Consciousness of Social Face: The Development and Validation of a Scale Measuring Desire to Gain Face Versus Fear of Losing Face

ABSTRACT

This article describes the development and validation of a scale that measures two distinct needs for individuals to manage their social “face”. Scale development process resulted in an 11-item Consciousness of Social Face (CSF) scale made up of the following two correlated dimensions: desire to gain face and fear of losing face. The two-factor correlated structure of CSF scale was stable across multiple samples of both students and non-students subjects. The construct validity of CSF scale, including convergent validity, discriminant validity, and criterion-related validity was also demonstrated by examining relationships with other personality or demographical variables.     

背景性质对7-10岁自闭症谱系障碍儿童面孔搜索与加工的作用

为了考察背景性质对ASD者搜索面孔的影响,设计两个眼动实验任务,要求14名7~10岁ASD儿童和20名同年龄正常儿童观看图片。实验一采用将面孔嵌入风景图片中引起语义不一致的刺激;实验二采用含有面孔的无意义背景乱序图片刺激。结果发现：（1）面孔与背景语义不一致并不能促进ASD儿童对面孔的搜索;（2）乱序背景对ASD儿童面孔搜索与加工没有产生干扰作用,但使正常儿童的搜索时间变长;（3）一旦觉察到面孔后,ASD儿童对面孔的注视时间少于正常儿童。表明正常儿童对面孔的搜索与加工受背景性质的影响,而ASD儿童不受背景性质的影响;一旦发现面孔,ASD儿童的注意维持较短,但面孔加工模式与正常儿童相似。     

返回抑制过程中情绪面孔加工优先：ERPs研究

返回抑制(IOR)是指注意过程中个体对已搜索过的位置进行抑制, 从而在随后该位置上出现目标时发生注意重新定向或反应变慢的过程。本研究使用ERPs技术, 采用线索-靶子范式, 考察了情绪目标辨别任务中IOR的发生过程及二者的神经机制。结果发现, 与无效线索相比, 有效线索下的P1波幅更小, N1波幅更大, 正性、负性面孔N170的波幅比中性面孔大。表明当要求被试做情绪辨别任务时, IOR与对情绪信息的反应之间发生了分离, 表现出情绪加工的优先。这说明IOR和情绪偏向是发生在两种不同神经通路上的适应机制, 也为进一步探究注意与情绪的关系问题提供了来自神经电生理学的证据。     

Holistic face perception: Mind the gap!

The most widely used measurement of holistic face perception, the composite face effect (CFE), is challenged by two apparently contradictory goals: having a defined face part (i.e., the top half), and yet perceiving the face as an integrated unit (i.e., holistically). Here, we investigated the impact of a small gap between top and bottom face halves in the standard composite face paradigm, requiring matching of sequentially presented top face halves. In Experiment 1, the CFE was larger for no-gap than gap stimuli overall, but not for participants who were presented with gap stimuli first, suggesting that the area of the top face half was unknown without a gap. This was confirmed in Experiment 2, in which these two stimulus sets were mixed up: the gap stimuli thus provided information about the area of a top face half and the magnitude of the CFE did not differ between stimulus sets. These observations indicate that the CFE might be artificially inflated in the absence of a stimulus cue that objectively defines a border between the face halves. Finally, in Experiment 3, observers were asked to determine which of two simultaneously presented faces was the composite face. Perceptual judgements for no-gap stimuli approached ceiling; however, with a gap, participants were almost unable to distinguish the composite face from a veridical face. This effect was not only due to low-level segmentation cues at the border of no-gap face halves, because stimulus inversion decreased performance in both conditions. This result indicates that the two halves of different faces may be integrated more naturally with a small gap that eliminates an enhanced contrast border. Collectively, these observations suggest that a small gap between face halves provides an objective definition of the face half to match and is beneficial for valid measurement of the behavioural CFE.     

