The Perceptual Determinants of Person Construal: Reopening the Social-Cognitive Toolbox.

Guided by a heuristic account of social-cognitive functioning, researchers have attempted to identify the cognitive benefits that derive from a categorical approach to person construal. While revealing, this work has overlooked the fact that, prior to the application of categorical thinking as an economizing mental tool, perceivers must first extract category-triggering information from available stimulus cues. It is possible, therefore, that basic perceptual processes may also contribute to people's propensity to view others in a category-based manner. This possibility was explored in 3 experiments in which the authors investigated the ease with which perceivers can extract categorical and identity-based knowledge from faces under both optimal and suboptimal (i.e., inverted faces, blurred faces, rapidly presented faces) processing conditions. The results confirmed that categorical knowledge is extracted from faces more efficiently than identity-related knowledge, a finding that underscores the importance of perceptual operations in the generation of categorical thinking. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Face, body, and center of gravity mediate person detection in natural scenes.

Person detection is an important prerequisite of social interaction, but is not well understood. Following suggestions that people in the visual field can capture a viewer's attention, this study examines the role of the face and the body for person detection in natural scenes. We observed that viewers tend first to look at the center of a scene, and only then to fixate on a person. When a person's face was rendered invisible in scenes, bodies were detected as quickly as faces without bodies, indicating that both are equally useful for person detection. Detection was optimized when face and body could be seen, but observers preferentially fixated faces, reinforcing the notion of a prominent role for the face in social perception. These findings have implications for claims of attention capture by faces in that they demonstrate a mediating influence of body cues and general scanning principles in natural scenes. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Categorizing Others: The Dynamics of Person Construal.

A fundamental question in social cognition is whether people categorize others on the basis of the social groups to which they belong. Integrating ideas from related work on face processing, the current research explored the emergence and boundary conditions of person categorization. Using speeded responses to facial stimuli as a marker of category activation, the authors showed in 3 experiments that person categorization: (a) occurs only under active-encoding conditions and (b) does not extend to applicable but task-irrelevant categorical dimensions, but (c) is sensitive to overlap in the perceptual features that support multiple categorical construals. The authors consider the implications of these findings for models of social-cognitive functioning and the component processes that support person perception. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Mere social categorization modulates identification of facial expressions of emotion.

The ability of the human face to communicate emotional states via facial expressions is well known, and past research has established the importance and universality of emotional facial expressions. However, recent evidence has revealed that facial expressions of emotion are most accurately recognized when the perceiver and expresser are from the same cultural ingroup. The current research builds on this literature and extends this work. Specifically, we find that mere social categorization, using a minimal-group paradigm, can create an ingroup emotion–identification advantage even when the culture of the target and perceiver is held constant. Follow-up experiments show that this effect is supported by differential motivation to process ingroup versus outgroup faces and that this motivational disparity leads to more configural processing of ingroup faces than of outgroup faces. Overall, the results point to distinct processing modes for ingroup and outgroup faces, resulting in differential identification accuracy for facial expressions of emotion. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

A dynamic interactive theory of person construal.

A dynamic interactive theory of person construal is proposed. It assumes that the perception of other people is accomplished by a dynamical system involving continuous interaction between social categories, stereotypes, high-level cognitive states, and the low-level processing of facial, vocal, and bodily cues. This system permits lower-level sensory perception and higher-order social cognition to dynamically coordinate across multiple interactive levels of processing to give rise to stable person construals. A recurrent connectionist model of this system is described, which accounts for major findings on (a) partial parallel activation and dynamic competition in categorization and stereotyping, (b) top-down influences of high-level cognitive states and stereotype activations on categorization, (c) bottom-up category interactions due to shared perceptual features, and (d) contextual and cross-modal effects on categorization. The system's probabilistic and continuously evolving activation states permit multiple construals to be flexibly active in parallel. These activation states are also able to be tightly yoked to ongoing changes in external perceptual cues and to ongoing changes in high-level cognitive states. The implications of a rapidly adaptive, dynamic, and interactive person construal system are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

How Gorbachev primed Yeltsin: Analyses of associative priming in person recognition by means of reaction times and event-related brain potentials.

