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ABSTRACT: Reversing the luminance values of a face (contrast negation) is known to disrupt recognition. However, the effects of contrast negation are attenuated in chimeric images, in which the eye region is returned to positive contrast (S. Gilad, M. Meng, & P. Sinha, 2009, Role of ordinal contrast relationships in face encoding, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, USA, Vol. 106, pp. 5353-5358). Here, we probe further the importance of the eye region for the representation of facial identity. In the first experiment, we asked to what extent the chimeric benefit is specific to the eye region. Our results showed a benefit for including a positive eye region in a contrast negated face, whereas chimeric faces in which only the forehead, nose, or mouth regions were returned to positive contrast did not significantly improve recognition. In Experiment 2, we confirmed that the presence of positive contrast eyes alone does not account for the improved recognition of chimeric face images. Rather, it is the integration of information from the positive contrast eye region and the surrounding negative contrast face that is essential for the chimeric benefit. In Experiment 3, we demonstrated that the chimeric benefit is dependent on a holistic representation of the face. Finally, in Experiment 4, we showed that the positive contrast eye region needs to match the identity of the contrast negated part of the image for the chimera benefit to occur. Together, these results show the importance of the eye region for holistic representations of facial identity. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2013 APA, all rights reserved).
Journal of Experimental Psychology Human Perception & Performance 05/2013; · 3.06 Impact Factor
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ABSTRACT: Three experiments are presented that investigate the two-dimensional valence/trustworthiness by dominance model of social inferences from faces (Oosterhof & Todorov, 2008). Experiment 1 used image averaging and morphing techniques to demonstrate that consistent facial cues subserve a range of social inferences, even in a highly variable sample of 1000 ambient images (images that are intended to be representative of those encountered in everyday life, see Jenkins, White, Van Montfort, & Burton, 2011). Experiment 2 then tested Oosterhof and Todorov's two-dimensional model on this extensive sample of face images. The original two dimensions were replicated and a novel 'youthful-attractiveness' factor also emerged. Experiment 3 successfully cross-validated the three-dimensional model using face averages directly constructed from the factor scores. These findings highlight the utility of the original trustworthiness and dominance dimensions, but also underscore the need to utilise varied face stimuli: with a more realistically diverse set of face images, social inferences from faces show a more elaborate underlying structure than hitherto suggested.
Cognition 01/2013; 127(1):105-118. · 3.16 Impact Factor
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ABSTRACT: Whether the brain represents facial expressions as perceptual continua or as emotion categories remains controversial. Here, we measured the neural response to morphed images to directly address how facial expressions of emotion are represented in the brain. We found that face-selective regions in the posterior superior temporal sulcus and the amygdala responded selectively to changes in facial expression, independent of changes in identity. We then asked whether the responses in these regions reflected categorical or continuous neural representations of facial expression. Participants viewed images from continua generated by morphing between faces posing different expressions such that the expression could be the same, could involve a physical change but convey the same emotion, or could differ by the same physical amount but be perceived as two different emotions. We found that the posterior superior temporal sulcus was equally sensitive to all changes in facial expression, consistent with a continuous representation. In contrast, the amygdala was only sensitive to changes in expression that altered the perceived emotion, demonstrating a more categorical representation. These results offer a resolution to the controversy about how facial expression is processed in the brain by showing that both continuous and categorical representations underlie our ability to extract this important social cue.
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 12/2012; · 9.68 Impact Factor
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ABSTRACT: Neural models of human face perception propose parallel pathways. One pathway (including posterior superior temporal sulcus, pSTS) is responsible for processing changeable aspects of faces such as gaze and expression, and the other pathway (including the fusiform face area, FFA) is responsible for relatively invariant aspects such as identity. However, to be socially meaningful, changes in expression and gaze must be tracked across an individual face. Our aim was to investigate how this is achieved. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging, we found a region in pSTS that responded more to sequences of faces varying in gaze and expression in which the identity was constant compared with sequences in which the identity varied. To determine whether this preferential response to same identity faces was due to the processing of identity in the pSTS or was a result of interactions between pSTS and other regions thought to code face identity, we measured the functional connectivity between face-selective regions. We found increased functional connectivity between the pSTS and FFA when participants viewed same identity faces compared with different identity faces. Together, these results suggest that distinct neural pathways involved in expression and identity interact to process the changeable features of the face in a socially meaningful way.
