Person Perception
What’s in a Face?
Who or What are You?
Lectures 1 & 2:
Person Perception
Macrae, C.N., & Bodenhausen, G.V. (2000). Social Cognition: Thinking
categorically about others. Annual Review of Psychology, 51, 93-120.
Palermo, R., & Rhodes, G. (2007). Are you always on my mind? A review
of how face perception and attention interact. Neuropsychologia, 45, 75-92.
Tarr M.J., & Cheng, Y.D. (2002). Learning to see faces and objects. Trends
in Cognitive Sciences, 7, 23-30.
Lecture 1 – Face Perception (Background and Basics)
Lecture 2 – Person Categorization
Face Perception:
Triggering Person Understanding
Recognizing Others
QuickTime™ and a
Sorenson Video 3 decompressor
are needed to see this picture.
Development of Face Perception
Is Face Processing Innate?
• Goren, Sarty, & Wu (1975)
showed that new born infants (with an average age
of 9 minutes) track schematic face-like patterns
more than control patterns with the same features
rearranged - see also Dziurawiec & Ellis (1986)
• human infants may come equipped with knowledge of
faces (i.e., roughly what do faces look like)
I’m Looking at You
QuickTime™ and a
Sorenson Video 3 decompressor
are needed to see this picture.
But What About Face Recognition:
Are You My Mother?
Recognizing Family Members
• person recognition develops in the first 7 months of life Sai & Bushnell (1988) report that 1-month olds can
discriminate between the face of their mother and a
stranger.
• Bushnell et al. (1989) - two day olds can perform the
above discrimination.
• hair cues (12-month olds cannot discriminate face of
mother and stranger if the hair region is concealed with a
bathing cap - Bushnell, 1982).
Face Cues:
Extracting Person Knowledge
• Invariant knowledge –
identity, sex, race.
• Variable knowledge expression, emotional
status, direction of
attention.
• Static vs. Dynamic Cues
• Complex processing
conditions
Face Processing Models
• Bruce & Young (1986) Model
basic assumption – information is extracted from faces via
two distinct processing routes:
(i) identity route
(ii) expression/sex/age/gaze route
• behavioral, patient, imaging evidence
Face Processing:
Cognitive and Neural Components
Bruce & Young
(1986)
Haxby et al., (2000)
Who or What Are You?
Extracting Categories and Identities
Identifying People
• what makes a person recognizable?
features vs. configurations (part-based vs. holistic
processing (importance of configural information)
A Face of Two Halves
• Young et al (1987) made new
composite faces from the top
halves and bottom halves
different famous faces. When
the two halves of the composite
were closely aligned, to form a
new face, subjects found it very
difficult to name the top halves.
When the two halves were
misaligned, subjects were much
quicker to name the top halves
Who is It?
Disrupting Configural Processing
• Face identification relies on
configural information.
Recognition is impaired when
faces are inverted (i.e.,
featural processing dominates
- Young et al., 1988)
A Blast From the Past
Is Anybody Safe?
Expertise and Configural Processing
• Diamond and Carey (1986)
showed that recognition of
individual members of a breed
of dogs by expert breeders was
as disrupted by inversion as was
face recognition (thus, dog
breeders relied on configural
processing to identify
individual dogs)
Importance of Facial Configuration
• the importance of the overall configuration of the face can
help us understand why face recognition can be
remarkably robust despite a variety of natural (change in
expression, orientation etc) as well as unnatural (cartoons)
transformations in faces.
Recognizing Caricatures
• caricatures can be more
recognizable than line
drawings of the same
faces (Rhodes et al.,
1987). Caricatures are
effective because they
exaggerate the relationship
between the component
facial features
Are Faces Special:
Is Britney Spears Like a Teapot?
Critical Issues
• Is there anything special about the stimulus category faces or are
they just like any other class of objects?
• Hay and Young (1982)
uniqueness - are the perceptual and cognitive
processes used for recognizing faces different in
nature
from those used to process other classes of information?
specificity - are the processes involved in face
recognition, irrespective of their nature, organized into a
separate system that deals only with faces?
Evidence for Cognitive Distinctiveness
• complexity - face recognition among our greatest
accomplishments (we learn 1000s of faces)
• own-race bias (Bothwell et al., 1989)
recognition for Black/White faces among
Black/White participants
own-race bias (configural vs. featural processing)
evolution of a special face processing system
Configural Information
• faces are special because of their reliance on configural
information
inverted faces and other-race faces disrupt
configural processing
but
remember the dog experts!