In this study, participants recognized target faces or names that were preceded by prime faces or names of related or unrelated persons. Associative priming effects on reaction times (RTs) and event-related brain potentials (ERPs) were equivalent for within-domain (e.g., face–face) and cross-domain (e.g., name–face) priming. Moreover, the ERP modulation due to priming was topographically equivalent for face and name targets. This suggests that priming of faces and names modulated the activity of the same brain sources, arguing for a postperceptual locus of priming. When combined effects of priming and target degradation were investigated, ERP priming effects were confined to time segments beyond 300 ms, whereas degradation effects started within the first 150 ms and were independent of priming. The findings suggest that associative priming in person recognition acts on domain-independent representations of person identity but not on perceptual processing. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

A comparative view of face perception.

Face perception serves as the basis for much of human social exchange. Diverse information can be extracted about an individual from a single glance at their face, including their identity, emotional state, and direction of attention. Neuropsychological and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) experiments reveal a complex network of specialized areas in the human brain supporting these face-reading skills. Here we consider the evolutionary roots of human face perception by exploring the manner in which different animal species view and respond to faces. We focus on behavioral experiments collected from both primates and nonprimates, assessing the types of information that animals are able to extract from the faces of their conspecifics, human experimenters, and natural predators. These experiments reveal that faces are an important category of visual stimuli for animals in all major vertebrate taxa, possibly reflecting the early emergence of neural specialization for faces in vertebrate evolution. At the same time, some aspects of facial perception are only evident in primates and a few other social mammals, and may therefore have evolved to suit the needs of complex social communication. Because the human brain likely utilizes both primitive and recently evolved neural specializations for the processing of faces, comparative studies may hold the key to understanding how these parallel circuits emerged during human evolution. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Holistic processing of faces: Perceptual and decisional components.

Researchers have used several composite face paradigms to assess holistic processing of faces. In the selective attention paradigm, participants decide whether one face part (e.g., top) is the same as a previously seen face part. Their judgment is affected by whether the irrelevant part of the test face is the same as or different than the relevant part of the study face. This failure of selective attention implies holistic processing. However, the authors show that this task alone cannot distinguish between perceptual and decisional sources of holism. The distinction can be addressed by the complete identification paradigm, in which both face parts are judged to be same or different, combined with analyses based on general recognition theory (F. G. Ashby & J. T. Townsend, 1986). The authors used a different paradigm, sequential responses, to relate these 2 paradigms empirically and theoretically. Sequential responses produced the same results as did selective attention and complete identification. Moreover, disruptions of holistic processing by systematic misalignment of the faces corresponded with systematic and significant changes in the decisional components, but not in the perceptual components, that were extracted using general recognition theory measures. This finding suggests a significant decisional component of holistic face processing in the composite face task. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Not so black and white: Memory for ambiguous group members.

Exponential increases in multiracial identities, expected over the next century, create a conundrum for perceivers accustomed to classifying people as their own- or other-race. The current research examines how perceivers resolve this dilemma with regard to the own-race bias. The authors hypothesized that perceivers are not motivated to include ambiguous-race individuals in the in-group and therefore have some difficulty remembering these individuals. Both racially ambiguous and other-race faces were misremembered more often than own-race faces (Study 1), though memory for ambiguous faces was improved among perceivers motivated to include biracial individuals in the in-group (Study 2). Racial labels assigned to racially ambiguous faces determined memory for these faces, suggesting that uncertainty provides the motivational context for discounting ambiguous faces in memory (Study 3). Finally, an inclusion motivation fostered cognitive associations between racially ambiguous faces and the in-group. Moreover, the extent to which perceivers associated racially ambiguous faces with the in-group predicted memory for ambiguous faces and accounted for the impact of motivation on memory (Study 4). Thus, memory for biracial individuals seems to involve a flexible person construal process shaped by motivational factors. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Infant discrimination of faces in naturalistic events: Actions are more salient than faces.

Despite the fact that faces are typically seen in the context of dynamic events, there is little research on infants' perception of moving faces. L. E. Bahrick, L. J. Gogate, and I. Ruiz (2002) demonstrated that 5-month-old infants discriminate and remember repetitive actions but not the faces of the women performing the actions. The present research tested an attentional salience explanation for these findings: that dynamic faces are discriminable to infants, but more salient actions compete for attention. Results demonstrated that 5-month-old infants discriminated faces in the context of actions when they had longer familiarization time (Experiment 1) and following habituation to a single person performing 3 different activities (Experiment 2). Further, 7-month-old infants who have had more experience with social events also discriminated faces in the context of actions. Overall, however, discrimination of actions was more robust and occurred earlier in processing time than discrimination of dynamic faces. These findings support an attentional salience hypothesis and indicate that faces are not special in the context of actions in early infancy. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Rhesus monkeys (Macaca mulatta) lack expertise in face processing.

