Asymmetries of Influence: Differential Effects of Body Postures on Perceptions of Emotional Facial Expressions

The accuracy and speed with which emotional facial expressions are identified is influenced by body postures. Two influential models predict that these congruency effects will be largest when the emotion displayed in the face is similar to that displayed in the body: the emotional seed model and the dimensional model. These models differ in whether similarity is based on physical characteristics or underlying dimensions of valence and arousal. Using a 3- alternative forced-choice task in which stimuli were presented briefly (Exp 1a) or for an unlimited time (Exp 1b) we provide evidence that congruency effects are more complex than either model predicts; the effects are asymmetrical and cannot be accounted for by similarity alone. Fearful postures are especially influential when paired with facial expressions, but not when presented in a flanker task (Exp 2). We suggest refinements to each model that may account for our results and suggest that additional studies be conducted prior to drawing strong theoretical conclusions

Attentional biases and recognition accuracy: What happens when multiple own- and other-race faces are encountered simultaneously?

Adults recognize own-race faces more accurately than other-race faces. We investigated three characteristics of laboratory investigations hypothesized to minimize the magnitude of the own-race recognition advantage (ORA): lack of competition for attention and instructions that emphasize individuating faces during the study phase, and a lack of uncertainty during the test phase. Across two experiments, participants studied faces individually, in arrays comprising multiple faces and household objects, or in naturalistic scenes (presented on an eye-tracker); they were instructed to remember everything, memorize faces, or form impressions of people. They then completed one of two recognition tasks--an old/new recognition task or a lineup recognition task. Task instructions influenced time spent looking at faces but not the allocation of attention to own- versus other-race faces. The magnitude of the ORA was independent of both task instructions and test protocol, with some modulation by how faces were presented in the study phase. We discuss these results in light of current theories of the ORA. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR

That’s my teacher! Children’s ability to recognize personally familiar and unfamiliar faces improves with age

Most previous research on the development of face recognition has focused on recognition of highly controlled images. One of the biggest challenges of face recognition is to identify an individual across images that capture natural variability in appearance. We created a child-friendly version of Jenkins, White, Van Montford, and Burton’s sorting task (Cognition, 2011, Vol. 121, pp. 313–323) to investigate children’s recognition of personally familiar and unfamiliar faces. Children between 4 and 12 years of age were presented with a familiar/unfamiliar teacher’s house and a pile of face photographs (nine pictures each of the teacher and another identity). Each child was asked to put all the pictures of the teacher inside the house while keeping the other identity out. Children over 6 years of age showed adult-like familiar face recognition. Unfamiliar face recognition improved across the entire age range, with considerable variability in children’s performance. These findings suggest that children’s ability to tolerate within-person variability improves with age and support a face-space framework in which faces are represented as regions, the size of which increases with age

Aging Faces and Aging Perceivers: Young and Older Adults are Less Sensitive to Deviations from Normality in Older than in Young Adult Faces

Past studies examining the other-age effect, the phenomenon in which own-age faces are recognized more accurately than other-age faces, are limited in number and report inconsistent results. Here we examine whether the perceptual system is preferentially tuned to differences among young adult faces. In experiment 1 young (18-25 years) and older adult (63-87 years) participants were shown young and older face pairs in which one member of each pair was undistorted and the other had compressed or expanded features. Participants indicated which member of each pair was more normal and which was more expanded. Both age groups were more accurate when tested with young compared with older faces -- but only when judging normality. In experiment 2 we tested a separate group of young adults on the same two tasks but with upright and inverted face pairs to examine the differential pattern of results between the normality and discrimination tasks. Inversion impaired performance on the normality task but not the discrimination task and eliminated the young adult advantage in the normality task. Collectively, these results suggest that the face processing system is optimized for young adult faces and that abundant experience with older faces later in life does not reverse this perceptual tuning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR

Wide eyes and drooping arms: Adult-like congruency effects emerge early in the development of sensitivity to emotional faces and body postures

