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Abstract

The face is the primary visual signpost of our identity, but the process of how we know that a particular face is one’s own has only recently started to receive considerable scientific attention. This interest has been enhanced by multisensory phenomena such as the enfacement illusion. In this illusion, watching another face being stroked in synchrony with one’s own face produces a bias in self-recognition, whereby the other face is perceived as the own. Here, we argue that the enfacement illusion demonstrates that the representation of the own face is highly flexible and can be updated rapidly. This flexibility would allow the incorporation of changes in physical appearance as a consequence of, for example, ambient within-person variability, grooming activities or ageing. We further present evidence to demonstrate that the enfacement illusion not only transcends differences in visual appearance with another face, but also moderates affective and social processing of that face.
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... One's own face holds a significant meaning to humans as it is strongly tied to one's identity and one's self-consciousness (e.g., Estudillo & Bindemann, 2017a) and the ability to recognize one's own face helps to maintain a sense of self (Estudillo & Bindemann, 2017b;Platek et al., 2004). Being a significant stimulus critical to one's identity and the most relevant face to each individual, the own face seems to be processed in a distinctive quantitative and qualitative manner compared to other types of faces, such as faces of family members, friends, famous people, or unfamiliar people. ...
... Furthermore, it is also important to acknowledge that the goal of processing other people's and own faces is different. Specifically, individuals generally perceive the face of other people for identification purposes, whereas the own face is generally viewed for the inspection of facial features through the mirror (e.g., for grooming purposes; see Estudillo & Bindemann, 2017a;Estudillo & Bindemann, 2017b). In other words, although holistic information might be important to make identity or emotion judgements when viewing others' faces, individuals may naturally pay attention to more subtle facial details when they view themselves in the mirror. ...
... In other words, although holistic information might be important to make identity or emotion judgements when viewing others' faces, individuals may naturally pay attention to more subtle facial details when they view themselves in the mirror. In agreement with this idea, a few studies have questioned the holistic processing of the own face and have proposed a more featural approach (see Estudillo & Bindemann, 2017a). For instance, in a mental imagining study, Greenberg and Goshen-Gottstein (2009) measured the time participants took to generate a mental image of one's own face or a mental image of other people's faces. ...
Research Proposal
It is widely accepted that face perception relies on holistic processing, where faces are perceived as a "whole" rather than a collection of individual facial parts or features. However, this holistic advantage is not always found for the processing of the own face. Our study aims to further explore the role of holistic and featural processing in the identification of the own face, using three standard but largely independent measures of holistic face processing: the face inversion task, the composite face task, and the part-whole task. Participants will be asked to identify their own face, a friend's face, and an unfamiliar face in three different experimental blocks: (1) inverted vs. upright; (2) top and bottom halves of the face aligned vs. misaligned; and (3) facial features presented in isolation vs. whole foil face context. If the own face is identified at a more featural level, it is expected that, in comparison to the friend's and the stranger's faces, the own face will produce weaker face inversion, composite face, and part-whole effects. Such findings would suggest that the own face may be processed in a more featural manner compared to familiar and unfamiliar faces.
... One's own face is presumably one of the most distinctive physical features (Tsakiris, 2008) of an individual and is arguably a unique self-referential stimulus not shared with others (Devue & Brédart, 2008). Indeed, one's own face is strongly tied to identity and self-consciousness (e.g., Estudillo & Bindemann, 2017b;McNeill, 1998) and the ability to recognise one's own face helps to maintain a sense of self (Estudillo & Bindemann, 2016, 2017aPlatek et al., 2004). One's own face thus holds a special meaning to humans and is asserted to be processed distinctively. ...
... More importantly, photographs and videos offer a poor visual experience about the self-face. In fact, a large amount of research has shown that self-face representations are built through the combination of multisensory information, such as visual, tactile, and proprioceptive (for review, see Estudillo & Bindemann, 2017b). In contrast to photographs and videos, self-reflection in a mirror offers this multisensory experience. ...