Britney and the Teapot:
The Neural Correlates of Face Processing
Evidence Relating to Neural Distinctiveness
• Single-Cell Recording
single neurons in the superior temporal sulcus (STS)
that are selectively responsive to faces.
• Gross (1992) showed that the cells that are sensitive to
face stimuli do not respond to other complex
visual patterns (e.g., hands).
• Perrett et al. (1988) have demonstrated that certain cells in
STS are tuned to the face of a particular known
individual.
Recording in STS
Further Evidence for Neural Distinctiveness
• lateralization
- patients with unilateral lesions
- normal participants - visual half-field procedures
- right hemisphere is dominant for face perception
(e.g., prosopagnosia)
Still Further Evidence for Neural Distinctiveness
• aetology & anatomy
face processing disorders emerge in a wide range of
patient populations
- dementia (Hodges et al., 1993)
- closed head injury (De Haan & Campbell,
1992)
- autistic patients (Teunisse & De Gelder,
1994)
Yet Further Evidence for Neural Distinctiveness
• functional imaging
recent PET/fMRI investigations have identified a
number of areas involved in the processing of
familiar faces in the posterior, occipito-temporal
areas of the brain, the fusiform gyrus - especially
in the right hemisphere.
• fusiform face area (FFA)
responds selectively to faces
specific face processing system
Fusiform Face Area (FFA)
• functional brain imaging
investigations of the normal
human brain show that a region
in the fusiform gyrus is not only
activated when subjects view
faces, but is activated twice as
strongly for faces as for a wide
range of non-face stimuli
(Kanwisher et al., 1997)
Is the Fusiform Gyrus a Face-Specific Region?
• domain generality
- discriminating between perceptually similar objects
- are we simply experts at faces?
- might the putative face-specific mechanisms be
specialized for making any discriminations for
which we have gained expertise (remember the
dog breeders and the effects of inversion)?
Enter the Greebles
Greebles in the Brain
QuickTime™ and a
Sorenson Video 3 decompressor
are needed to see this picture.
Tapping Expertise:
Gauthier et al. (2000)
Activating Expertise
• When bird experts and car
experts were scanned while
viewing birds, cars, faces, and
objects, the activity in the faceselective region of the of
fusiform gyrus is weakest
during the viewing of assorted
objects, next strongest for the
non-expert category, stronger
yet for the expert category, and
strongest for faces (Gauthier et
al., 2000)
Summary
Things Worth Knowing
1.
2.
Components of Face Processing (i.e., featural vs. configural information)
Are Faces Special?
Next Week
1. Person Categorization
Lecture 2:
Person Categorization (Who or What are You?)
Two Routes to Person Understanding
• person categorization
categorical thinking
generic knowledge
(stereotypes)
fast, efficient, thoughtless
individuation
categorization
• person individuation
unique persons
idiosyncratic attributes
slow, effortful, thoughtful
Allport’s Assumption:
The Dominance of Categorical Thinking
“we like to solve problems easily. We
can do so best if we can fit them
rapidly into a satisfactory category
and use this category as a means of
prejudging the solution…So long
as we can get away with course
overgeneralizations we tend to do
so. Why? Well, it takes less effort,
and effort, except in the area of our
most intense interests, is
disagreeable.”
(1954, pp. 20-21)
Two Views of Jim
• ‘individuated’ Jim
• ‘categorical’ Jim
‘Individuated’ Jim
‘Categorical’ Jim
Opening the Social-Cognitive Toolbox:
The Power of Categorical Thinking
• reported effects in the literature
memories
impressions
actions
attentional preservation
• but something’s missing
people & perception
target registration
Origins of Categorical Thinking:
Relocating the ‘Person’ in Person Perception
• cognitive economy
primary cause or
useful consequence
• social-cognitive processing stream
exploiting the products of
perceptual operations
• ease of knowledge extraction
categorical vs. identity-based
Schematic Model of Person Construal
categorization
category-based processing
memories
impressions
actions
????
identification
person-based
processing
Extracting Categorical Knowledge From a Face:
Is it Easy?
