Investigating the impact of motion visual synchrony on self face recognition using real time morphing.

Face recognition is a crucial aspect of self-image and social interactions. Previous studies have focused on static images to explore the boundary of self-face recognition. Our research, however, investigates the dynamics of face recognition in contexts involving motor-visual synchrony. We first validated our morphing face metrics for self-face recognition. We then conducted an experiment using state-of-the-art video processing techniques for real-time face identity morphing during facial movement. We examined self-face recognition boundaries under three conditions: synchronous, asynchronous, and static facial movements. Our findings revealed that participants recognized a narrower self-face boundary with moving facial images compared to static ones, with no significant differences between synchronous and asynchronous movements. The direction of morphing consistently biased the recognized self-face boundary. These results suggest that while motor information of the face is vital for self-face recognition, it does not rely on movement synchronization, and the sense of agency over facial movements does not affect facial identity judgment. Our methodology offers a new approach to exploring the 'self-face boundary in action', allowing for an independent examination of motion and identity.

Visual periodicity reveals distinct attentional signatures for face and non-face categories.

Observers can selectively deploy attention to regions of space, moments in time, specific visual features, individual objects, and even specific high-level categories-for example, when keeping an eye out for dogs while jogging. Here, we exploited visual periodicity to examine how category-based attention differentially modulates selective neural processing of face and non-face categories. We combined electroencephalography with a novel frequency-tagging paradigm capable of capturing selective neural responses for multiple visual categories contained within the same rapid image stream (faces/birds in Exp 1; houses/birds in Exp 2). We found that the pattern of attentional enhancement and suppression for face-selective processing is unique compared to other object categories: Where attending to non-face objects strongly enhances their selective neural signals during a later stage of processing (300-500 ms), attentional enhancement of face-selective processing is both earlier and comparatively more modest. Moreover, only the selective neural response for faces appears to be actively suppressed by attending towards an alternate visual category. These results underscore the special status that faces hold within the human visual system, and highlight the utility of visual periodicity as a powerful tool for indexing selective neural processing of multiple visual categories contained within the same image sequence.

Perceptual narrowing continues throughout childhood: Evidence from specialization of face processing.

Face recognition shows a long trajectory of development and is known to be closely associated with the development of social skills. However, it is still debated whether this long trajectory is perceptually based and what the role is of experience-based refinements of face representations throughout development. We examined the effects of short and long-term experienced stimulus history on face processing, using regression biases of face representations towards the experienced mean. Children and adults performed same-different judgments in a serial discrimination task where two consecutive faces were drawn from a distribution of morphed faces. The results show that face recognition continues to improve after 9 years of age, with more pronounced improvements for own-race faces. This increased narrowing with age is also indicated by similar use of stimulus statistics for own-race and other-race faces in children, contrary to the different use of the overall stimulus history for these two face types in adults. Increased face proficiency in adulthood renders the perceptual system less tuned to other-race face statistics. Altogether, the results demonstrate associations between levels of specialization and the extent to which perceptual representations become narrowly tuned with age.

Impact of babyface schema on time perception: Insights from neutral and crying facial expressions.

Facial expressions in infants have been noted to create a spatial attention bias when compared with adult faces. Yet, there is limited understanding of how adults perceive the timing of infant facial expressions. To investigate this, we used both infant and adult facial expressions in a temporal bisection task. In Experiment 1, we compared duration judgments of neutral infant and adult faces. The results revealed that participants felt that neutral infant faces lasted for a shorter time than neutral adult faces, independent of participant sex. Experiment 2 employed sad (crying) facial expressions. Here, the female participants perceived that the infants' faces were displayed for a longer duration than the adults' faces, whereas this distinction was not evident among the male participants. These findings highlight the influence of the babyface schema on time perception, nuanced by emotional context and sex-based individual variances.

Religious labels and food preferences, but not country of origin, support opposing face aftereffects.