Article
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The self-face advantage (SFA) is reflected through a faster recognition of a self-face compared to familiar and unfamiliar faces. Nevertheless, as Westerners and East Asians tend to present differences in self-concept styles, it is possible that the SFA is modulated by culture. The present study explored this possibility using a visual search task. British Caucasians and Malaysian Chinese participants were asked to search for frontal view images of self, friend, and unfamiliar faces among an array of unfamiliar faces. Regardless of race, participants were more accurate and faster in searching for the own face and friend’s face compared to an unfamiliar face, with no differences in the search between the own and friend’s face, and these findings could not be accounted by the cultural differences in self-concept (i.e., operationalized by SCS and HCIV scores). Altogether our results suggest that culture does not modulate the SFA and that this effect is better explained by a familiar face advantage.
... The own face is strongly tied to one's identity (e.g., Estudillo & Bindemann, 2017a), and the ability to recognize it helps in maintaining a sense of self (Estudillo & Bindemann, 2016, 2017bEstudillo et al., 2018;Tsakiris, 2008). Being a significant stimulus critical to one's identity and the most relevant face to each individual (e.g., McNeill, 1998), there has been an increased interest in selfface processing in recent years. ...
... Additionally, when people perceive their own and other people's faces, they might have different processing goals. Specifically, whereas individuals tend to perceive the face of other people for identification purposes, they tend to perceive the own face for the detailed inspection of facial features (e.g., grooming purposes; see Estudillo & Bindemann, 2017a, 2017b. Hence, the different demands associated with the perception of the own and other faces might partially explain the processing differences between the own and other faces. ...
Article
Full-text available
Studies have suggested that the holistic advantage in face perception is not always reported for the own face. With two eye-tracking experiments, we explored the role of holistic and featural processing in the processing and the recognition of self, personally familiar, and unfamiliar faces. Observers were asked to freely explore (Exp.1) and recognize (Exp.2) their own, a friend's, and an unfamiliar face. In Exp.1, self-face was fixated more and longer and there was a preference for the mouth region when seeing the own face and for the nose region when seeing a friend and unfamiliar faces. In Exp.2, the viewing strategies did not differ across all faces, with eye fixations mostly directed to the nose region. These results suggest that task demands might modulate the way that the own face is perceived and highlights the importance of considering the role of the distinct visual experience people have for the own face in the processing and recognition of the self-face.
... The own face is strongly tied to one's identity (e.g., Estudillo & Bindemann, 2017a), and the ability to recognize it helps in maintaining a sense of self (Estudillo & Bindemann, 2016, 2017bEstudillo et al., 2018;Tsakiris, 2008). Being a significant stimulus critical to one's identity and the most relevant face to each individual (e.g., McNeill, 1998), there has been an increased interest in selfface processing in recent years. ...
... Additionally, when people perceive their own and other people's faces, they might have different processing goals. Specifically, whereas individuals tend to perceive the face of other people for identification purposes, they tend to perceive the own face for the detailed inspection of facial features (e.g., grooming purposes; see Estudillo & Bindemann, 2017a, 2017b. Hence, the different demands associated with the perception of the own and other faces might partially explain the processing differences between the own and other faces. ...
Preprint
Full-text available
Studies have suggested that the holistic advantage in face perception is not always reported for the own face. With two eye-tracking experiments, we explored the role of holistic and featural processing in the processing and the recognition of self, personally familiar, and unfamiliar faces. Observers were asked to freely explore (Exp.1) and recognize (Exp.2) their own, a friend’s, and an unfamiliar face. In Exp.1, self-face was fixated more and longer and there was a preference for the mouth region when seeing the own face and for the nose region when seeing a friend and unfamiliar faces. In Exp.2, the viewing strategies did not differ across all faces, with eye fixations mostly directed to the nose region. These results suggest that task demands might modulate the way that the own face is perceived and highlights the importance of considering the role of the distinct visual experience people have for the own face in the processing and recognition of the self-face.
... One's own face holds a significant meaning to humans as it is strongly tied to one's identity and one's self-consciousness (e.g., Estudillo & Bindemann, 2017a) and the ability to recognize one's own face helps to maintain a sense of self (Estudillo & Bindemann, 2017b;Platek et al., 2004). Being a significant stimulus critical to one's identity and the most relevant face to each individual, the own face seems to be processed in a quantitatively and qualitatively different manner than other types of faces, such as faces of family members, friends, famous people, or unfamiliar people. ...
