Face Processing Flashcards
What are four reasons why we study faces?
- available and rich source of information
- developmental disabilities
- insight into agents that drive social behavior
- important to humans
What happened with the woman who had visual prosopagnosia in the video shown in class?
she was unable to recognize faces after her brain injury
Tottenham et al.’s study showed that:
Humans have a better perception for (faces/houses) than (faces/houses).
faces; houses
True or False:
Face processing isn’t important to the human experience.
False
Humans learn a lot of information about others from their face.
What is the Fusiform Face Area (FFA)?
an area in the brain (the ventral occipitotemporal cortex) that is thought to light up when humans see faces
What is the Parahippocampal Place Area?
an area in the brain (the parahippocampal gyrus) that is thought to light up when humans see houses
What is the modular view on the organization of the brain?
The brain is mapped in a way where every stimulus (faces, specific objects, etc.) has its own area in the brain
The modular view on brain organization supports a ____ theory.
nativist
What did Bowlby’s study suggest about why infants prefer to look at faces?
infants show a visual preference for faces vs. non-faces because it wants to recognize their caregiver
True or False:
Infants prefer faces over non-faces.
False
Infants do not necessarily prefer face-like stimuli because of “facedness,” but because of higher spatial frequency in the arrangement of perceptual elements in visual stimuli within face-like images
True or False:
The preference for face-like stimuli increases linearly from birth.
False
Declines from 1-4 months of age
Rebounds from 3-5 months of age
What experiment explained why the preference for face-like stimuli rebounded at around 3-5 months?
Sticky Mittens experiment
What did the Sticky Mittens experiment show about infants’ preference to face-like stimuli?
- by 5 months, children are able to recognize that they are able to do something by themselves and now realize that others are also self-directed agents
- look back at their caregiver and realize that they, too, are also self-directed
- realization of the human experience
The outcomes of the Sticky Mittens experiment shows support for the ____ theory of development.
dynamic systems
How do the concepts of acquired distinctiveness and acquired similarity apply to face processing?
- face processing is an experience expectant process of recognizing all faces
- this eventually narrows down to only being able to differentiate human faces
____-month old infants are able to differentiate between primate faces, but they lose this ability at ____-months old.
6; 9
What did the other-species effect between adults, 9 month olds, and 6 month olds show?
- adults and 9 month olds looked longer at novel human faces, but looked equally long at monkey novel and familiar faces
- 6 month olds showed novelty preferences in both the human and monkey conditions
What does the own-race bias show?
people are better able to differentiate faces of their own race than of other races
What did the FFA experiment with cars and birds show?
- car experts’ FFA lit up when shown cars, but not birds
- bird experts’ FFA lit up when shown birds, but not cars
- both groups’ FFA lit up when shown faces
Why did both groups’ FFA light up when shown faces?
all humans are face experts
True or False:
The FFA is only active when processing faces.
False
It is active for anything you’re an expert at
What did the Greeble experiment show?
- subjects randomly assigned to become an expert of Greebles
- FFA lit up once they become an expert of Greebles, compared to those who had never seen Greebles before
Face processing skills (increase/decrease) with age and experience.
increase
