面孔相似性判断中各部件的权重分配

采用多级估量法,通过分析不同隶属度的部件样例组合成的面孔样例对原型的隶属度,考察耳朵、脸型、眼睛和嘴巴等部件在面孔相似性判断中的作用。结果发现,面孔相似性判断中,人们对不同面孔部件赋予的权重并不相同,对脸型和嘴巴赋予的权重较大,而对耳朵和眼睛赋予的权重较小。表明,面孔各部件在面孔相似性判断中的作用不同,相对于耳朵和眼睛,脸型和嘴巴的作用更大;面孔内部特征和外部特征的划分方法并不一定适合于面孔相似性判断。     

Differential emotion attribution to neutral faces of own and other races

Past research has demonstrated differential recognition of emotion on faces of different races. This paper reports the first study to explore differential emotion attribution to neutral faces of different races. Chinese and Caucasian adults viewed a series of Chinese and Caucasian neutral faces and judged their outward facial expression: neutral, positive, or negative. The results showed that both Chinese and Caucasian viewers perceived more Chinese faces than Caucasian faces as neutral. Nevertheless, Chinese viewers attributed positive emotion to Caucasian faces more than to Chinese faces, whereas Caucasian viewers attributed negative emotion to Caucasian faces more than to Chinese faces. Moreover, Chinese viewers attributed negative and neutral emotion to the faces of both races without significant difference in frequency, whereas Caucasian viewers mostly attributed neutral emotion to the faces. These differences between Chinese and Caucasian viewers may be due to differential visual experience, culture, racial stereotype, or expectation of the experiment. We also used eye tracking among the Chinese participants to explore the relationship between face-processing strategy and emotion attribution to neutral faces. The results showed that the interaction between emotion attribution and face race was significant on face-processing strategy, such as fixation proportion on eyes and saccade amplitude. Additionally, pupil size during processing Caucasian faces was larger than during processing Chinese faces.     

Learning unfamiliar faces in infants: The advantage of the regular sequence presentation and the three‐quarter view superiority

We investigated the effect of the regular sequence of different views and the three‐quarter view effect on the learning of unfamiliar faces by infants. 3–8‐month‐old infants were familiarized with unfamiliar female faces in either the regular condition (presenting 11 different face views from the frontal view to the left‐side profile view in regular order) or the random condition (presenting the same 11 different face views in random order). Following the familiarization, infants were tested with a pair of a familiarized and a novel female face either in a three‐quarter (Experiment 1) or in a profile view (Experiment 2). Results showed that only 6–8‐month‐old infants could identify a familiarized face in the regular condition when they were tested in three‐quarter views. In contrast, 6–8‐month‐old infants showed no significant novelty preference in profile views. The results suggest that the regular sequence of different face views promotes the learning of unfamiliar faces by infants over 6 months old. Moreover, our findings imply that the three‐quarter view effect appears in infants.     

Self-specific priming effect

Priority of the “self” is thought to be evolutionarily advantageous. However, evidence for this priority has been sparse. In this study, subjects performed a gender categorization task on self- and non-self target faces preceded by either congruent (same gender as target) or incongruent (different gender) periliminal (33 ms) or subliminal (17 ms) primes. We found that subliminal primes induced a priming effect only on self target faces. This discovery of a self-specific priming effect suggests that functional specificity for faces may include timing as well as spatial adaptations.     

5岁儿童对熟悉面孔的特征信息识别

关于儿童面孔认知的已有研究大多未曾控制好实验材料的熟悉度。研究选用10个同班同学的面孔作为材料,考察了5岁儿童对熟悉面孔的识别特点。结果发现,5岁儿童能准确辨认同伴的面孔。依赖面孔的部分信息(内、外轮廓)甚至单一部件(眼睛),儿童辨认同伴面孔的成绩就可以高于随机水平。儿童的面孔识别模式和成人相似,辨认内轮廓的绩效高于外轮廓,眼睛的绩效高于鼻子和嘴巴。儿童识别自我面孔的模式和成人相反,辨认他人面孔的成绩好于辨认自我面孔。实验证明熟悉度是影响儿童面孔识别绩效的重要因素。     

面孔方位对返回抑制的影响

采用辨别任务探讨了正立与倒立的中性面孔线索对返回抑制的影响。实验一采用同时线索化范式考察了正立与倒立面孔线索对靶刺激反应的影响,结果发现,两种面孔线索对随后靶刺激的反应没有影响。实验二采用单线索范式考察正立与倒立面孔对返回抑制的影响,结果发现,两种线索条件下均产生了返回抑制,而且返回抑制量没有显著差异。实验三,正立与倒立面孔作为靶刺激呈现,得到与实验二相同的结果。这些结果表明当采用中性面孔为线索时,返回抑制的产生并不受线索与靶刺激显著性的影响,而且返回抑制这种盲目机制不受任务难度的影响。     

