lecture 2 - face perception

Question 1

what is perception?

Answer 1

how the brain interprets the input
- how we understand events, objects and ppl un our environment

Question 2

what is visual acuity?

Answer 2

a measure of your vision’s clarity and sharpness, or your ability to distinguish fine detail
- this is poor at birth and then there is a rapid increase in the first 6 months

Question 3

how can visual acuity be assessed?

Answer 3

using paddles - if the infant can tell if they are actually lines or just a ‘blob’

Question 4

what is colour vision?

Answer 4

babies can distinguish between white and red but not other colours

Question 4

what is visual scanning?

Answer 4

tracking eye movements
- if younger than 2 months they cant track moving objects smoothly
- at one month - focus on limited features of shape
- at 2 months - start to focus on internal features

Question 5

how do we test perceptual abilities?

Answer 5

• preference tests
• habituation tests
• conditioning

Question 6

what are preference tests?

Answer 6

Present two stimuli at same time

Measure how long infant looks at each
- if they have a preference they can discriminate between the 2
ex - Frantz - how long the infants looked at the paddles

Question 7

what are habituation tests?

Answer 7

Shown interesting stimulus repeatedly
Infant loses interest eventually (habituation)

Change to a different stimulus
Infant shows renewed interest and looks again (dishabituation)

If so, the infant can tell the difference

Question 8

what is conditioning?

Answer 8

training the baby
- repeatedly reward target beh, the infant becomes habituated to the stimulus
- e.g babies and dummies - If infant does not increase sucking rate treats - 2 stimuli as the same
- Does increase sucking rate - distinguishes between 2 stimuli

Question 9

why is face perception useful?

Answer 9

allows us to identify species, sex, race, emotional state, truthfulness etc
- therefore it can impact on social interactions

Question 10

how does nature vs nurture apply?

Answer 10

nativism - innate
empiricism - acquire through experience

Question 11

do we have innate face preference? (Frantz)

Answer 11

the children in Frantz’s study preferred the more complex images

Question 12

do we have innate face preference? (Maurer and Barrera)

Answer 12

Looked longer at the natural face but not until 2 months

Question 13

do we have innate face preference? (Goren)

Answer 13

found the child tracked the face face when it was moved infront of the childs face

Question 14

what can newborns recognize?

Answer 14

• novel individuals
• eye gaze - like direct eye gaze
• expressions - when it changes they dishabituate
• prefer attractive faces
• discriminate mothers face - Walton - Sucked more to keep mother’s face on video

Question 15

what effect does the environment have? (Pascalis)

Answer 15

• 6m infants could discriminate between monkey faces and human faces
• 9m infants and adults could only discriminate between human faces
• If they had a storybook and talk about the diff monkeys they were able to gain it back

Question 16

what happens for babies to lose this ability to discriminate between diff primates faces?

Answer 16

we have too many synapses and connections so we need to keep the ones of importance - those less important die

Question 17

late maturation vs early maturation: what are the 2 key theories?

Answer 17

• Face specific perceptual development theory
• General cognitive development theory

Question 18

what is face specific perceptual development theory?

Answer 18

Face perception gets better because of increased exposure/experience with faces

Question 19

what is general cog dev theory?

Answer 19

• face perception matures early
• performance increases later as general cognitive mechanisms improve

Question 20

what happens to face perception when there is an inversion affect?

Answer 20

cant always distinguish the face e.g. if they are upside down

Question 21

what gets in the way of being able to quickly distinguish?

Answer 21

concentration, memory and attention

Question 22

what is prosopagnosia?

Answer 22

face blindness
- can be born with it or may come from damage (e.g, stroke or brain injury)
- can have diff levels of severity - may not even recognise there own face

Question 23

what is an example of normative history graded influence?

Answer 23

WW11