Investigating behaviour and face encoding in a hypothetical real-world social contract : handwashing in hazardous health settings

Investigations into the evolutionary origins of human cognition has shown that individuals’ memory for others is influenced by the latter’s behaviour in social contracts. Such research is primarily based on hypothetical or more abstract forms of social contracts, whereas an application of this knowledge to everyday health behaviours can be of great value. To address this, the current study investigated whether participants who were asked to imagine themselves in a hypothetical hazardous health scenario showed differential response sensitivity (d’) and latency (RT) to faces of hospital staff tagged with contrasting hand hygiene before touching patients: clean hands, dirty hands, or unknown hand-washing behaviour (control). The test used a two alternative forced-choice (2AFC: “old/new”) face recognition paradigm. The findings showed that d’ to dirty and clean hands was similar, but higher than for controls. Moreover, d’ was not affected by the occupation of hospital staff (nurses vs porters). The absence of memory gains towards clean or dirty hands points to the need for new strategies to remind patients to observe (and remember) the hand hygiene of others when exposed to hazardous health environments

Self-face perception: individual differences and discrepancies associated with mental self-face representation, attractiveness and self-esteem

Self-face perception plays an important role in self-consciousness and personal identity as well as in social exchanges and well-being. Despite its significance, little is known about how individuals represent their faces internally. This study explored mechanisms of self-face perception in three experiments. First, participants chose from two images (self-face image vs. self-image with manipulated facial features) which one was their veridical image and which one they liked most. Afterwards, participants could (digitally) manipulate their facial features to increase their attractiveness (either to themselves or to an imagined other/s). Results showed that self-face recognition was better when veridical faces were paired with 'clones' with larger facial features or when all facial features were enlarged concurrently. Moreover, up to half of the participants preferred smaller noses and larger eyes and manipulated their self-images accordingly. State (but not trait) self-esteem was inversely correlated with eye, mouth and nose size manipulations made to increase one's attractiveness. The results indicate that a certain tolerance for error in self-face recognition might be required to maintain a consistent facial identity during one's lifespan. The discovered preference for neotenous features and discrepancies between one's perceived and one's veridical face and their link to state self-esteem are discussed

Tied factor analysis for face recognition across large pose differences

Face recognition algorithms perform very unreliably when the pose of the probe face is different from the gallery face: typical feature vectors vary more with pose than with identity. We propose a generative model that creates a one-to-many mapping from an idealized “identity” space to the observed data space. In identity space, the representation for each individual does not vary with pose. We model the measured feature vector as being generated by a pose-contingent linear transformation of the identity variable in the presence of Gaussian noise. We term this model “tied” factor analysis. The choice of linear transformation (factors) depends on the pose, but the loadings are constant (tied) for a given individual. We use the EM algorithm to estimate the linear transformations and the noise parameters from training data. We propose a probabilistic distance metric that allows a full posterior over possible matches to be established. We introduce a novel feature extraction process and investigate recognition performance by using the FERET, XM2VTS, and PIE databases. Recognition performance compares favorably with contemporary approaches

Relationships between fiction media, genre, and empathic abilities

Fiction enables readers to simulate the social experiences of characters and may facilitate prosociality. Research has indicated that fiction print exposure positively relates to empathy and may promote altruistic behaviors. Whether associations hold across different media formats and thematic genres remains unclear. This study took a multidimensional approach to both fiction engagement and empathic abilities. Specifically, it aimed to replicate previous findings that lifetime fiction exposure positively predicts empathy, and to extend this literature through an exploration of the relationships between media and genre formats, empathy and altruism. Participants (N = 404) completed a multidimensional task measure of fiction media exposure and answered questions about fiction engagement, empathic and altruistic tendencies. Results showed divergent associations between fiction format, genre, and empathic abilities, and fiction media exposure positively predicted the tendencies to become transported into narratives and to help others. Engagement with fiction formats and thematic genres may differentially support adults’ prosocial development

Asymmetries during multiple face encoding : increased dwell time and number of fixations in the upper visual hemifield

Visual field asymmetries in the encoding of groups of faces have rarely been investigated. Here, eye movements (percentage of dwell time [pDT] and number of fixations [nFix]) were recorded during the encoding of three groups of four faces tagged with cheating, cooperative, or neutral behaviours. Faces in each group were placed in the top left, top right, bottom left, or bottom right quadrants. Face recall was equally high in the three behavioural groups. Conversely, pDT and nFix were higher for faces in the upper hemifields. Most of the first saccades were made to the top left visual quadrant, which also commanded a higher pDT and nFix than the other quadrants. The findings are relevant to the understanding of visual field asymmetries in the processing of multiple faces, a common social scenario, and may be linked to reading habits in conjunction (or not) with cultural and environmental cues

Congruency effect between articulation and grasping in native English speakers

Previous studies have shown congruency effects between specific speech articulations and manual grasping actions. For example, uttering the syllable [kɑ] facilitates power grip responses in terms of reaction time and response accuracy. A similar association of the syllable [ti] with precision grip has also been observed. As these congruency effects have been to date shown only for Finnish native speakers, this study explored whether the congruency effects generalize to native speakers of another language. The original experiments were therefore replicated with English participants (N=16). Several previous findings were reproduced, namely the association of syllables [kɑ] and [ke] with power grip and of [ti] and [te] with precision grip. However, the association of vowels [ɑ] and [i] with power and precision grip, respectively, previously found for Finnish participants, was not significant for English speakers. This difference could be related to ambiguities of English orthography and pronunciation variations. It is possible that for English speakers seeing a certain written vowel activates several different phonological representations associated with that letter. If the congruency effects are based on interactions between specific phonological representations and grasp actions, this ambiguity might lead to weakening of the effects in the manner demonstrated here