• what or who do you see?
category vs. identity
• sources of facial information
featural vs. configural
• sub-optimal conditions
orientation
degradation
presentation
Troublesome Conditions
Efficiency of Sex/Identity Construal:
Effects of Inversion
• disrupting person construal
sex vs. identity
• costs of facial inversion
configural to featural shift
• speed of construal
sex vs. familiarity
Speed of Construal (facial inversion)
1200
Median reaction time
1100
1000
900
upright
inverted
800
700
600
500
Sex
Identity
Cloutier, Mason & Macrae (2005)
Efficiency of Sex/Identity Construal:
Effects of Blurring
• disrupting person construal
sex vs. identity
• costs of blurring (spatial filtering)
• speed of construal
sex vs. familiarity
Speed of Construal (blur)
1200
Median reaction time
1100
1000
900
clear
blurred
800
700
600
500
Se x
Identity
Cloutier, Mason & Macrae (2005)
Efficiency of Sex/Identity Construal:
Speed of Presentation
• disrupting person construal
sex vs. identity
• costs of rapid presentation
• speed of construal
sex vs. familiarity
Speed of Construal (presentation duration)
Median reaction time
900
800
200 msec
700
20 msec
600
500
Sex
Identity
Cloutier, Mason & Macrae (2005)
What’s That?
Person Perception:
Sex vs. Identity -Viewpoint Invariant?
• identity vs. sex
familiar or unfamiliar?
male of female?
• rotation costs
viewpoint dependence
0, 45, 90, 135, 180 degrees
• speed of classification
Speed of Classification
Cloutier & Macrae (2007)
Person Categorization:
Viewpoint Invariant?
• featural cues
hairstyle
• rotation costs
viewpoint dependence
0, 45, 90, 135, 180 degrees
• stimulus normalization
hair vs. no hair
• speed of sex categorization
Speed of Sex Categorization
1000
950
Median reaction time
900
850
800
Hair
No Hair
750
700
650
600
550
0Ў
45Ў
90Ў
135Ў
180Ў
Orientation
Cloutier & Macrae (2007)
Racial Categorization:
More Disappearing Cues
• skin tone (Levin, 2000)
hairstyle
• remove critical cues
featural to configural shift
• costs of facial rotation
Hue are You?
Speed of Race Categorization
800
Median reaction time
750
700
650
Original
Green
600
550
500
450
0Ў
45Ў
90Ў
135Ў
180Ў
Orientation
Cloutier & Macrae (2007)
Is it All in the Hair?
• triggering cues
intact face vs. hair
• social-cognitive products
categories
stereotypes
• priming effects
Hair and Sex Priming
Prime
Target
Angela
mismatching
Peter
matching
Ballet
matching
male or female?
Jeep
mismatching
Category Priming
RT(ms)
Macrae & Martin (2008)
Stereotype Priming
RT(ms)
Macrae & Martin (2008)
Changing Sex
Errors of Construal:
Dude Looks Like a Lady!
• triggering cues
power of hair
• stimulus appraisal
feature-based processing
M100 (Liu et al., 2002)
• presentation duration
25 ms vs. 200 ms
Errors of Construal
Response Latency (ms)
Experiment 2 - 200ms
780
760
740
720
700
680
Matching
Mismatching
660
640
620
600
Short Hair
Male Prime
Long Hair
Long Hair
Female Prime
Short Hair
Condition
Macrae & Martin (2008)
Errors of Construal
Response Latency (ms)
Experiment 2 - 25ms
780
760
740
720
700
680
Matching
Mismatching
660
640
620
600
Short Hair
Male Prime
Long Hair
Long Hair
Female Prime
Short Hair
Condition
Macrae & Martin (2008)
The Paradox of Person Construal:
Extracting Identities
• what do you see?
man?
rock star?
Rod Stewart?
habitual dater of blondes?
• paradox
sex vs. identity
• spontaneous construal
familiar objects
specificity
entry level (Tanaka, 2001)
What Do You See?
Spontaneous Construal
Prop.
Familiarity and Sex Priming
Prime
(150 ms)
Target
mismatching
matching
matching
male or female?
mismatching
Sex Priming
RT (ms)
Quinn, Mason & Macrae (2009)
Familiarity and Sex Priming II:
Speed of Extraction
Prime
100 or 150 ms
100 or 150 ms
Target
mismatching
matching
matching
male or female?
mismatching
Sex Priming (150 ms)
RT (ms)
Quinn, Mason & Macrae (2009)
Sex Priming (100 ms)
RT (ms)
Quinn, Mason & Macrae (2009)
Extracting Identities:
Temporal Parameters
•
there’s something about Carey!
when is Mariah a woman? (~100ms)
when is Mariah, Mariah? (~150ms)
•
time course of identity-based processing
sex then identity?
does Mariah override woman?
Identity-Based Priming:
Speed of Extraction
Prime
100 or 150 ms
100 or 150 ms
Target
familiar or unfamiliar?
mismatching
matching
matching
mismatching
Identity-Based Priming
RT (ms)
Quinn, Mason & Macrae (2009)
Summary
Things Worth Knowing
1.
2.
Efficiency of Person Categorization
Importance of Featural Cues
Next Week
1. Stereotyping