Both children and adults scan faces of own and other races differently

AbstractExtensive behavioral and neural evidence suggests that processing of own-race faces differs from that of other-race faces in both adults and infants. However, little research has examined whether and how children scan faces of own and other races differently for face recognition. In this eye-tracking study, Chinese children aged from 4 to 7years and Chinese adults were asked to remember Chinese and Caucasian faces. None of the participants had any direct contact with foreign individuals. Multi-method analyses of eye-tracking data revealed that regardless of age group, proportional fixation duration on the eyes of Chinese faces was significantly lower than that on the eyes of Caucasian faces, whereas proportional fixation duration on the nose and mouth of Chinese faces was significantly higher than that on the nose and mouth of Caucasian faces. In addition, the amplitude of saccades on Chinese faces was significantly lower than that on Caucasian faces, potentially reflecting finer-grained processing for own-race faces. Moreover, adults’ fixation duration/saccade numbers on the whole faces, proportional fixation percentage on the nose, proportional number of saccades between AOIs, and accuracy in recognizing faces were higher than those of children. These results together demonstrate that an abundance of visual experience with own-race faces and a lack of it with other-race faces may result in differential facial scanning in both children and adults. Furthermore, the increased experience of processing faces may result in a more holistic and advanced scanning strategy in Chinese adults

Adults Scan Own- and Other-Race Faces Differently

It is well established that individuals show an other-race effect (ORE) in face recognition: they recognize own-race faces better than other-race faces. The present study tested the hypothesis that individuals would also scan own- and other-race faces differently. We asked Chinese participants to remember Chinese and Caucasian faces and we tested their memory of the faces over five testing blocks. The participants' eye movements were recorded with the use of an eye tracker. The data were analyzed with an Area of Interest approach using the key AOIs of a face (eyes, nose, and mouth). Also, we used the iMap toolbox to analyze the raw data of participants' fixation on each pixel of the entire face. Results from both types of analyses strongly supported the hypothesis. When viewing target Chinese or Caucasian faces, Chinese participants spent a significantly greater proportion of fixation time on the eyes of other-race Caucasian faces than the eyes of own-race Chinese faces. In contrast, they spent a significantly greater proportion of fixation time on the nose and mouth of Chinese faces than the nose and mouth of Caucasian faces. This pattern of differential fixation, for own- and other-race eyes and nose in particular, was consistent even as participants became increasingly familiar with the target faces of both races. The results could not be explained by the perceptual salience of the Chinese nose or Caucasian eyes because these features were not differentially salient across the races. Our results are discussed in terms of the facial morphological differences between Chinese and Caucasian faces and the enculturation of mutual gaze norms in East Asian cultures

Category-specific face prototypes are emerging, but not yet mature, in 5-year-old children

Adults’ expertise in face recognition has been attributed to norm-based coding. Moreover, adults possess separable norms for a vari-ety of face categories (e.g., race, sex, age) that appear to enhancerecognition by reducing redundancy in the information shared byfaces and ensuring that only relevant dimensions are used toencode faces from a given category. Although 5-year-old childrenprocess own-race faces using norm-based coding, little is knownabout the organization and refinement of their face space. The cur-rent study investigated whether 5-year-olds rely on category-spe-cific norms and whether experience facilitates the development ofdissociable face prototypes. In Experiment 1, we examinedwhether Chinese 5-year-olds show race-contingent opposing after-effects and the extent to which aftereffects transfer across face raceamong Caucasian and Chinese 5-year-olds. Both participant racesshowed partial transfer of aftereffects across face race; however,there was no evidence for race-contingent opposing aftereffects.To examine whether experience facilitates the development of cat-egory-specific prototypes, we investigated whether race-contin-gent aftereffects are present among Caucasian 5-year-olds withabundant exposure to Chinese faces (Experiment 2) and thentested separate groups of 5-year-olds with two other categorieswith which they have considerable experience: sex (male/femalefaces) and age (adult/child faces) (Experiment 3). Across all threecategories, 5-year-olds showed no category-contingent opposingaftereffects. These results demonstrate that 5 years of age is a stagecharacterized by minimal separation in the norms and associated oding dimensions used for faces from different categories andsuggest that refinement of the mechanisms that underlie expertface processing occurs throughout childhood