Face templates can be experimentally manipulated, and category-contingent aftereffects suggest discrete templates across social groups. We tested whether 1) explicit religious labels, 2) food preferences, and 3) country of origin would support religion-contingent aftereffects across Christians and Muslims face sets. While viewing face images, ninety-three participants heard audio that stated either 1) a character's religious identity, 2) preferred food, or 3) country of origin. Participants viewed contracted Christian faces and expanded Muslim faces during the training phase. To measure adaptation, before and after the training phases, participants selected the face out of a pair of expanded and contracted Christian or Muslim faces that they found more attractive. Contingent aftereffects were found in the religious explicit (t(30) = 2.49, p = 0.02, Cohen's d = 0.58) and food conditions (t(30) = -3.77, p < 0.01, Cohen's d = -0.82), but not the country condition (t(30) = 1.64, p = 0.11, Cohen's d = 0.31). This suggests that religious labels and food preferences create socially meaningful groups, but country of origin does not. This is evidence of an impact of social categorization on visual processing.

Face detection in contextual scenes.

Object and scene perception are intertwined. When objects are expected to appear within a particular scene, they are detected and categorised with greater speed and accuracy. This study examined whether such context effects also moderate the perception of social objects such as faces. Female and male faces were embedded in scenes with a stereotypical female or male context. Semantic congruency of these scene contexts influenced the categorisation of faces (Experiment 1). These effects were bi-directional, such that face sex also affected scene categorisation (Experiment 2), suggesting concurrent automatic processing of both levels. In contrast, the more elementary task of face detection was not affected by semantic scene congruency (Experiment 3), even when scenes were previewed prior to face presentation (Experiment 4). This pattern of results indicates that semantic scene context can affect categorisation of faces. However, the earlier perceptual stage of detection appears to be encapsulated from the cognitive processes that give rise to this contextual interference.

Positive and negative facial valence perception are modulated differently by eccentricity in the parafovea: Replication from KDEF to NimStim.

While perceiving the emotional state of others may be crucial for our behavior even when this information is present outside of central vision, emotion perception studies typically focus on central visual field. We have recently investigated emotional valence (pleasantness) perception across the parafovea (≤ 4°) and found that for briefly presented (200 ms) emotional face images (from the established KDEF image-set), positive (happy) valence was the least affected by eccentricity (distance from the central visual field) and negative (fearful) valence the most. Furthermore, we found that performance at 2° predicted performance at 4°. Here we tested (n = 37) whether these effects replicate with face stimuli of different identities from a different well-established image-set (NimStim). All our prior findings replicated and eccentricity-based modulation magnitude was smaller with NimStim (~ 16.6% accuracy reduction at 4°) than with KDEF stimuli (~ 27.3% reduction). Our current investigations support our earlier findings that for briefly presented parafoveal stimuli, positive and negative valence perception are differently affected by eccentricity and may be dissociated. Furthermore, our results highlight the importance of investigating emotions beyond central vision and demonstrate commonalities and differences across different image sets in the parafovea, emphasizing the contribution of replication studies to substantiate our knowledge about perceptual mechanisms.

Re-evaluating the Role of Partnership-Related Perceptions in Women's Preferences for Men with Masculine Face Shapes.

Many researchers have proposed that women perceive men with masculine face shapes to be less suitable as parents and long-term partners than men with feminine face shapes, causing women to find masculine men more attractive for short-term than long-term relationships. However, recent work shows that results obtained using the type of experimentally manipulated stimuli that were employed in studies presenting evidence for these claims are not necessarily observed when natural (i.e., unmanipulated) face stimuli were used to suggest that the evidence for these claims may need to be revaluated. Consequently, we tested for possible relationships between ratings of natural male faces for parenting- and relationship-related traits and shape masculinity (Study 1) and also tested whether women's preferences for shape masculinity were stronger when natural male faces were rated for short-term relationships than when natural male faces were rated for long-term relationships (Studies 2 and 3). We saw no evidence for either of these predictions, instead finding that men with more attractive faces were perceived to be better parents and better long-term partners. Thus, our findings do not support the widely held view that masculine men are more attractive for short-term relationships because they are perceived to be unlikely to invest time and effort in their romantic partners and offspring.

Recognition of facial expressions of emotions in tactile drawings by blind children, children with low vision and sighted children.

In the context of blindness, studies on the recognition of facial expressions of emotions by touch are essential to define the compensatory touch abilities and to create adapted tools on emotions. This study is the first to examine the effect of visual experience in the recognition of tactile drawings of facial expressions of emotions by children with different visual experiences. To this end, we compared the recognition rates of tactile drawings of emotions between blind children, children with low vision and sighted children aged 6-12 years. Results revealed no effect of visual experience on recognition rates. However, an effect of emotions and an interaction effect between emotions and visual experience were found. Indeed, while all children had a low average recognition rate, the drawings of fear, anger and disgust were particularly poorly recognized. Moreover, sighted children were significantly better at recognizing the drawings of surprise and sadness than the blind children who only showed high recognition rates for joy. The results of this study support the importance of developing emotion tools that can be understood by children with different visual experiences.