Adults’ and 8-year-old children’s perception of emotional faces is disrupted when faces are presented in the context of incongruent body postures (e.g., when a sad face is displayed on a fearful body) if the two emotions are highly similar (e.g., sad/fear) but not if they are highly dissimilar (e.g., sad/happy). The current research investigated the emergence of this adult-like pattern. Using a sorting task, we identified the youngest age at which children could accurately sort isolated facial expressions and body postures and then measured whether their accuracy was impaired in the incongruent condition. Among the child participants, 6-year-olds showed congruency effects for sad/fear, but even 4-year-olds did not do so for sad/happy. Early emergence of this adult-like pattern is consistent with the dimensional and emotional seed models of emotion perception, although future research is needed to test the relative validity of these two models. Testing children with emotional faces presented in the context of body postures and background scenes is an important step toward understanding how they perceive emotions on a daily basis

Representing young and older adult faces: Shared or age-specific prototypes?

Young adults recognize young adult faces more accurately than older adult faces and are more sensitive to how individual young faces deviate from a norm/prototype. Here we used an adaptation paradigm to examine whether young and older adult faces are represented by separable norms and the extent to which the coding dimensions for these two categories overlap. In Experiment 1, following adaptation to oppositely distorted young and older faces (e.g., expanded young and compressed older faces), adults’ normality judgments simultaneously shifted in opposite directions for the two face categories, providing evidence for separable norms. In Experiment 2, participants were adapted to distorted faces from a single age category (e.g., compressed young); aftereffects transferred across face age but were larger for the face age that matched adaptation. Collectively, these results provide evidence that young and older faces are processed with regard to separable norms that share some underlying coding dimensions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR

How does a newly encountered face become familiar? The effect of within-person variability on adults' and children's perception of identity

Adults and children aged 6 years and older easily recognize multiple images of a familiar face, but often perceive two images of an unfamiliar face as belonging to different identities. Here we examined the process by which a newly encountered face becomes familiar, defined as accurate recognition of multiple images that capture natural within-person variability in appearance. In Experiment 1 we examined whether exposure to within-person variability in appearance helps children learn a new face. Children aged 6-13 years watched a 10-min video of a woman reading a story; she was filmed on a single day (low variability) or over three days, across which her appearance and filming conditions (e.g., camera, lighting) varied (high variability). After familiarization, participants sorted a set of images comprising novel images of the target identity intermixed with distractors. Compared to participants who received no familiarization, children showed evidence of learning only in the high-variability condition, in contrast to adults who showed evidence of learning in both the low- and high-variability conditions. Experiment 2 highlighted the efficiency with which adults learn a new face; their accuracy was comparable across training conditions despite variability in duration (1 vs. 10min) and type (video vs. static images) of training. Collectively, our findings show that exposure to variability leads to the formation of a robust representation of facial identity, consistent with perceptual learning in other domains (e.g., language), and that the development of face learning is protracted throughout childhood. We discuss possible underlying mechanisms

Attractiveness Judgments and Discrimination of Mommies and Grandmas: Perceptual Tuning for Young Adult Faces

Highlights •3- and 7-year-olds judged young and older face pairs: one normal and one distorted.•Attractiveness judgments (referencing a norm) were more accurate for young faces.•Performance on a match-to-sample task was also more accurate for young faces.•Our results have implications for how face space becomes optimized for young faces.•We discuss implications for domain-general vs. domain-specific development

Differential attentional allocation and subsequent recognition for young and older adult faces

Studies examining own-age recognition biases report inconsistent results and often utilize paradigms that present faces individually and in isolation. We investigated young and older adults' attention towards young and older faces during learning and whether differential attention influences recognition. Participants viewed complex scenes while their eye movements were recorded; each scene contained two young and two older faces. Half of the participants formed scene impressions and half prepared for a memory test. Participants then completed an old/new face recognition task. Both age groups looked longer at young than older faces; however, only young adults showed an own-age recognition advantage. Participants in the memory condition looked longer at faces but did not show enhanced recognition relative to the impressions condition. Overall, attention during learning did not influence recognition. Our results provide evidence for a young adult face bias in attentional allocation but suggest that longer looking does not necessarily indicate deeper encoding.This work was supported by a Discovery Accelerator Supplement Award from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada grant (CJM), a Canada Foundation for Innovation grant (CJM), and a Vanier Canada Graduate Scholarship (LAS)

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