, I offer organizing frameworks to characterize the child‐ and youth‐serving workforce, note emerging issues when addressing specific challenges, and identify areas for future research.     

What do infants see in faces? ERP evidence of different roles of eyes and mouth for face perception in 9‐month‐old infants

The study examined whether face‐specific perceptual brain mechanisms in 9‐month‐old infants are differentially sensitive to changes in individual facial features (eyes versus mouth) and whether sensitivity to such changes is related to infants' social and communicative skills. Infants viewed photographs of a smiling unfamiliar female face. On 30% of the trials, either the eyes or the mouth of that face were replaced by corresponding parts from a different female. Visual event‐related potentials were recorded to examine face‐sensitive brain responses. Results revealed that increased competence in expressive communication and interpersonal relationships was associated with a more mature response to faces, as reflected in a larger occipito‐temporal N290 with shorter latency. Both eye‐ and mouth changes were detected, though infants derived different information from these features. Eye changes had a greater impact on the face perception mechanisms and were not correlated with social or communication development, whereas mouth changes had a minimal impact on face processing but were associated with levels of language and communication understanding. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

How many voices did you hear? Natural variability disrupts identity perception from unfamiliar voices

Our voices sound different depending on the context (laughing vs. talking to a child vs. giving a speech), making within‐person variability an inherent feature of human voices. When perceiving speaker identities, listeners therefore need to not only ‘tell people apart’ (perceiving exemplars from two different speakers as separate identities) but also ‘tell people together’ (perceiving different exemplars from the same speaker as a single identity). In the current study, we investigated how such natural within‐person variability affects voice identity perception. Using voices from a popular TV show, listeners, who were either familiar or unfamiliar with this show, sorted naturally varying voice clips from two speakers into clusters to represent perceived identities. Across three independent participant samples, unfamiliar listeners perceived more identities than familiar listeners and frequently mistook exemplars from the same speaker to be different identities. These findings point towards a selective failure in ‘telling people together’. Our study highlights within‐person variability as a key feature of voices that has striking effects on (unfamiliar) voice identity perception. Our findings not only open up a new line of enquiry in the field of voice perception but also call for a re‐evaluation of theoretical models to account for natural variability during identity perception.     

Understanding others: the face and person construal

The face is a critical stimulus in person perception, yet little research has considered the efficiency of the processing operations through which perceivers glean social knowledge from facial cues. Integrating ideas from work on social cognition and face processing, the current research considered the ease with which invariant aspects of person knowledge can be extracted from faces under different viewing and processing conditions. The results of 2 experiments demonstrated that participants extracted knowledge pertaining to the sex and identity of faces in both upright and inverted orientations, even when the faces were irrelevant to the task at hand. The results of an additional experiment, however, suggested that although the extraction of person knowledge from faces may occur unintentionally, the process is nonetheless contingent on the operation of a semantic processing goal. The authors consider the efficiency of person construal and the processes that support this fundamental facet of social-cognitive functioning.     

Functional consequences of perceiving facial expressions of emotion without awareness

A substantial body of research has established that even when we are not consciously aware of the faces of others we are nevertheless sensitive to, and impacted by their facial expression. In this paper, we consider this body of research from a new perspective by examining the functions of unconscious perception revealed by these studies. A consideration of the literature from this perspective highlights that existing research methods are limited when it comes to revealing possible functions of unconscious perception. The critical shortcoming is that in all of the methods, the perceived facial expression remains outside of awareness. This is a problem because there are good reasons to believe that one important function of unconsciously perceived negative faces is to attract attention so that they are consciously perceived; such conscious perception, however, is never allowed with existing methodologies. We discuss recent studies of emotional face perception under conditions of visual search that address this issue directly. Further, we suggest that methodologies that do not examine cognitive processes as they occur in more natural settings may result in fundamental misunderstandings of human cognition.     

