Face-based categorization, context-based categorization, and distortions in the recollection of gender ambiguous faces

In three studies, we examined the impact of face-based and context-based categorization in the recollection of gender ambiguous faces. Gender ambiguous faces were created by morphing male and female source faces. In Study 1, the recollection of moderately ambiguous faces (i.e., 70% male-30% female faces and 70% female-30% male faces) was accentuated towards face distracters that were more typical of the spontaneous (i.e., face-based) categorization of these faces. In Study 2, the recollection of extremely ambiguous faces (50% male-50% female faces) was accentuated towards face distracters that were more typical of the gender category suggested by context cues attached to these faces prior to the face presentation. Study 3 relied on the same design as Study 2, but this time context cues were provided after face encoding. In line with predictions, no accentuation effect emerged under the latter conditions. The theoretical and practical implications of these findings are discussed.     

The horizontal and vertical relations in upright faces are transmitted by different spatial frequency ranges

Faces convey distinct types of information: features and their spatial relations, which are differentially vulnerable to inversion. While inversion largely disrupts the processing of vertical spatial relations (e.g. eyes’ height), its effect is moderate for horizontal relations (e.g. interocular distance) and local feature properties. The SF ranges optimally transmitting horizontal and vertical face relations were here investigated to further address their functional role in face perception. Participants matched upright and inverted pairs of faces that differed at the level of local featural properties, horizontal relations in vertical relations. Irrespective of SF, the inversion effect was larger for vertical than horizontal and featural cues. Most interestingly, SF differentially influenced the processing of vertical, horizontal and featural cues in upright faces. Vertical relations were optimally processed in intermediate SF, which are known to carry useful information for face individuation. In contrast, horizontal relations were best conveyed by high SF, which are involved in the processing of local face properties. These findings not only confirm that horizontal and vertical relations play distinct functional roles in face perception, but they also further suggest a unique role of vertical relations in face individuation.     

Human content in affect-inducing stimuli: A secondary analysis of the international affective picture system

We report a secondary analysis of the international affective picture system (IAPS), the broadest available standardized sample of emotional stimuli, which confirmed our prediction that the distribution of slides across the valence and arousal dimensions would be related to human versus inanimate slide content. Pictures depicting humans are over-represented in the high arousal/positive and high arousal/negative areas of affective space as compared to inanimate pictures, which are especially frequent in the low arousal/neutral valence area. Results pertaining to dominance ratings and gender differences in valence and arousal ratings further suggest that there are qualitative differences between emotional reactions to animal or human slide content and responses to nonsocial still photos. Researchers need to be mindful of this distinction when selecting affect-inducing stimuli.

Cracking the Code of Genocide: The Moral Psychology of Rescuers,Bystanders, and Nazis during the Holocaust

What turns neighbors into genocidalists? Why do some stand by, while others risk their lives to help? A narrative analysis of interviews with rescuers, bystanders, and Nazi supporters during World War II focuses attention on self‐image, worldview, and cognitive categorization as critical influences. Rescuers, bystanders, and Nazis demonstrated dramatically different self concepts, yet identity constrained choice for all groups. A critical aspect of identity is relational: the sense of self in relation to others. Worldview, canonical expectations, and idealized cognitive models are critical determinants, with the ethical importance of values emanating not from particular values but from the integration of these values into the speaker's sense of self. Finally, cognitive categorization carries strong ethical overtones. The dehumanization that spurs perpetrators and the sense of moral salience that drives rescuers work through the cognitive classification of “the other.”     

Attention to low- and high-spatial frequencies in categorizing facial identities, emotions and gender in children with autism

This study was aimed at investigating face categorization strategies in children with autistic spectrum disorders (ASD). Performance of 17 children with ASD was compared to that of 17 control children in a face-matching task, including hybrid faces (composed of two overlapping faces of different spatial bandwidths) and either low- or high-pass filtered faces. Participants were asked to match faces on the basis of identity, emotion or gender. Results revealed that children with ASD used the same strategies as controls when matching faces by gender. By contrast, in the identity and the emotion conditions, children with ASD showed a high-pass bias (i.e., preference for local information), contrary to controls. Consistent with previous studies on autism, these findings suggest that children with ASD do use atypical (local-oriented) strategies to process faces.     

