faces

Question 1

faces are …

Answer 1

salient (we’re drawn to other faces)

Question 2

first-order relationship properties

Answer 2

• Refers to the basic configuration of a face (i.e. eyes above the nose, nose above mouth etc.)
• We use these properties to DETECT THE PRESENCE of a face
• Babies react to the presence of faces, so present very early

Question 3

second-order relationship properties

Answer 3

• Refers to distance between features of the face

- used for DISCRIMINATING faces

Question 4

first-order features

Answer 4

Are the most salient features that can be processed independently of other features (e.g. nose, mouth)

Question 5

second-order features

Answer 5

• The relationship between first-order features

- Requires processing two parts of the face simultaneously. (e.g. space between eyes)

Question 6

higher-order features

Answer 6

Requires combination of first and/or second order features. (e.g. age)

Question 7

emergent properties

Answer 7

Only exists by the relationship between components

Question 8

holistic processing

Answer 8

• Refers to the observation that faces are processed as indecomposable wholes
• When we view faces, we find it hard (thought not impossible) to regard individual features, such as a mouth or a nose, without being influenced by other features of the same face.

Question 9

the composite face task

Answer 9

Task is to name top half. Bottom half is of from different person.

• when the two pictures are aligned, our ability to name the person accurately and quickly are decreased
• ^ illustrates that we can’t help but process the features as a whole (in relation to each other)

Question 10

the cross-race effect

Answer 10

People tend to be better at recognising faces from their own races rather than other races

• harder to discriminate both first-order and second-order features for people who are another race
• diminishes when people have had more “contact” with the other race

Question 11

nativism (nature)

Answer 11

• innate – “built into” every human from birth
• Universal – culture and other non-genetic influences take a secondary role to genetic influences.
• Chomsky

Question 12

empiricism (nurture)

Answer 12

Learned from ‘empirical’ sources – i.e. experience

If we are really good at something it is because we have been learning it a lot.

• Skinner

Question 13

Domain-specific hypothesis

Answer 13

Is the idea that we have “built-in” brain areas specifically specialised for processing face stimuli.
- nativist-ish

Question 14

possible evidence for Domain-specific hypothesis

Answer 14

• Infants can discriminate their mother’s face from other faces
• prefer faces over other salient stimuli
• can tell from attractive vs. unattractive faces

Question 15

Perceptual expertise (aka “Expert hypothesis”, “Perceptual Expertise”)

Answer 15

• Asserts that holistic processing is due to automatized attention to whole objects (we’re just used to it, have a lot of experience/exposure to faces)
• We process faces as a whole because faces occur as a single object, not individual features
• empiricist

Question 16

perceptual expertise experiment

Answer 16

greebles
showed that the FFA (fusiform face area) is not limited to just faces
- we can be taught to recognise objects using facial recognition