Fifty years of dichotic listening research - still going and going and…

This year celebrates 50 years of research in auditory laterality and hemispheric asymmetry, using a dichotic listening approach. The discovery of the "right ear advantage" in 1961 by Doreen Kimura to dichotic presentations of phonetic stimuli paved the way for new studies of how speech perception and related language processes are lateralized in the human brain. The articles in this special issue, celebrating the first 50 years of dichotic listening research, reveal both the breadth and depth of current research, with contributions spanning from basic research to clinical applications, from behavioral studies to studies using advanced neuroimaging techniques, and with contributions from all over the world. It is my hope as Guest Editor that the next 50 years will be as productive as the first 50 years.     

Arguments about the nature of concepts: Symbols,embodiment, and beyond

How are the meanings of words, events, and objects represented and organized in the brain? This question, perhaps more than any other in the field, probes some of the deepest and most foundational puzzles regarding the structure of the mind and brain. Accordingly, it has spawned a field of inquiry that is diverse and multidisciplinary, has led to the discovery of numerous empirical phenomena, and has spurred the development of a wide range of theoretical positions. This special issue brings together the most recent theoretical developments from the leaders in the field, representing a range of viewpoints on issues of fundamental significance to a theory of meaning representation. Here we introduce the special issue by way of pulling out some key themes that cut across the contributions that form this issue and situating those themes in the broader literature. The core issues around which research on conceptual representation can be organized are representational format, representational content, the organization of concepts in the brain, and the processing dynamics that govern interactions between the conceptual system and sensorimotor representations. We highlight areas in which consensus has formed; for those areas in which opinion is divided, we seek to clarify the relation of theory and evidence and to set in relief the bridging assumptions that undergird current discussions.     

An Introduction to "The Neuroscience of Perceptual Integration"

An important goal in the study of object, word, and face perception is to understand how the brain integrates various visual features- the binding process. Along with the progress of knowledge of the neurophysiological properties of integration processes in cortical areas, a number of psychophysical, neuropsychological, and computational studies have provided information about how and in what conditions the visual system combines different signals across time and space, the factors that modulate integration processes, the local processes that control larger scale integration, and how the mechanisms can be implemented physiologically. This special issue is aimed at summarizing recent data about integration processes based on investigations ranging from the neurochemical substrate of integration processes, the role of attention in integrating characteristics, the spatial and temporal integration of local signals into coherentpercepts, the integration of visual information during the programming of saccade, and what remains when integration fails in neurologically impaired patients.     

The social signal value of emotions

Human interactions are replete with emotional exchanges. In these exchanges information about the emotional state of the interaction partners is only one type of information conveyed. In addition, emotion displays provide information about the interaction partners' disposition and the situation as such. That is, emotions serve as social signals. Acknowledging this role of emotions, this special section brings together research that illustrates how both person perception and situational understanding can be derived from emotional displays and the modulation of this process through context. Three contributions focus on information about expressers and their intentions. An additional article focuses on the informative value of emotional expressions for an observer's construal of social situations and another article exemplifies the way context determines the social impact of emotions. Finally, the last article presents the dynamic nature of mutual influence of emotions. In an attempt to integrate these contributions and offer lenses for future research, this editorial offers a contextualised model of social perception which attempts to systematise not only the types of information that emotion expressions can convey, but also to elaborate the notion of context.     

Introduction to Michotte's heritage in perception and cognition research

Several decades after Michotte's work was published, it continues to inspire current research in perception, cognition, and beyond. In this special issue we pay tribute to this heritage with a collection of empirical and theoretical papers on amodal completion and the perception of causality, two areas of research within which Michotte's work and ideas have had a lasting influence. As a background to better understand the remaining papers, we briefly sketch Michotte's life and work and the scope (in breadth and in depth) of his impact. We then review Michotte's seminal contributions to the areas covered in this special issue, some of the major research discoveries and themes in the intervening decades, and the major open questions and challenges we are still facing. We also include a sneak preview of the papers in this special issue, noting how they relate to Michotte's work and to each other. This review shows both how much influence Michotte has had on contemporary perception and cognition research, and how much important work remains to be done. We hope that the papers in this special issue will serve both to celebrate Michotte's heritage in this respect, and to inspire other investigators to continue the projects he began.