Faces are salient stimuli for primates that rely predominantly on visual cues for recognizing conspecifics and maintaining social relationships. While previous studies have shown similar face discrimination processes in chimpanzees and humans, data from monkeys are unclear. Therefore, three studies examined face processing in rhesus monkeys using the face inversion effect, a fractured face task, and an individual recognition task. Unlike chimpanzees and humans, the monkeys showed a general face inversion effect reflected by significantly better performance on upright compared to inverted faces (conspecifics, human and chimpanzees faces) regardless of the subjects' expertise with those categories. Fracturing faces alters first- and second-order configural manipulations whereas previous studies in chimpanzees showed selective deficits for second-order configural manipulations. Finally, when required to individuate conspecific's faces, i.e., matching two different photographs of the same conspecific, monkeys showed poor discrimination and repeated training. These results support evolutionary differences between rhesus monkeys and Hominoids in the importance of configural cues and their ability to individuate conspecifics' faces, suggesting a lack of face expertise in rhesus monkeys. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Not all faces are processed equally: Evidence for featural rather than holistic processing of one's own face in a face-imaging task.

The present work considers the mental imaging of faces, with a focus in own-face imaging. Experiments 1 and 3 demonstrated an own-face disadvantage, with slower generation of mental images of one's own face than of other familiar faces. In contrast, Experiment 2 demonstrated that mental images of facial parts are generated more quickly for one's own face. Finally, Experiment 4 established that a bias toward local processing is advantageous for one's own face, whereas a global-processing bias produces an enhanced own-face disadvantage. The results suggest that own-face imaging is more synchronized with retrieval of face features and less attuned to a face's holistic pattern than is imaging of other people's faces. The authors propose that the salient information for own and other face identification reflects, in part, differences in the purpose and experiences (expertise) generally associated with processing of own and other faces. Consistent with work examining the range of face processing, including other-race faces, our results suggest that not all faces receive the same holistic emphasis. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

When Greta Garbo is easier to remember than Stefan Edberg: Influences of prior knowledge on recognition memory in Alzheimer's disease.

Investigated the effects of prior knowledge on recognition memory in patients with a mild Alzheimer's disease. Normal older adults and mildly demented patients were presented with dated and contemporary famous faces with name tags and were asked to generate unique statements about each person. Results indicate that both groups generated more statements about the dated than about the contemporary figures. Most important, both groups performed better with the dated than with the contemporary faces in an unexpected episodic face recognition task. This pattern of results suggests that both groups (1) possess more knowledge of dated than of contemporary famous individuals and (2) are able to utilize prior knowledge to enhance episodic remembering. Viewing these results in light of other recent work, it is concluded that differences between normal old and mildly demented individuals in the ability to utilize cognitive support for remembering may be differences in degree. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Face–name interference.

Investigated interference effects between the processing of simultaneously presented photographs of faces of familiar people and printed names of familiar people in 5 experiments each with 12 adult Ss. Results show that printed names interfered with identifying faces, whereas faces did not interfere with saying printed names. In contrast, faces interfered more with name categorization than names interfered with face categorization. It is suggested that despite a priori reasons as to why faces might be thought to possess functional properties different from those of other visual objects, the observed effects are comparable to those found in object–word interference studies, with photographs of faces behaving like pictures of objects and printed people's names behaving like printed names of objects. In face naming tasks, the presence of related names produced more interference than did the presence of unrelated names. This effect was examined in greater detail in Exp III, where it was found that the effect arose when the face and the name belonged to people of similar appearance. An effect of common category membership was not found in Exp III. Exp V, however, showed that names of people highly associated with the person whose face was presented also produced more interference than did names of unrelated people. (40 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Observations on the efficiency of two different processing strategies for remembering faces.

Investigated the efficiency of 2 processing strategies on 2 aspects of facial recognition with 36 undergraduates. Ss viewed each target face for 3 sec and then rated either the likeability of each of a series of photographic faces or decided which was the most distinctive physical feature. Each face was presented in its own unique environmental context. Two tests of retention were given: old–new recognition test based on the faces minus their context, and a test of the Ss' ability to recall the context in which each target face had appeared. Results show that there was no difference between the processing conditions on old–new recognition, but there was a substantial difference in context recall, with the likeability judgment producing much better performance. (French abstract) (17 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Searching for differences in race: Is there evidence for preferential detection of other-race faces?