Cerebral Cortex 11/2012; · 6.54 Impact Factor
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ABSTRACT: Neuropsychological and neuroimaging studies have demonstrated a role for the amygdala in processing the perceived trustworthiness of faces, but it remains uncertain whether its responses are linear (with the greatest response to the least trustworthy-looking faces), or quadratic (with increased fMRI signal for the dimension extremes). It is also unclear whether the trustworthiness of the stimuli is crucial or if the same response pattern can be found for faces varying along other dimensions. In addition, the responses to perceived trustworthiness of face-selective regions other than the amygdala are seldom reported. The present study addressed these issues using a novel set of stimuli created through computer image-manipulation both to maximise the presence of naturally occurring cues that underpin trustworthiness judgments and to allow systematic manipulation of these cues. With a block-design fMRI paradigm, we investigated neural responses to computer-manipulated trustworthiness in the amygdala and core face-selective regions in the occipital and temporal lobes. We asked whether the activation pattern is specific for differences in trustworthiness or whether it would also track variation along an orthogonal male-female gender dimension. The main findings were quadratic responses to changes in both trustworthiness and gender in all regions. These results are consistent with the idea that face-responsive brain regions are sensitive to face distinctiveness as well as the social meaning of the face features.
Neuropsychologia 05/2012; 50(9):2205-11. · 3.64 Impact Factor
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ABSTRACT: Neuropsychological and neuroimaging studies have demonstrated a role for the amygdala in processing the perceived trustworthiness of faces, but it remains uncertain whether its responses are linear (with the greatest response to the least trustworthy-looking faces), or quadratic (with increased fMRI signal for the dimension extremes). It is also unclear whether the trustworthiness of the stimuli is crucial or if the same response pattern can be found for faces varying along other dimensions. In addition, the responses to perceived trustworthiness of face-selective regions other than the amygdala are seldom reported. The present study addressed these issues using a novel set of stimuli created through computer image-manipulation both to maximise the presence of naturally occurring cues that underpin trustworthiness judgments and to allow systematic manipulation of these cues. With a block-design fMRI paradigm, we investigated neural responses to computer-manipulated trustworthi-ness in the amygdala and core face-selective regions in the occipital and temporal lobes. We asked whether the activation pattern is specific for differences in trustworthiness or whether it would also track variation along an orthogonal male–female gender dimension. The main findings were quadratic responses to changes in both trustworthiness and gender in all regions. These results are consistent with the idea that face-responsive brain regions are sensitive to face distinctiveness as well as the social meaning of the face features.
Neuropsychologia 01/2012; · 3.64 Impact Factor
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ABSTRACT: Burton, Bruce & Johnston (1990) have recently presented an interactive activation and competition (IAC) model of face recognition. Within this architecture they present accounts of repetition priming, semantic priming and distinctiveness effects with faces. This model predicts that a short-lived priming effect should extend from a person's face to their name, this is called ‘self priming’. The model also predicts that the distinctiveness of the person's face should interact with the amount of self priming found. We tested this prediction with distinctive and typical face sets (Expt 1); results confirmed the prediction. From a hybrid of Valentine's (1991 a) multidimensional space framework and Burton et al.'s IAC model we derived a second prediction, that a caricature of a face should produce more self-priming than the veridical or an anti-caricatured (shifted towards an average face) representation of the face. Using continuous-tone caricatures of photographic quality we tested this prediction in Expts 2 and 3; results again confirmed the prediction. This finding is consistent with the idea that caricaturing works by enhancing the face's distinctiveness.
British Journal of Psychology. 04/2011; 87(1):141 - 162.
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ABSTRACT: Two experiments investigated the role that different face regions play in a variety of social judgements that are commonly made from facial appearance (sex, age, distinctiveness, attractiveness, approachability, trustworthiness, and intelligence). These judgements lie along a continuum from those with a clear physical basis and high consequent accuracy (sex, age) to judgements that can achieve a degree of consensus between observers despite having little known validity (intelligence, trustworthiness). Results from Experiment 1 indicated that the face's internal features (eyes, nose, and mouth) provide information that is more useful for social inferences than the external features (hair, face shape, ears, and chin), especially when judging traits such as approachability and trustworthiness. Experiment 2 investigated how judgement agreement was affected when the upper head, eye, nose, or mouth regions were presented in isolation or when these regions were obscured. A different pattern of results emerged for different characteristics, indicating that different types of facial information are used in the various judgements. Moreover, the informativeness of a particular region/feature depends on whether it is presented alone or in the context of the whole face. These findings provide evidence for the importance of holistic processing in making social attributions from facial appearance.
