Unfamiliar face recognition in children with autistic spectrum disorders

We investigated unfamiliar face recognition in low‐functioning children with autistic spectrum disorders (ASD) using a ‘part‐of‐face’ method. This method has not previously been used for unfamiliar faces with this population. The ‘part‐of‐face’ procedure provides measures of both face recognition accuracy and of processing style. We compared the performance of the children with ASD with three control groups: children with developmental delay (DD), typically developing (TD) children matched for verbal cognitive ability and TD children matched for chronological age (CA). Compared to the DD group, the ASD group showed similar processing in recognition accuracy and processing style. Compared to the TD children, the ASD group did not show the same level of accuracy as controls of the same CA, instead showing similar performance to younger TD children. However, as both children with ASD and DD showed the same performance, no ASD‐specific deficit was found. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Genetic and environmental transactions underlying educational attainment

This report used a population-representative longitudinal twin study with two birth cohorts to explore the association between intelligence and education by understanding how genetic and environmental influences on intelligence moderate genetic and environmental influences on school grades and educational attainment. Nonshared environmental influences on grades were strong when IQ was low, but decreased across the range of IQ. Shared environmental influences common to age 24 educational attainment and age 17 IQ were strong when IQ was low, but genetic influences common to IQ and education were strong when IQ was high. These results suggest that the causal mechanisms linking educational variables with intelligence differ for people with different levels of intelligence.     

Intentionally remembering or forgetting own- and other-race faces: Evidence from directed forgetting

People are better at remembering faces of their own relative to another ethnic group. This so-called own-race bias (ORB) has been explained in terms of differential perceptual expertise for own- and other-race faces or, alternatively, as resulting from socio-cognitive factors. To test predictions derived from the latter account, we examined item-method directed forgetting (DF), a paradigm sensitive to an intentional modulation of memory, for faces belonging to different ethnic and social groups. In a series of five experiments, participants during learning received cues following each face to either remember or forget the item, but at test were required to recognize all items irrespective of instruction. In Experiments 1 and 5, Caucasian participants showed DF for own-race faces only while, in Experiment 2, East Asian participants with considerable expertise for Caucasian faces demonstrated DF for own- and other-race faces. Experiments 3 and 4 found clear DF for social in- and outgroup faces. These results suggest that a modulation of face memory by motivational processes is limited to faces with which we have acquired perceptual expertise. Thus, motivation alone is not sufficient to modulate memory for other-race faces and cannot fully explain the ORB.     

Effects of motion and audio-visual redundancy on upright and inverted face and feature preferences in 4-13-month old pre- and full-term NICU graduates

NICU infants are reported to have diminished social orientation and increased risk of socio-communicative disorders. In this eye tracking study, we used a preference for upright compared to inverted faces as a gauge of social interest in high medical risk full- and pre-term NICU infants. We examined the effects of facial motion and audio-visual redundancy on face and eye/mouth preferences across the first year. Upright and inverted baby faces were simultaneously presented in a paired-preference paradigm with motion and synchronized vocalization varied. NICU risk factors including birth weight, sex, and degree of CNS injury were examined. Overall, infants preferred the more socially salient upright faces, making this the first report, to our knowledge, of an upright compared to inverted face preference among high medical risk NICU infants. Infants with abnormalities on cranial ultrasound displayed lower social interest, i.e. less of a preferential interest in upright faces, when viewing static faces. However, motion selectively increased their upright face looking time to a level equal that of infants in other CNS injury groups. We also observed an age-related sex effect suggesting higher risk in NICU males. Females increased their attention to the mouth in upright faces across the first year, especially between 7–10 months, but males did not. Although vocalization increased diffuse attention toward the screen, contrary to our predictions, there was no evidence that the audio-visual redundancy embodied in a vocalizing face focused additional attention on upright faces or mouths. This unexpected result may suggest a vulnerability in response to talking faces among NICU infants that could potentially affect later verbal and socio-communicative development.     