Between the face and the voice: Bakhtin meets Levinas

The essay draws on a little-known fragment from M.M. Bakhtin’s Draft Exercise Notebooks of 1943 to highlight both the affinities and the divergences of the respective philosophical projects of Bakhtin and Emmanuel Levinas. The first part of the discussion follows their parallel itineraries through several points of convergence, from a sense of profound philosophical disenchantment to a conception of the ethical subject as living on borderlines, facing the other, irremediably vulnerable and infinitely responsible. The second part focuses on the “dialogic impasse” and its attempted resolution through gestures of triangulation, evidenced in Levinas’s “third” and Bakhtin’s “superaddresee.” The third part of the discussion, beginning with Bakhtin’s and Levinas’s different readings of Dostoevsky, focuses on the ultimate divergence of their philosophical positions, and suggests that Bakhtin’s discursive conception of subjectivity may point the direction towards a more viable thinking of a post-metaphysical ethics.

The role of higher level adaptive coding mechanisms in the development of face recognition

Developmental improvements in face identity recognition ability are widely documented, but the source of children’s immaturity in face recognition remains unclear. Differences in the way in which children and adults visually represent faces might underlie immaturities in face recognition. Recent evidence of a face identity aftereffect (FIAE), in which adaptation (exposure) to a particular identity causes a previously neutral face to take on the computationally opposite identity, suggests that adults code faces in an opponent fashion relative to an average face. One previous study showed comparable FIAEs in 8-year-olds and adults but did not demonstrate that adaptation was selective for high-level representations in both groups. Using a developmentally appropriate FIAE task, we investigated whether children show adult-like adaptation for facial identity when adapting and test images differ in size. Both age groups showed an equivalent FIAE, suggesting that qualitative changes in the use of higher level adaptive coding mechanisms do not drive the developmental improvements in face recognition ability, at least from 8 years of age.     

The effect of inversion on 3- to 5-year-olds’ recognition of face and nonface visual objects

This study compared the effect of stimulus inversion on 3- to 5-year-olds’ recognition of faces and two nonface object categories matched with faces for a number of attributes: shoes (Experiment 1) and frontal images of cars (Experiments 2 and 3). The inversion effect was present for faces but not shoes at 3 years of age (Experiment 1). Analogous results were found for boys when faces were compared with frontal images of cars. For girls, stimulus inversion impaired recognition of both faces and cars at 3 to 4 years of age, becoming specific to faces only at 5 years of age (Experiments 2 and 3). Evidence demonstrates that the ability to extract the critical cues that lead to adults’ efficient face recognition is selectively tuned to faces during preschool years.     

The influence of perceptual and semantic categorization on inhibitory processing as measured by the N2–P3 response

In daily activities, humans must attend and respond to a range of important items and inhibit and not respond to unimportant distractions. Our current understanding of these processes is largely based on perceptually simple stimuli. This study investigates the interaction of conceptual-semantic categorization and inhibitory processing using Event Related Potentials (ERPs). Participants completed three Go–NoGo tasks that increased systematically in the degree of conceptual-semantic information necessary to respond correctly (from single items to categories of objects and animals). Findings indicate that the N2 response reflects inhibitory processing but does not change significantly with task difficulty. The P3 NoGo amplitude, on the other hand, is attenuated by task difficulty. Further, the latency of the peak of the P3 NoGo response elicited by the most difficult task is significantly later than are the peaks detected during performance of the other two tasks. Thus, the level of complexity of conceptual-semantic representations influences inhibitory processing in a systematic way. This inhibition paradigm may be a key for investigating inhibitory dysfunction in patient populations.     

Holistic processing is tuned for in-group faces

Past research has found that mere in-group/out-group categorizations are sufficient to elicit biases in face memory. The current research yields novel evidence that mere social categorization is also sufficient to modulate processes underlying face perception, even for faces for which we have strong perceptual expertise: same-race (SR) faces. Using the composite face paradigm, we find that SR faces categorized as in-group members (i.e., fellow university students) are processed more holistically than are SR faces categorized as out-group members (i.e., students at another university). Hence, holding perceptual expertise with faces constant, categorizing an SR target as an out-group member debilitates the strong holistic processing typically observed for SR faces.