Quarterly journal of experimental psychology (2006) 11/2010; 64(4):751-66. · 1.96 Impact Factor
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ABSTRACT: Initial reports of emotion recognition in Huntington's disease (HD) found disproportionate impairments in recognising disgust. Not all subsequent studies have found this pattern, and a review of the literature to date shows that marked impairments in recognising anger are also often seen in HD. However, the majority of studies have based their conclusions on a single test of facial expression recognition. In the current study we revisit this issue of emotion recognition in HD to address whether the pattern found on one test of facial expression recognition generalised to another, and to different modalities using tests of emotion recognition from facial expressions, vocal expressions, and short verbal vignettes. The results showed evidence of impairments in recognising anger, fear and disgust across the three domains, with recognition of anger the most severely impaired. Given work identifying different subtypes of disgust that are associated with different facial features, a second study examined the recognition of three disgust expressions that healthy participants reliably associate with unpleasant tastes, unpleasant smells, and a more general elaborated or expanded form of disgust that includes reactions to violations of moral standards. The results showed a disproportionate impairment in recognising faces associated with the expanded form, the subtype most closely aligned with anger. We conclude that the related emotions of disgust and anger associated with social disapproval are frequently impaired in HD and discuss factors that might cause one emotion to show more severe impairments than the other.
Neuropsychologia 07/2010; 48(9):2719-29. · 3.64 Impact Factor
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ABSTRACT: The perception and recognition of familiar faces depends critically on an analysis of the internal features of the face (eyes, nose, mouth). We therefore contrasted how information about the internal and external (hair, chin, face outline) features of familiar and unfamiliar faces is represented in face-selective regions. There was a significant response to both the internal and external features of the face when presented in isolation. However, the response to the internal features was greater than the response to the external features. There was significant adaptation to repeated images of either the internal or external features of the face in the fusiform face area (FFA). However, the magnitude of this adaptation was greater for the internal features of familiar faces. Next, we asked whether the internal features of the face are represented independently from the external features. There was a release from adaptation in the FFA to composite images in which the internal features were varied but the external features were unchanged, or when the internal features were unchanged but the external features varied, demonstrating a holistic response. Finally, we asked whether the holistic response to faces could be influenced by the context in which the face was presented. We found that adaptation was still evident to composite images in which the face was unchanged but body features were varied. Together, these findings show that although internal features are important in the neural representation of familiar faces, the face's internal and external features are represented holistically in face-selective regions of the human brain.
Journal of Neuroscience 03/2010; 30(9):3544-52. · 7.11 Impact Factor
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ABSTRACT: An influential neural model of face perception suggests that the posterior superior temporal sulcus (STS) is sensitive to those aspects of faces that produce transient visual changes, including facial expression. Other researchers note that recognition of expression involves multiple sensory modalities and suggest that the STS also may respond to crossmodal facial signals that change transiently. Indeed, many studies of audiovisual (AV) speech perception show STS involvement in AV speech integration. Here we examine whether these findings extend to AV emotion. We used magnetoencephalography to measure the neural responses of participants as they viewed and heard emotionally congruent fear and minimally congruent neutral face and voice stimuli. We demonstrate significant supra-additive responses (i.e., where AV > [unimodal auditory + unimodal visual]) in the posterior STS within the first 250 ms for emotionally congruent AV stimuli. These findings show a role for the STS in processing crossmodal emotive signals.
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 11/2009; 106(47):20010-5. · 9.68 Impact Factor
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ABSTRACT: A widely adopted neural model of face perception (Haxby, Hoffman, & Gobbini, 2000) proposes that the posterior superior temporal sulcus (STS) represents the changeable features of a face, while the face-responsive fusiform gyrus (FFA) encodes invariant aspects of facial structure. 'Changeable features' of a face can include rigid and non-rigid movements. The current study investigated neural responses to rigid, moving faces displaying shifts in social attention. Both functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and magnetoencephalography (MEG) were used to investigate neural responses elicited when participants viewed video clips in which actors made a rigid shift of attention, signalled congruently from both the eyes and head. These responses were compared to those elicited by viewing static faces displaying stationary social attention information or a scrambled video displaying directional motion. Both the fMRI and MEG analyses demonstrated heightened responses along the STS to turning heads compared to static faces or scrambled movement conditions. The FFA responded to both turning heads and static faces, showing only a slight increase in response to the dynamic stimuli. These results establish the applicability of the Haxby model to the perception of rigid face motions expressing changes in social attention direction. Furthermore, the MEG beamforming analyses found an STS response in an upper frequency band (30-80 Hz) which peaked in the right anterior region. These findings, derived from two complementary neuroimaging techniques, clarify the contribution of the STS during the encoding of rigid facial action patterns of social attention, emphasising the role of anterior sulcal regions alongside previously observed posterior areas.
