Face Perception Flashcards

Question

What else?

Answer 1

Gender differences - twin studies reveal strong genetic influence Depends on the face or the task? - differences between familiar and unfamiliar faces (e.g. Young and Burton, 2018)

Answer 2

Autism and social recognition - recognise familiar people - remembering faces - interpreting eye-gaze and emotions Williams Syndrome - process unfamiliar faces atypically - prolonged face gaze (Ruby et al 2008) Prosopagnosia (face blindness) - damage or abnormalities in right fusiform gyrus (stroke, brain injury) - congenital prosopagnosia -> from birth, appears to run in families Different degrees of severity - might not even recognise own face

Answer 3

--- Introduction --- Emphasising and social importance of face recognition, particularly for humans and other primates Faces provide crucial information for identifying individuals and making social decisions Three core theoretical debates in face-processing development: 1. nature vs nurture -> whether face pro messing is innate or shaped primarily by experience 2. level of processing -> basic categorisation (e.g. gender, race) vs individual recognition 3. types of processing -> featural (individual features), configural (spacing between features) and holistic (the face as an integrated whole) Difference between face traits (stable properties such as identity, race and sage) and face states (dynamic cues such as emotion and gaze) - focus on face traits -> identity and categorisation Aim to explain how early face abilities emerge, how they are refined across development and how experience shapes face expertise --- Methods (Nature of review) --- - Types of study being reviewed - - behavioural studies (preferential looking, habituation, recognition tasks) - developmental studies of infants, children, adolescents and adults - training studies (e.g. exposure to other race or other species faces) - neurophysiological studies (EEG/ERP, fMRI, PET, near-infrared spectroscopy) - Participants across reviewed studies - - newborns and infants from birth to 12 months - children from childhood through adolescence - adults used as benchmarks for expertise -Key paradigms and measures - - looking time preferences - face discrimination and recognition accuracy - inversion effects (upright vs upside down faces) - categorisation tasks (e..g race and gender) - neural markers such as the N170 ERP components and activation the the fusiform face area - Data synthesis approach - Qual integrations of results across studies to identify - developmental trends - points of controversy - areas of convergence across behavioural and neural evidence --- Results (Key findings) --- 1. Early face processing abilities - begins at brith - newborns prefer face like stimuli, imitate facial movements, recognise familiar faces and attend to attractiveness - infants can discriminate faces using featural, configrual and holistic information far earlier than once believed 2. development of categorisation vs individual recognition - infants rapidly categorise faces by species, gender,r race, age and attractiveness - experience shapes these categories -> infants prefer own race faces by 3 months -> preferences reflect visual expsoruee (e.g. more exposure to female caregivers) - with increasing expertise, recognition shifts rom categorical processing to individuation, mirroring adult face expertise 3.perceptual narrowing - early in life, infants can discriminate faces across many races and even species - by around 9 months, this ability narrows -> infants becomes getter at recognising own-race and own-species faces -> discrimination of less familiar faces declines unless specific experience is maintained - training studies show this narrowing is experience-dependent and reversible 4. featural, configural and holistic processing - contrary to older theories, infants so not rely solely on features - sensitivity to continual information emerges between 3-5 months - inversion effects ( a hallmark of configural processing) ar present in infancy - however, configrual and holistic processing continues to improve through childhood and adolescence, reaching adult levels are - featural processing becomes adult like earlier, but children remain less efficient and more vulnerable to interference 5. neural development - infants show face sensitivity e neural responses (early versions of the N170) - by ~ 12 months, neural patterns resemble adult - brain imaging suggests face selective regions (e.g. FFA) are present in childhood but increase in size and specialisation with age - some developmental changes reflect general cognitive maturation, not face-specific mechanisms --- Discussion and conclusion --- Argue that face processing shows a paradoxical developmental pattern - thy system is highly functional early in life - yet continues to refine well into adolescence Key conclusions - experience plays a crucial role at every state of development - early biases toward faces may be biologically prepared, but experience sculpts the system - developmental changes reflect both -> face specific refinements (e.g. configural processing) -> general cogntive development (attnetion, memory, executive function) Highlight major gaps in literature - lack of detail around middle childhood - over reliance on infant studies - need for controlled training studies to established causal links between experience and expertise

Answer 4

--- Introduction ---- Long standing belief in face perception research: although infants show impressive earlier abilities, face recognition is thought the develop slowly across childhood, reaching adult levels only in adolescence However, more recent shown: - infants and young children already demonstrate adult like face effects (e.g. inversion, holistic processing, other rate effects) - the key unresolved question is quantitative maturity: are these mechanisms weaker in children or already fully developed? Contrasts two competing theories 1. face specific perceptual development theory - face processing itself continues to develop through childhood - improvements reflect increased holistic processing, refinement of face space, or better encoding of novel faces 2. general cognitive development theory - face processing mechanisms re mature early - improvements in taks performance are due to general factors (attention, memory, strategy use, processing speed) --- Methods (review and new experiments) --- - Nature of the paper - Includes - critical review of previous developmental studies - three new experiments designed tp avoid methodological flaws common in earlier work - Ppts (new experiments0 - Across three experiments - children: 5-7 years - adults: young adults as comparison Children younger that this were not tested because pilot work showed they struggle with task demands and risked floor effects - Materials - - face stimuli (unfamiliar faces) - object stimuli carefully matched to faces -> Labrador dogs were used because they share a common cofngiruation (like faces) and vary naturally, avoiding problems with houses or tools - stimuli were designed to avoid ceiling and floor effects, allowing fair quant comparisons - Procedure and design - Experiment 1: face vs object. recognition memory - comapred developmental change in recognition memory for faces vc dogs - learning set sizes were manipulated so children and adults started at comparable performance levels Experiment 2: inversion effects (holistic processing) - measured whether faces show a disproportionately larger inversion effect than objects - compared 7 year olds, adults matched to children, adults unmatched (standardised adult performance) Experiment 3: encoding of novel faces - used implicit memory (repetition priming) to assess perceptual encoding - the avoids reliance on conscious strategies or explicit memory, which improve with age - Data analysis - - accuracy and reaction time measures - critical emphasis on baseline matching to prevent misleading age effects - avoidance of range restriction (floor/ceiling effects), a major critique of prior studies --- Results --- - review findings of previous literature - Authors show that - no qual differences exist between children and adults: all major face-processing effects are present early - apparent quant improvements in earlier studies often result from methodological artefacts, especially -> floor effects in children -> ceiling effects in adults - when baselines are properly controlled, face specific effects remain stable across age - Experiment 1 results - _ recognition memory improves with age equally for faces and dogs - no evidence that face memory develops faster than object memory - this supports general cognitive development, not face-specific maturation - Experiment 2 results - - children showed a disproportionate inversion effect for faces, just like adults - the size of face specific inversion effect did not increase with age - indicates holistic processing is quant matured by ~7 years - Experiment 3 results - - implicit memory showed equally strong encoding of novel faces in children and adults - no developmental increase in perceptual face encoding - suggests children can encode new fades as efficiently as adults when strategy demands are removed --- Discussion --- Authors argue that - improvements in face task perofmance across childhood don't reflect ongoing development of face perception itself Instead, they reflect maturation of general cogntive systems, such as -> attentional control -> memory capacity -> processing speed -> strategy use They strongly criticise prior development studies for - ignoring baseline differences - misinterpreting effect sizes - using poorly matched object comparison stimuli Concludes that - holistic processing - face space strtcure - encoding of novel faces are all quant mature by early childhood

Face Perception Flashcards

Lecture 2 (28 cards)