Development of Recognition of Face Parts from Unfamiliar Faces

The present study examined developmental changes in the ability to recognize face parts. In Experiment 1, participants were familiarized with whole faces and given a recognition test with old and new eyes, noses, mouths, inner faces, outer faces, or whole faces. Adults were above chance in their recognition of the eye and mouth regions. However, children did not naturally encode and recognize face parts independently of the entire face. In addition, all age groups showed comparable inner and outer face recognition, except for 8‐ to 9‐year‐olds who showed a recognition advantage for outer faces. In Experiment 2, when participants were familiarized with eyes, noses, or mouths and tested with eyes, noses, or mouths, respectively, all ages showed above‐chance recognition of eyes and mouths. Thirteen‐ to 14‐year‐olds were adult‐like in their recognition of the eye region, but mouth recognition continued to develop beyond 14 years of age. Nose recognition was above chance among 13‐ to 14‐year‐olds, but recognition scores remained low even in adulthood. The present findings reveal unique developmental trajectories in the use of isolated facial regions in face recognition and suggest that featural cues (as a class) have a different ontogenetic course relative to holistic and configural cues. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

On the Ethics of Facial Transplantation Research

Transplantation continues to push the frontiers of medicine into domains that summon forth troublesome ethical questions. Looming on the frontier today is human facial transplantation. We develop criteria that, we maintain, must be satisfied in order to ethically undertake this as-yet-untried transplant procedure. We draw on the criteria advanced by Dr. Francis Moore in the late 1980s for introducing innovative procedures in transplant surgery. In addition to these we also insist that human face transplantation must meet all the ethical requirements usually applied to health care research. We summarize the achievements of transplant surgery to date, focusing in particular on the safety and efficacy of immunosuppressive medications. We also emphasize the importance of risk/benefit assessments that take into account the physical, aesthetic, psychological, and social dimensions of facial disfiguration, reconstruction, and transplantation. Finally, we maintain that the time has come to move facial transplantation research into the clinical phase.     

The relationship between face recognition ability and socioemotional functioning throughout adulthood

The relationship between face recognition ability and socioemotional functioning has been widely explored. However, how aging modulates this association regarding both objective performance and subjective-perception is still neglected. Participants, aged between 18 and 81 years, performed a face memory test and completed subjective face recognition and socioemotional questionnaires. General and social anxiety, and neuroticism traits account for the individual variation in face recognition abilities during adulthood. Aging modulates these relationships because as they age, individuals that present a higher level of these traits also show low-level face recognition ability. Intriguingly, the association between depression and face recognition abilities is evident with increasing age. Overall, the present results emphasize the importance of embedding face metacognition measurement into the context of these studies and suggest that aging is an important factor to be considered, which seems to contribute to the relationship between socioemotional and face-cognitive functioning.     

Processing of negative stimuli facilitates event-based prospective memory only under low memory load

Event-based prospective memory (PM) is related to the ability to execute a previously planned action at the appropriate situation. Previous literature showed enhanced performance when emotional stimuli are used as PM targets. However, it was entirely unexplored whether this effect is susceptible to prospective memory load (PML), related to the number of target events that are relevant for the pending PM task. Here we presented participants with angry or neutral faces for an identity judgment (ongoing task). A different number of faces, depending on low vs. high levels of PML, served as PM targets. The results showed better PM performance following negative than neutral targets, but only under low levels of PML. This indicates that the bottom-up facilitation driven by negative stimuli serving as PM targets dramatically depends on the available attention resources allocated for monitoring the incoming information.     

Distinctiveness helps when matching static faces and voices

Three experiments are reported which examined the capacity to match a voice with a static image of a face. When using a simultaneous same/different matching task, performance was significantly better than chance (Experiments 1 and 2). However, it did not appear to depend either on sex of speaker, sex of listener, stimulus distinctiveness, or self-reported strategies (Experiment 2). Concerns over floor effects as well as a significant response bias prompted a change of task, and when performance was examined through matching a voice to a face lineup, a more interesting pattern emerged. Again, performance was significantly better than chance, but in addition, it was demonstrably affected by the distinctiveness of the speaker’s voice. These results are considered in the context of theoretical discussions regarding face–voice integration, and in the context of more applied considerations regarding multimodal benefits in witness scenarios.