Consequences of brain tumour resection on emotion recognition

Emotion processing impairments are common in patients undergoing brain surgery for fronto-temporal tumour resection, with potential consequences on social interactions. However, evidence is controversial concerning side and site of lesions causing such deficits. This study investigates visual and auditory emotion recognition in brain tumour patients with the aim of clarifying which lesion sites are related to impairments in emotion processing from different modalities. Thirty-four patients were evaluated, before and after surgery, on facial expression and emotional prosody recognition; voxel-based lesion–symptom mapping (VLSM) analyses were performed on patients’ post-surgery MRI images. Results showed that patients’ performance decreased after surgery in both visual and auditory modalities, but, in general, recovered 3 months after surgery. In facial expression recognition, left brain-damaged patients showed greater post-surgery deterioration than right brain-damaged ones, whose performance specifically decreased for sadness and fear. VLSM analysis revealed two segregated areas in the left hemisphere accounting for post-surgery scores for happy (fronto-temporo-insular region) and surprised (middle frontal gyrus and inferior fronto-occipital fasciculus) facial expressions. Our findings demonstrate that surgical removal of tumours in the fronto-temporal region produces impairment in facial emotion recognition with an overall recovery at 3 months, suggesting a partially different representation of positive and negative emotions in the left and right hemispheres for visually – but not auditory – presented emotions; moreover, we show that deficits in specific expression recognition are associated with discrete lesion locations.     

Early development of visual attention in infants in rural Malawi

Eye tracking research has shown that infants develop a repertoire of attentional capacities during the first year. The majority of studies examining the early development of attention comes from Western, high‐resource countries. We examined visual attention in a heterogeneous sample of infants in rural Malawi (N = 312–376, depending on analysis). Infants were assessed with eye‐tracking‐based tests that targeted visual orienting, anticipatory looking, and attention to faces at 7 and 9 months. Consistent with prior research, infants exhibited active visual search for salient visual targets, anticipatory saccades to predictable events, and a robust attentional bias for happy and fearful faces. Individual variations in these processes had low to moderate odd‐even split‐half and test‐retest reliability. There were no consistent associations between attention measures and gestational age, nutritional status, or characteristics of the rearing environment (i.e., maternal cognition, psychosocial well‐being, socioeconomic status, and care practices). The results replicate infants’ early attentional biases in a large, unique sample, and suggest that some of these biases (e.g., bias for faces) are pronounced in low‐resource settings. The results provided no evidence that the initial manifestation of infants’ attentional capacities is associated with risk factors that are common in low‐resource environments.     

It's not all in the face: reduced face visibility does not modulate social segmentation

Humans rely on social information to parse environmental content into social and nonsocial events. Here, we assessed if information conveyed by faces was necessary for this process. We asked participants to view a video clip depicting a social interaction and mark social and nonsocial events while actors’ faces were either visible or blurred. Keypress and eye-movement data were collected. Participants consistently identified social and nonsocial event boundaries independently of face availability, with greater agreement and less variability in keypresses for social relative to nonsocial events. Eye-tracking revealed that participants attended more to actors’ faces when they were visible and more to bodies when faces were blurred. Thus, face information is not necessary for social segmentation, which appears to be a flexible process that depends on a range of information conveyed by both faces and bodies.     

Social categorization and individuation in the own‐age bias

Young adults recognize other young adult faces more accurately than older adult faces, an effect termed the own‐age bias (OAB). The categorization‐individuation model (CIM) proposes that recognition memory biases like the OAB occur as unfamiliar faces are initially quickly categorized. In‐group faces are seen as socially relevant which motivates the processing of individuating facial features. Outgroup faces are processed more superficially with attention to category‐specific information which hinders subsequent recognition. To examine the roles of categorization and individuation in the context of the OAB, participants completed a face recognition task and a speeded age categorization task including young and older adult faces. In the recognition task, half of the participants were given instructions aimed to encourage individuation of other‐age faces. An OAB emerged that was not influenced by individuation instructions, but the magnitude of the OAB was correlated with performance in the categorization task. The larger the categorization advantage for older adult over young adult faces, the larger the OAB. These results support the premise that social categorization processes can affect the subsequent recognition of own‐ and other‐age faces, but do not provide evidence for the effectiveness of individuation instructions in reducing the OAB.