Interactive effects of participant and stimulus race on cognitive performance in youth: Insights from the ABCD study.

An extensive literature shows that race information can impact cognitive performance. Two key findings include an attentional bias to Black racial cues in U.S. samples and diminished recognition of other-race faces compared to same-race faces in predominantly White adult samples. Yet face stimuli are increasingly used in psychological research often unrelated to race (Conley et al., 2018) or without consideration for how race information may influence cognitive performance, especially among developmental participants from different racial groups. In the current study we used open-access data from the Adolescent Brain Cognitive DevelopmentSM (ABCD) Study® 4.0.1 release to test for developmentally similar other- and same-race effects of Black and White face stimuli on attention, working memory, and recognition memory in 9- and 10-year-old Black and White children (n=5,659) living in the U.S. Black and White children showed better performance when attending to Black versus White faces. We also show an advantage in recognition memory of same-race compared to other-race faces in White children that did not generalize to Black children. Together the findings highlight how race information, even when irrelevant to an experiment, may indirectly lead to misinterpretation of group differences in cognitive performance in children of different racial backgrounds.

Influence of protective clothing and masks on facial trustworthiness in an investment game: insights from a Chinese population study.

Facial features are important sources of information about perceived trustworthiness. Masks and protective clothing diminish the visibility of facial cues by either partially concealing the mouth and nose or covering the entire face. During the pandemic, the use of personal protective equipment affected and redefined who trusts whom in society. This study used the classical investment game of interpersonal trust with Chinese participants to explore the impact of occlusion on interpersonal trust. Faces with moderate initial trustworthiness were occluded by a mask or protective clothing in Experiment 1 and were digitally occluded by a square in Experiment 2, and faces with three levels of initial trustworthiness were occluded by a mask in Experiment 3. Results showed that both undergraduates (Experiment 1a) and non-student adults (Experiment 1b) perceived the faces with protective clothing as more trustworthy than faces wearing standard masks and faces not wearing masks. Faces with the top halves showing were perceived as trustworthy as full faces, while faces with the bottom halves showing were perceived as less trustworthy. The effect of masks is weak and complex. Masks reduced participants' trust in faces with high initial trustworthiness, had no effect on faces with low and moderate initial trustworthiness, and only slightly increased the trust of undergraduates in faces with moderate initial trustworthiness. Our findings indicate that the lack of information caused by occlusion and the social significance associated with occlusion collectively affect people's trust behavior in Chinese society. We believe the findings of this study will be useful in elucidating the effects of personal protective equipment usage on perceptions of trustworthiness.

Altered effective connectivity among face-processing systems in major depressive disorder.

BACKGROUND: Neuroimaging studies have revealed abnormal functional interaction during the processing of emotional faces in patients with major depressive disorder (MDD), thereby enhancing our comprehension of the pathophysiology of MDD. However, it is unclear whether there is abnormal directional interaction among face-processing systems in patients with MDD. METHODS: A group of patients with MDD and a healthy control group underwent a face-matching task during functional magnetic resonance imaging. Dynamic causal modelling (DCM) analysis was used to investigate effective connectivity between 7 regions in the face-processing systems. We used a Parametric Empirical Bayes model to compare effective connectivity between patients with MDD and controls. RESULTS: We included 48 patients and 44 healthy controls in our analyses. Both groups showed higher accuracy and faster reaction time in the shape-matching condition than in the face-matching condition. However, no significant behavioural or brain activation differences were found between the groups. Using DCM, we found that, compared with controls, patients with MDD showed decreased self-connection in the right dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC), amygdala, and fusiform face area (FFA) across task conditions; increased intrinsic connectivity from the right amygdala to the bilateral DLPFC, right FFA, and left amygdala, suggesting an increased intrinsic connectivity centred in the amygdala in the right side of the face-processing systems; both increased and decreased positive intrinsic connectivity in the left side of the face-processing systems; and comparable task modulation effect on connectivity. LIMITATIONS: Our study did not include longitudinal neuroimaging data, and there was limited region of interest selection in the DCM analysis. CONCLUSION: Our findings provide evidence for a complex pattern of alterations in the face-processing systems in patients with MDD, potentially involving the right amygdala to a greater extent. The results confirm some previous findings and highlight the crucial role of the regions on both sides of face-processing systems in the pathophysiology of MDD.