Neuropsychologia 10/2009; 48(2):477-90. · 3.64 Impact Factor
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Jeremy Hall,
Heather C Whalley,
James W McKirdy,
Liana Romaniuk,
David McGonigle,
Andrew M McIntosh,
Ben J Baig,
Viktoria-Eleni Gountouna,
Dominic E Job,
David I Donaldson,
Reiner Sprengelmeyer, Andrew W Young,
Eve C Johnstone,
Stephen M Lawrie
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ABSTRACT: The amygdala plays a central role in detecting and responding to fear-related stimuli. A number of recent studies have reported decreased amygdala activation in schizophrenia to emotional stimuli (such as fearful faces) compared with matched neutral stimuli (such as neutral faces). We investigated whether the apparent decrease in amygdala activation in schizophrenia could actually derive from increased amygdala activation to the neutral comparator stimuli.
Nineteen patients with schizophrenia and 24 matched control participants viewed pictures of faces with either fearful or neutral facial expressions, and a baseline condition, during functional magnetic resonance imaging scanning.
Patients with schizophrenia showed a relative decrease in amygdala activation to fearful faces compared with neutral faces. However, this difference resulted from an increase in amygdala activation to the neutral faces in patients with schizophrenia, not from a decreased response to the fearful faces.
Patients with schizophrenia show an increased response of the amygdala to neutral faces. This is sufficient to explain their apparent deficit in amygdala activation to fearful faces compared with neutral faces. The inappropriate activation of neural systems involved in fear to otherwise neutral stimuli may contribute to the development of psychotic symptoms in schizophrenia.
Biological psychiatry 08/2008; 64(1):70-3. · 8.93 Impact Factor
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ABSTRACT: Event-related potentials (ERPs) were used to investigate the role of attention on the processing of facial expressions of fear and disgust. Stimuli consisted of overlapping pictures of a face and a house. Participants had to monitor repetitions of faces or houses, in separate blocks of trials, so that object-based attention was manipulated while spatial attention was kept constant. Faces varied in expression and could be either fearful or neutral (in the fear condition) or disgusted or neutral (in the disgust condition). When attending to faces, participants were required to signal repetitions of the same person, with the facial expressions being completely irrelevant to the task. Different effects of selective attention and different patterns of brain activity were observed for faces with fear and disgust expressions. Results indicated that the perception of fear from faces is gated by selective attention at early latencies, whereas a sustained positivity for fearful faces compared to neutral faces emerged around 160ms at central-parietal sites, independent of selective attention. In the case of disgust, ERP differences began only around 160ms after stimulus onset, and only after 480ms was the perception of disgust modulated by attention allocation. Results are interpreted in terms of different neural mechanisms for the perception of fear and disgust and related to the functional significance of these two emotions for the survival of the organism.
Neuropsychologia 05/2008; 46(5):1468-79. · 3.64 Impact Factor
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ABSTRACT: The attentional blink paradigm was used to examine whether emotional stimuli always capture attention. The processing requirement for emotional stimuli in a rapid sequential visual presentation stream was manipulated to investigate the circumstances under which emotional distractors capture attention, as reflected in an enhanced attentional blink effect. Emotional distractors did not cause more interference than neutral distractors on target identification when perceptual or phonological processing of stimuli was required, showing that emotional processing is not as automatic as previously hypothesized. Only when semantic processing of stimuli was required did emotional distractors capture more attention than neutral distractors and increase attentional blink magnitude. Combining the results from 5 experiments, the authors conclude that semantic processing can modulate the attentional capture effect of emotional stimuli.
