Infants rapidly detect human faces in complex naturalistic visual scenes

Infants respond preferentially to faces and face‐like stimuli from birth, but past research has typically presented faces in isolation or amongst an artificial array of competing objects. In the current study infants aged 3‐ to 12‐months viewed a series of complex visual scenes; half of the scenes contained a person, the other half did not. Infants rapidly detected and oriented to faces in scenes even when they were not visually salient. Although a clear developmental improvement was observed in face detection and interest, all infants displayed sensitivity to the presence of a person in a scene, by displaying eye movements that differed quantifiably across a range of measures when viewing scenes that either did or did not contain a person. We argue that infant's face detection capabilities are ostensibly “better” with naturalistic stimuli and artificial array presentations used in previous studies have underestimated performance.     

Facial and self‐report questionnaire measures capture different aspects of romantic partner preferences

Romantic relationship researchers often use self‐report measures of partner preferences based on verbal questionnaires. These questionnaires show that partner preferences involve an evaluation in terms of underlying factors of vitality–attractiveness, status‐resources, and warmth–trustworthiness. However, when people first encounter a potential partner, they can usually derive a wealth of impressions from their face, and little is known about the relationship between verbal self‐reports and impressions derived from faces. We conducted four studies investigating potential parallels and differences between facial impressions and verbal self‐reports. Study 1 showed that when evaluating highly variable everyday face images in a context that does not require considering them as potential partners, participants can reliably perceive the traits and factors that are related to partner preferences. However, despite being capable of these nuanced evaluations, Study 2 found that when asked to evaluate images of faces as potential romantic partners, participants’ preferences become dominated by attractiveness‐related concerns. Study 3 confirmed this dominance of facial attractiveness using morphed face‐like images. Study 4 showed that attractiveness dominates partner preferences for faces even when task instructions imply that warmth–trustworthiness or status–resources should be of primary importance. In contrast to verbal questionnaire measures of partner preferences, evaluations of faces focus heavily on attractiveness, whereas questionnaire self‐reports tend on average to prioritize warmth–trustworthiness over attractiveness. Evaluations of faces and verbal self‐report measures therefore capture different aspects of partner preferences.     

Covert processing of faces in prosopagnosia is restricted to facial expressions: evidence from cross-modal bias

We present a single case study of a brain-damaged patient, AD, suffering from visual face and object agnosia, with impaired visual perception and preserved mental imagery. She is severely impaired in all aspects of overt recognition of faces as well as in covert recognition of familiar faces. She shows a complete loss of processing facial expressions in recognition as well as in matching tasks. Nevertheless, when presented with a task where face and voice expressions were presented concurrently, there was a clear impact of face expressions on her ratings of the voice. The cross-modal paradigm used here and validated previously with normal subjects (de Gelder & Vroomen, 1995, 2000), appears as a useful tool in investigating spared covert face processing in a neuropsychological perspective, especially with prosopagnosic patients. These findings are discussed against the background of different models of the covert recognition of face expressions.     

Identification from CCTV: Assessing police super‐recogniser ability to spot faces in a crowd and susceptibility to change blindness

Police worldwide regularly review closed‐circuit television (CCTV) evidence in investigations. This research found that London police experts who work in a full‐time “Super‐Recogniser Unit” and front line police identifiers regularly making suspect identifications from CCTV possessed superior unfamiliar face recognition ability and, with higher levels of confidence, outperformed controls at locating actors in a bespoke Spot the Face in a Crowd Test. Police were also less susceptible to change blindness errors and possessed higher levels of conscientiousness and lower levels of neuroticism and openness. Controls who took part in Spot the Face in a Crowd Test actor familiarisation training outperformed untrained controls, suggesting this exercise might enhance identification of persons of interest in real investigations. This research supports an accumulating body of evidence demonstrating that international police forces may benefit from deploying officers with superior face recognition ability to roles such as CCTV review, as these officers may be the most likely to identify persons of interest.     

Distinct eye movements for different cognitive processes as expressed in the face recognition task

Contemporary research literature indicates that eye movements during the learning and testing phases can predict and affect future recognition processes. Nevertheless, only partial information exists regarding eye movements in the various components of recognition processes: Hits, Correct rejections, Misses and False Alarms (FA). In an attempt to address this issue, participants in this study viewed human faces in a yes/no recognition memory paradigm. They were divided into two groups – one group that carried out the testing phase immediately after the learning phase (n?=?30) and another group with a 15-minute delay between phases (n?=?28). The results showed that the Immediate group had a lower FA rate than the Delay group, and that no Hit rate differences were observed between the two groups. Eye movements differed between the recognition processes in the learning and the testing phases, and this pattern interacted with the group type. Hence, eye movement measures seem to track memory accuracy during both learning and testing phases and this pattern also interacts with the length of delay between learning and testing. This pattern of results suggests that eye movements are indicative of present and future recognition processes.     

Attractiveness and Facial Competence Bias Face‐Based Inferences of Candidate Ideology

Can voters infer candidates' political orientations from their faces? We report evidence that observers make systematic judgment errors, ascribing their own political views to attractive or competent‐looking candidates. Subjects judged headshot images of student candidates running in university elections (Experiment 1), as well as professional politicians from state election races in Germany (Experiment 2), according to whether the person(s) displayed held ideologically leftist or rightist views. While prediction accuracy was above chance level in both experiments, candidate attractiveness (Experiment 1) and perceived competence (Experiment 2) increased a subject's likelihood of attributing her political views to a candidate. These findings suggest that the value of face‐based inferences in choosing the candidate who best represents one's views is more limited than previously assumed. They also suggest that good looks may help extremist candidates in presenting themselves as more moderate.     

双侧梭状回面孔区在面孔加工中的功能分工与协作

梭状回面孔区(fusiform face area,FFA)是视觉皮层上专门加工面孔的区域。然而,双侧FFA在面孔加工中的功能分工与协作还存在争议。在特异性刺激的加工上,右侧FFA主要负责人类面孔类别的知觉,而左侧FFA的功能与面孔精细特征的感知有关;在皮层可塑性上,右侧FFA主要参与青少年的社会适应学习,而左侧FFA负责成年人的知觉学习;在面孔网络中,二者与不同区域的连接用以适应不同的认知需求;他们之间的有向协作具有任务特定性。未来研究需要回答三个问题:左侧FFA的可塑性程度及这一可塑性是否是认知特定的、左侧FFA及其形成的网络连接的认知意义,双侧FFA在面孔网络中的连接有向性等问题。