Visual scanning and recognition of Chinese, Caucasian, and racially ambiguous faces: Contributions from bottom-up facial physiognomic information and top-down knowledge of racial categories

AbstractRecent studies have shown that participants use different eye movement strategies when scanning own- and other-race faces. However, it is unclear (1) whether this effect is related to face recognition performance, and (2) to what extent this effect is influenced by top-down or bottom-up facial information. In the present study, Chinese participants performed a face recognition task with Chinese, Caucasian, and racially ambiguous faces. For the racially ambiguous faces, we led participants to believe that they were viewing either own-race Chinese faces or other-race Caucasian faces. Results showed that (1) Chinese participants scanned the nose of the true Chinese faces more than that of the true Caucasian faces, whereas they scanned the eyes of the Caucasian faces more than those of the Chinese faces; (2) they scanned the eyes, nose, and mouth equally for the ambiguous faces in the Chinese condition compared with those in the Caucasian condition; (3) when recognizing the true Chinese target faces, but not the true target Caucasian faces, the greater the fixation proportion on the nose, the faster the participants correctly recognized these faces. The same was true when racially ambiguous face stimuli were thought to be Chinese faces. These results provide the first evidence to show that (1) visual scanning patterns of faces are related to own-race face recognition response time, and (2) it is bottom-up facial physiognomic information that mainly contributes to face scanning. However, top-down knowledge of racial categories can influence the relationship between face scanning patterns and recognition response time

Implicit racial attitudes influence perceived emotional intensity on other-race faces

An ability to accurately perceive and evaluate out-group members' emotions plays a critical role in intergroup interactions. Here we showed that Chinese participants' implicit attitudes toward White people bias their perception and judgment of emotional intensity of White people's facial expressions such as anger, fear and sadness. We found that Chinese participants held pro-Chinese/anti-White implicit biases that were assessed in an evaluative implicit association test (IAT). Moreover, their implicit biases positively predicted the perceived intensity of White people's angry, fearful and sad facial expressions but not for happy expressions. This study demonstrates that implicit racial attitudes can influence perception and judgment of a range of emotional expressions. Implications for intergroup interactions were discussed. © 2014 Wang et al.Link_to_subscribed_fulltex

Using Polygraph to Detect Passengers Carrying Illegal Items

The present study examined the effectiveness of a Modified-Comparison Questions Technique, used in conjunction with the polygraph, to differentiate between common travelers, drug traffickers, and terrorists at transportation hubs. Two experiments were conducted using a mock crime paradigm. In Experiment 1, we randomly assigned 78 participants to either a drug condition, where they packed and lied about illicit drugs in their luggage, or a control condition, where they did not pack or lie about any illegal items. In Experiment 2, we randomly assigned 164 participants to one of the two conditions in Experiment 1 or an additional bomb condition, where they packed and lied about a bomb in their luggage. For both experiments, we assessed participants’ RR interval, heart rate, peak-to-peak amplitude of Galvanic Skin Response (GSR) and all three combined, using Discriminant Analyses to determine the classification accuracy of participants in each condition. In both experiments, we found decelerated heart rates and increased peak-to-peak amplitude of GSR in guilty participants when lying in response to questions regarding their crime. We also found accurate classifications of participants, in both Experiment 1 (drug vs. control: 84.2% vs. 82.5%) and Experiment 2 (drug vs. control: 82:1% vs. 95.1%; bomb vs. control: 93.2% vs. 95.1%; drug vs. bomb: 92.3% vs. 90.9%), above chance level. These findings indicate that Modified-CQT, combined with a polygraph test, is a viable method for investigating suspects of drug trafficking and terrorism at transportation hubs such as train stations and airports