Previous research has suggested that like animal and social fear-relevant stimuli, other-race faces (African American) are detected preferentially in visual search. Three experiments using Chinese or Indonesian faces as other-race faces yielded the opposite pattern of results: faster detection of same-race faces among other-race faces. This apparently inconsistent pattern of results was resolved by showing that Asian and African American faces are detected preferentially in tasks that have small stimulus sets and employ fixed target searches. Asian and African American other-race faces are found slower among Caucasian face backgrounds if larger stimulus sets are used in tasks with a variable mapping of stimulus to background or target. Thus, preferential detection of other-race faces was not found under task conditions in which preferential detection of animal and social fear-relevant stimuli is evident. Although consistent with the view that same-race faces are processed in more detail than other-race faces, the current findings suggest that other-race faces do not draw attention preferentially. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Accuracy and awareness in the perception and categorization of male sexual orientation.

For clear and unambiguous social categories, person perception occurs quite accurately from minimal cues. This article addresses the perception of an ambiguous social category (male sexual orientation) from minimal cues. Across 5 studies, the authors examined individuals' actual and self-assessed accuracy when judging male sexual orientation from faces and facial features. Although participants were able to make accurate judgments from multiple facial features (i.e., hair, the eyes, and the mouth area), their perceived accuracy was calibrated with their actual accuracy only when making judgments based on hairstyle, a controllable feature. These findings provide evidence that suggests different processes for extracting social category information during perception: explicit judgments based on obvious cues (hairstyle) and intuitive judgments based on nonobvious cues (information from the eyes and mouth area). Differences in the accuracy of judgments based on targets' controllability and perceivers' awareness of cues provides insight into the processes underlying intuitive predictions and intuitive judgments. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Local and relational aspects of face distinctiveness

Distinctiveness contributes strongly to the recognition and rejection of faces in memory tasks. In four experiments we examine the role played by local and relational information in the distinctiveness of upright and inverted faces. In all experiments subjects saw one of three versions of a face: original faces, which had been rated as average in distinctiveness in a previous study (Hancock, Burton, & Bruce, 1996), a more distinctive version in which local features had been changed (D-local), and a more distinctive version in which relational features had been changed (D-rel). An increase in distinctiveness was found for D-local and D-rel faces in Experiment 1 (complete faces) and 3 and 4 (face internals only) when the faces had to be rated in upright presentation, but the distinctiveness of the D-rel faces was reduced much more than that of the D-local versions when the ratings were given to the faces presented upside-down (Experiments 1 and 3). Recognition performance showed a similar pattern: presented upright, both D-local and D-rel revealed higher performance compared to the originals, but in upside-down presentation the D-local versions showed a much stronger distinctiveness advantage. When only internal features of faces were used (Experiments 3 and 4), the D-rel faces lost their advantage over the Original versions in inverted presentation. The results suggest that at least two dimensions of facial information contribute to a face's apparent distinctiveness, but that these sources of information are differentially affected by turning the face upside-down. These findings are in accordance with a face processing model in which face inversion effects occur because a specific type of information processing is disrupted, rather than because of a general disruption of performance.     

Human and chimpanzee face recognition in chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes): Role of exposure and impact on categorical perception.

The respective influences of exposure and inborn neural networks on conspecific and nonconspecific face processing remain unclear. Although the importance of exposure in the development of object and face recognition in general is well documented, studies explicitly comparing face recognition across species showed a species-specific effect. For instance, laboratory monkeys exposed daily to human faces were better at discriminating monkeys than humans, suggesting that the role of exposure may not be the only factor affecting cross-species recognition. In the present study, the authors investigated conspecific and nonconspecific face recognition in chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes) from 2 primate centers that provided different exposure to chimpanzee and human faces. The authors showed that the chimpanzees from the center providing more exposure to human faces than to chimpanzee faces were better at discriminating human faces than they were at discriminating chimpanzee faces. The chimpanzees from the other center did not show the same effect. A computational simulation was developed to evaluate the average similarities among human pictures and among chimpanzee pictures. Both categories were comparable. Chimpanzees' scores were significantly correlated with the similarity coefficients. Overall, the results show that exposure is a critical determinant in conspecific and nonconspecific face recognition. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)