... Furthermore, it is also important to acknowledge that the goal of processing other people's and own faces is different. Specifically, individuals generally perceive the face of other people for identification purposes, whereas the own face is generally viewed for the inspection of facial features through the mirror (e.g., for grooming purposes; see Estudillo & Bindemann, 2017a, 2017b. In other words, although holistic information might be important to make identity or emotion judgements when viewing others' faces, individuals may naturally pay attention to more subtle facial details when they view themselves in the mirror. ...
Article
Full-text available
It is widely accepted that face perception relies on holistic processing. However, this holistic advantage is not always found in the processing of the own face. Our study aimed to explore the role of holistic and featural processing in the identification of the own face, using three standard, but largely independent measures of holistic face processing: the face inversion task, the composite face task, and the part-whole task. Participants were asked to identify their face, a friend’s face, and an unfamiliar face in three different experimental blocks: (a) inverted versus upright; (b) top and bottom halves of the face aligned versus misaligned; and (c) facial features presented in isolation versus whole foil face context. Inverting a face impaired its identification, regardless of the identity. However, alignment effects were only found when identifying a friend or an unfamiliar face. In addition, a stronger feature advantage (i.e., better recognition for isolated features compared to in a whole-face context) was observed for the own face compared to the friend and unfamiliar faces. Altogether, these findings suggest that the own face is processed in a more featural manner but also relies on holistic processing. This work also highlights the importance of taking into consideration that different holistic processing paradigms could tap different forms of holistic processing.
... recent research suggests that this representation is flexible and constantly updated (see, e.g., Estudillo & Bindemann, 2017a;Maister, Tsiakkas, & Tsakiris, 2013;Sforza, Bufalari, Haggard, & Aglioti, 2010;Tajadura-Jiménez, Grehl, & Tsakiris, 2012;Tsakiris, 2008). As a consequence, it appears that the cognitive representation of the own face can be contaminated by other facial identities. ...
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This study focuses on learning of the self, by examining how human observers update internal representations of their own face. For this purpose, we present a novel gaze-contingent paradigm, in which an onscreen face either mimics observers’ own eye-gaze behaviour (in the congruent condition), moves its eyes in different directions to that of the observers (incongruent condition), or remains static and unresponsive (neutral condition). Across three experiments, the mimicry of the onscreen face did not affect observers’ perceptual self-representations. However, this paradigm influenced observers’ reports of their own face. This effect was such that observers felt the onscreen face to be their own and that, if the onscreen gaze had moved on its own accord, observers expected their own eyes to move too. The theoretical implications of these findings are discussed.
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While a change in view is considered to be one of the most damaging manipulations for facial identification, this phenomenon has been measured traditionally with tasks that confound perceptual processes with recognition memory. This study explored facial identification with a pairwise matching task to determine whether view generalization is possible when memory factors are minimised. Experiment 1 showed that the detrimental view effect in recognition memory is attenuated in face matching. Moreover, analysis of individual differences revealed that some observers can identify faces across view with perfect accuracy. This was replicated in Experiment 2, which also showed that view generalization is unaffected when only the internal facial features are shown. These results indicate that the view effect in recognition memory does not arise from data limits, whereby faces contain insufficient visual information to allow identification across views. Instead, these findings point to resource limits, within observers, that hamper such person identification in recognition memory.
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Abstract This study investigated whether multisensory stimulation with other-race faces can reduce racial prejudice. In three experiments, the faces of Caucasian observers were stroked with a cotton bud while they watched a black face being stroked in synchrony on a computer screen. This was compared with a neutral condition, in which no tactile stimulation was administered (Experiment 1 and 2), and with a condition in which observers’ faces were stroked in asynchrony with the onscreen face (Experiment 3). In all experiments, observers experienced an enfacement illusion after synchronous stimulation, whereby they reported to embody the other-race face. However, this effect did not produce concurrent changes in implicit or explicit racial prejudice. This outcome contrasts with other procedures for the reduction of self-other differences that decrease racial prejudice, such as behavioural mimicry and intergroup contact. We speculate that enfacement is less effective for such prejudice reduction because it does not encourage perspective-taking.
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