A behavioral advantage for the face pareidolia illusion in peripheral vision.

Investigation of visual illusions helps us understand how we process visual information. For example, face pareidolia, the misperception of illusory faces in objects, could be used to understand how we process real faces. However, it remains unclear whether this illusion emerges from errors in face detection or from slower, cognitive processes. Here, our logic is straightforward; if examples of face pareidolia activate the mechanisms that rapidly detect faces in visual environments, then participants will look at objects more quickly when the objects also contain illusory faces. To test this hypothesis, we sampled continuous eye movements during a fast saccadic choice task-participants were required to select either faces or food items. During this task, pairs of stimuli were positioned close to the initial fixation point or further away, in the periphery. As expected, the participants were faster to look at face targets than food targets. Importantly, we also discovered an advantage for food items with illusory faces but, this advantage was limited to the peripheral condition. These findings are among the first to demonstrate that the face pareidolia illusion persists in the periphery and, thus, it is likely to be a consequence of erroneous face detection.

The Multimodal Trust Effects of Face, Voice, and Sentence Content.

Trust is an aspect critical to human social interaction and research has identified many cues that help in the assimilation of this social trait. Two of these cues are the pitch of the voice and the width-to-height ratio of the face (fWHR). Additionally, research has indicated that the content of a spoken sentence itself has an effect on trustworthiness; a finding that has not yet been brought into multisensory research. The current research aims to investigate previously developed theories on trust in relation to vocal pitch, fWHR, and sentence content in a multimodal setting. Twenty-six female participants were asked to judge the trustworthiness of a voice speaking a neutral or romantic sentence while seeing a face. The average pitch of the voice and the fWHR were varied systematically. Results indicate that the content of the spoken message was an important predictor of trustworthiness extending into multimodality. Further, the mean pitch of the voice and fWHR of the face appeared to be useful indicators in a multimodal setting. These effects interacted with one another across modalities. The data demonstrate that trust in the voice is shaped by task-irrelevant visual stimuli. Future research is encouraged to clarify whether these findings remain consistent across genders, age groups, and languages.

Atypical neural encoding of faces in individuals with autism spectrum disorder.

Individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) experience pervasive difficulties in processing social information from faces. However, the behavioral and neural mechanisms underlying social trait judgments of faces in ASD remain largely unclear. Here, we comprehensively addressed this question by employing functional neuroimaging and parametrically generated faces that vary in facial trustworthiness and dominance. Behaviorally, participants with ASD exhibited reduced specificity but increased inter-rater variability in social trait judgments. Neurally, participants with ASD showed hypo-activation across broad face-processing areas. Multivariate analysis based on trial-by-trial face responses could discriminate participant groups in the majority of the face-processing areas. Encoding social traits in ASD engaged vastly different face-processing areas compared to controls, and encoding different social traits engaged different brain areas. Interestingly, the idiosyncratic brain areas encoding social traits in ASD were still flexible and context-dependent, similar to neurotypicals. Additionally, participants with ASD also showed an altered encoding of facial saliency features in the eyes and mouth. Together, our results provide a comprehensive understanding of the neural mechanisms underlying social trait judgments in ASD.

Contrasting neurofunctional correlates of face- and visuospatial-processing in children and adolescents with Williams syndrome: convergent results from four fMRI paradigms.