Journal of Experimental Psychology Human Perception & Performance 05/2008; 34(2):328-39. · 3.06 Impact Factor
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ABSTRACT: The perception of a face allows us to recognize the person, infer his or her emotional state, better understand what the person is saying, and derive general information, such as age and gender. This unique visual stimulus has generated a wealth of research, and subsequently theoretical and methodological debate. This special issue brings together 16 original papers that show the extraordinary diversity and fruitfulness of the approaches now being pursued. They are aimed at understanding different aspects of face perception in populations ranging from healthy children to adults with brain lesions and with techniques covering the entire spectrum from paper-and-pencil tests to functional brain imaging. Together, these contributions provide an insightful overview of the current state of research on face perception and exemplify the questions that dominate the field. To one such question, whether 'face perception' is a special issue in the broad field of the cognitive neurosciences, the answer is clearly yes!
Journal of Neuropsychology 04/2008; 2(Pt 1):1-14. · 1.74 Impact Factor
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ABSTRACT: Previous studies examining face learning have mostly used only a single exposure to 1 image of each of the faces to be learned. However, in daily life, faces are usually learned from multiple encounters. These 6 experiments examined the effects on face learning of repeated exposures to single or multiple images of a face. All experiments provided evidence for image-specific picture learning taking place over and above any invariant face learning, with recognition accuracy always highest for the image studied and performance falling across transformations between study and test images. The relative roles of pictorial and structural codes in mediating learning faces from photographs need to be reconsidered.
Journal of Experimental Psychology Human Perception & Performance 03/2008; 34(1):77-100. · 3.06 Impact Factor
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ABSTRACT: Findings of amygdala responsiveness to the eye region of fearful faces raise the question of whether eye widening is the only facial cue involved. We used fMRI to investigate the differential amygdala response to fearful versus neutral stimuli for faces, eyes, and for faces in which the eye region was masked. For maximum sensitivity, a block design was used, with a region of interest (ROI) centred on the amygdala which included peri-amygdalar areas. Evidence of amygdala responsiveness to fear compared to neutral stimuli was found for whole faces, eye region only, and for faces with masked eyes. The amygdala can therefore use information from facial regions other than the eyes, allowing it to respond differentially to fearful compared to neutral faces even when the eye region is hidden.
Neuropsychologia 02/2008; 46(9):2364-70. · 3.64 Impact Factor
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ABSTRACT: Judgments about personality and other social characteristics based on facial appearance are remarkably consistent across individuals. However, whereas the facial cues that underpin age and sex judgments are already well understood, the physical bases for judgments of characteristics such as intelligence or trustworthiness are still unknown. Inversion and photographic negation are used here to investigate the visual processes underlying social inferences from the face and to explore whether various judgments might rely on different perceptual representations. In experiment 1, the perceptions of age, sex, attractiveness, approachability, intelligence, and trustworthiness, but not distinctiveness, were affected by inversion, and all these characteristics were affected by negation. The effects of inversion and negation were independent, suggesting that they impaired the encoding of different types of information. Moreover, an independent manipulation of hue and luminance in experiment 2 showed that the effects of negation were mainly due to the reversal of luminance values. These results are consistent with the view that information about the configuration of features (the processing of which is impaired by inversion) and information about surface properties (the processing of which is impaired by brightness negation) are both used in the perception of social characteristics from faces. In addition, the fact that there was a similar pattern of impairment across most judgments suggests that there is an initial common perceptual representation of the face, from which most characteristics are inferred.
Perception 02/2008; 37(7):1061-78. · 1.31 Impact Factor
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ABSTRACT: Abrupt discontinuities in recognizing categories of emotion are found for the labelling of consciously perceived facial expressions. This has been taken to imply that, at a conscious level, we perceive facial expressions categorically. We investigated whether the abrupt discontinuities found in categorization for conscious recognition would be replaced by a graded transition for subthreshold stimuli. Fifteen volunteers participated in two experiments, in which participants viewed faces morphed from 100% fear to 100% disgust along seven increments. In Experiment A, target faces were presented for 30 ms, in Experiment B for 170 ms. Participants made two-alternative forced-choice decisions between fear and disgust. Results for the 30 ms presentation time indicated a significant linear trend between degree of morphing and classification of the images. Results for 170 ms presentation time followed the higher order function found in studies of categorical perception. These results provide preliminary evidence for separate processes underlying conscious and nonconscious perception of facial expressions of emotion.
Visual Cognition 01/2007; 15(1):36-47. · 2.05 Impact Factor