Speech Spectrum's Correlation with Speakers' Eysenck Personality Traits

The current study explored the correlation between speakers' Eysenck personality traits and speech spectrum parameters. Forty-six subjects completed the Eysenck Personality Questionnaire. They were instructed to verbally answer the questions shown on a computer screen and their responses were recorded by the computer. Spectrum parameters of /sh/ and /i/ were analyzed by Praat voice software. Formant frequencies of the consonant /sh/ in lying responses were significantly lower than that in truthful responses, whereas no difference existed on the vowel /i/ speech spectrum. The second formant bandwidth of the consonant /sh/ speech spectrum was significantly correlated with the personality traits of Psychoticism, Extraversion, and Neuroticism, and the correlation differed between truthful and lying responses, whereas the first formant frequency of the vowel /i/ speech spectrum was negatively correlated with Neuroticism in both response types. The results suggest that personality characteristics may be conveyed through the human voice, although the extent to which these effects are due to physiological differences in the organs associated with speech or to a general Pygmalion effect is yet unknown

A repeated lie becomes a truth? The effect of intentional control and training on deception

Deception has been demonstrated as a task that involves executive control such as conflict monitoring and response inhibition. In the present study, we investigated whether or not the controlled processes associated with deception could be trained to be more efficient. Forty-eight participants finished a reaction time-based differentiation of deception paradigm (DDP) task using selfand other-referential information on two occasions. After the first baseline DDP task, participants were randomly assigned to one of three groups: a control group in which participants finished the same task for a second time; an instruction group in which participants were instructed to speed up their deceptive responses in the second DDP; a training group in which participants received training in speeding up their deceptive responses, and then proceeded to the second DDP. Results showed that instruction alone significantly reduced the RTs associated with participants' deceptive responses. However, the differences between deceptive and truthful responses were erased only in the training group. The result suggests that the performance associated with deception is malleable and could be voluntarily controlled with intention or training. © 2012 Hu, Chen and Fu.Link_to_subscribed_fulltex

Does willingness affect the N2-P3 effect of deceptive and honest responses?

The present investigation examined the effect of willingness on honest and deceptive responses. Event-related potentials were recorded while participants made deceptive and honest response that were either self-determined or forced. Results showed that the reaction time was faster in response to old words compared to new words and honest responses were faster than deceptive responses. In addition, the P300 of honest responses was significantly more positive than deceptive responses and a significant main effect of willingness indicated that the P300 amplitude, elicited by self-determined responses, was more positive than forced responses. Moreover, the conflict detection N2 component was significantly more negative-going in the lying versus honest responses at Cz. The main effect of willingness also revealed that the forced response evoked a more negative N2 than the self-determined response. These results suggested that deception may involve conflict detection and that there are significant differences in neurological processing between forced deception and self-determined deception. © 2009 Elsevier Ireland Ltd. All rights reserved.Link_to_subscribed_fulltex

Temporal course of executive control when lying about self- and other-referential information: An ERP study

Recent neuroimaging studies have been trying to investigate the neural correlates of deception. To explore the temporal course of neural activity underlying deception, we recorded event-related potentials (ERPs) while participants were performing the Differentiation of Deception Paradigm (DDP) task to self- and other-referential information. Results showed that lying was associated with increased N1 (parietal-occipital area), N2 (frontal-central area) and decreased P3 (frontal-central area). Moreover, self-referential information elicited larger P2 and P3 compared with other-referential information. Finally, the interaction between stimulus and response types on N2 and P3 suggested that lying about self-referential information is more difficult than lying about other-referential information. These results revealed a temporal course of neural activity regarding executive function underlying deception, which complemented the current understanding of deception from the spatial dimensions. © 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Link_to_subscribed_fulltex