Understanding neurogenetic mechanisms underlying neuropsychiatric disorders such as schizophrenia and autism is complicated by their inherent clinical and genetic heterogeneity. Williams syndrome (WS), a rare neurodevelopmental condition in which both the genetic alteration (hemideletion of ~ twenty-six 7q11.23 genes) and the cognitive/behavioral profile are well-defined, offers an invaluable opportunity to delineate gene-brain-behavior relationships. People with WS are characterized by increased social drive, including particular interest in faces, together with hallmark difficulty in visuospatial processing. Prior work, primarily in adults with WS, has searched for neural correlates of these characteristics, with reports of altered fusiform gyrus function while viewing socioemotional stimuli such as faces, along with hypoactivation of the intraparietal sulcus during visuospatial processing. Here, we investigated neural function in children and adolescents with WS by using four separate fMRI paradigms, two that probe each of these two cognitive/behavioral domains. During the two visuospatial tasks, but not during the two face processing tasks, we found bilateral intraparietal sulcus hypoactivation in WS. In contrast, during both face processing tasks, but not during the visuospatial tasks, we found fusiform hyperactivation. These data not only demonstrate that previous findings in adults with WS are also present in childhood and adolescence, but also provide a clear example that genetic mechanisms can bias neural circuit function, thereby affecting behavioral traits.

The resolution of face perception varies systematically across the visual field.

Visual abilities tend to vary predictably across the visual field-for simple low-level stimuli, visibility is better along the horizontal vs. vertical meridian and in the lower vs. upper visual field. In contrast, face perception abilities have been reported to show either distinct or entirely idiosyncratic patterns of variation in peripheral vision, suggesting a dissociation between the spatial properties of low- and higher-level vision. To assess this link more clearly, we extended methods used in low-level vision to develop an acuity test for face perception, measuring the smallest size at which facial gender can be reliably judged in peripheral vision. In 3 experiments, we show the characteristic inversion effect, with better acuity for upright faces than inverted, demonstrating the engagement of high-level face-selective processes in peripheral vision. We also observe a clear advantage for gender acuity on the horizontal vs. vertical meridian and a smaller-but-consistent lower- vs. upper-field advantage. These visual field variations match those of low-level vision, indicating that higher-level face processing abilities either inherit or actively maintain the characteristic patterns of spatial selectivity found in early vision. The commonality of these spatial variations throughout the visual hierarchy means that the location of faces in our visual field systematically influences our perception of them.

Neural correlates of retrospective memory confidence during face-name associative learning.

The ability to accurately assess one's own memory performance during learning is essential for adaptive behavior, but the brain mechanisms underlying this metamemory function are not well understood. We investigated the neural correlates of memory accuracy and retrospective memory confidence in a face-name associative learning task using magnetoencephalography in healthy young adults (n = 32). We found that high retrospective confidence was associated with stronger occipital event-related fields during encoding and widespread event-related fields during retrieval compared to low confidence. On the other hand, memory accuracy was linked to medial temporal activities during both encoding and retrieval, but only in low-confidence trials. A decrease in oscillatory power at alpha/beta bands in the parietal regions during retrieval was associated with higher memory confidence. In addition, representational similarity analysis at the single-trial level revealed distributed but differentiable neural activities associated with memory accuracy and confidence during both encoding and retrieval. In summary, our study unveiled distinct neural activity patterns related to memory confidence and accuracy during associative learning and underscored the crucial role of parietal regions in metamemory.

Facial expressions affect the memory of facial colors.

Facial color influences the perception of facial expressions, and emotional expressions bias how facial color is remembered. However, it remains unclear whether facial expressions affect daily facial color memory. The memory color effect demonstrates that knowledge about typical colors affects the perception of the actual color of given objects. To investigate the effect of facial color memory, we examined whether the memory color effect for faces varies depending on facial expression. We calculated the subjective achromatic point of the facial expression image stimulus and compared the degree to which it was shifted from the actual achromatic point between facial expression conditions. We hypothesized that if the memory of facial color is influenced by the facial expression color (e.g., anger is a warm color, fear is a cold color), then the subjective achromatic point would vary with facial expression. In Experiment 1, we recruited 13 participants who adjusted the color of facial expression stimuli (anger, neutral, and fear) and a banana stimulus to be achromatic. No significant differences in the subjective achromatic point between facial expressions were observed. Subsequently, we conducted Experiment 2 with 23 participants because Experiment 1 did not account for the sensitivity to color changes on the face; humans perceive greater color differences in faces than in non-faces. Participants selected which facial color they believed the expression stimulus appeared to be, choosing one of two options provided to them. The results indicated that the subjective achromatic points of anger and fear faces significantly shifted toward the opposite color direction compared with neutral faces in the brief presentation condition. This research suggests that the memory color of faces differs depending on facial expressions and supports the idea that the perception of emotional expressions can bias facial color memory.