Super-Recognisers show an advantage for other race face identification

The accurate identification of an unfamiliar individual from a face photo is a critical factor in several applied situations (e.g., border control). Despite this, matching faces to photographic ID is highly prone to error. In lieu of effective training measures, which could reduce face matching errors, the selection of “super-recognisers” (SRs) provides the most promising route to combat misidentification or fraud. However, to date, super-recognition has been defined and tested using almost exclusively “own-race” face memory and matching tests. Here, across three studies, we test Caucasian participants' performance on own- and other-race face identification tasks (GFMT, MFMT, CFMT+, EFMT, CFMT-Chinese). Our findings show that compared to controls, high-performing typical recognisers (Studies 1 and 2) and SRs (Study 3) show superior performance on both the own- and other-race tests. These findings suggest that recruiting SRs in ethnically diverse applied settings could be advantageous.     

Facial expression recognition in the wild,by fusion of deep learnt and hand-crafted features

In spite of the recent advancements in the field of deep learning based techniques for facial expression recognition, the efficiency of the state-of-the-art recognition methods in the wild scenarios, remains a challenge. The main reason behind the less efforts made for handling wild scenarios is two-folds: very less and varying levels of cues available to identify the distinguishable patterns of features (spatial and temporal) and non-availability of a big dataset to train a deep learning model. Recently, a huge dataset called AffectNet is introduced in the literature providing enough base to apply a deep learning model to train. This paper proposes an efficient combination of hand crafted and deep learning features for facial expression recognition in the wild. We use facial landmark points as hand-crafted features and XceptionNet for the deep learned features. We experiment with XceptionNet and Densenet propose the use of XceptionNet as it performs better compared to DenseNet, when applied on wild scenarios. The proposed fusion of the hand-crafted and XceptionNet features outperforms the state-of-the-art methods for facial expression recognition in the wild.     

元认知与面部认知的结合：切入点及方法

元认知是对认知的认知,包含认知的各个方面,近年来元认知与面部认知的结合开始得到关注。两者结合切入点包括元认知错觉(达克效应和自我中心偏见)在面部认知中的适用性,以及面部认知现象(异族效应和熟悉度优势)在元认知中的适用性。研究方法根据测量时间点和评估对象的选取而各有侧重。当前研究尚停留在元认知监测层面,未来可扩展至面部认知的元认知控制、与机器学习结合等方向,为理解面部认知提供新角度,扩展其应用价值。     

寻找丢失的自我——精神分裂症患者的自我面孔识别

为探索精神分裂症患者自我面孔识别的能力以及在视听整合任务中面孔对声音身份识别(同性和异性)的影响,选取34名住院精神分裂症患者和26名健康被试,分别进行单通道动态自我面孔识别任务、单通道自我声音识别任务和视听整合任务的3个实验。结果发现:精神分裂症患者的单通道自我面孔识别能力和自我声音识别能力与健康组无区别,但在视听整合任务中,精神分裂症患者的声音身份识别受到视觉通道面孔识别的影响。结果表明,精神分裂症患者有自我面孔识别的能力,自我面孔会促进自我声音的识别,并抑制对同性他人声音和异性他人声音的识别。     

面孔知觉中特征、结构和整体加工策略的眼动研究

考察面孔知觉中特征加工、结构加工和整体加工三种不同加工方式对应的眼动模式。实验1中, 将以特征信息为主的错乱面孔和以结构信息为主的模糊面孔作为线索刺激, 引发对测试面孔的特征加工和结构加工, 眼动分析表明：特征加工表现为对面孔各特征内更长的凝视时间, 结构加工表现为对面孔各特征间高频的眼跳。实验2采用相同的研究范式, 将完整面孔、轻度错乱面孔和低水平模糊面孔作为线索刺激, 引发对测试面孔除特征加工和结构加工外的另一种加工方式-- 整体加工, 表现为注视点更多地落在测试面孔中央区的鼻子部位以扩大注视范围, 进而把握整张面孔信息。本研究揭示了三种不同面孔加工方式眼动模式的差异。