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PSY2001: Developmental Psychology PSY STAGE 2 > Lecture 2: Face Perception > Flashcards

Lecture 2: Face Perception Flashcards

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1
Q

Outline of lecture

A
  • RECAP from last week
  • General review of the development of visual perception
  • Review of perception research methods in young infants and children
  • Why is face perception important?
  • Ontogeny (development) of face perception
  • Overview of theories of face perception → early vs late maturation
  • Disorders affecting face perception.
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2
Q

OMBEA

Q1

a) Which of the following is example of normative history graded influence?

A
  • WWII
  • NOT Starting school at age 5, Death of a parent, Puberty
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3
Q

OMBEA

Q1

b) If ‘nature’ is playing a bigger role than ‘nurture’ for a specific trait then…

A
  • Monozygotic (MZ) twins will be more similar.
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4
Q

Psychologists discriminate between perception and sensation

Perception vs Sensation

Sensation

A
  • Sensation refers to the process when sensory receptors detect sensory input from the environment which is then transmitted to the brain.
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5
Q

Psychologists discriminate between perception and sensation

Perception vs Sensation

Perception

A
  • Perception is the interpretation of this sensory input that happens in the brain.
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6
Q

Psychologists discriminate between perception and sensation

Perception vs Sensation

With, perception

A
  • we obtain an understanding about events, objects and people in our enviroment.
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7
Q

Both sensation and perception are…

A

different

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8
Q

Visual perception development

A
  • Visual acuity
  • Visual scanning
  • Colour vision
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9
Q

Visual acuity

What is it?

A
  • Visual acuity is measuring an individual’s ability to process fine detail.
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10
Q

Visual acuity

Grating Stimuli

Atkinson & Braddick, 1981

A
  • Used a series of grating stimuli that were on paddles.
  • The stimuli were made up of black and white lines that were vertical and of equal width.
  • Along with each paddle, the lines have progressively gotten narrower to the point which individuals won’t be able to detect that the lines are separate and the paddles will appear grey.
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11
Q

Visual acuity

Grating Stimuli

Atkinson & Braddick, 1981

Newborn infants have poor visual acuity

A
  • Results from Atkinson and Braddick experiment showed that newborn infants were only able to recognise that the lines were separate if they were 30 times wider than the minium lines adults can detect.
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12
Q

Visual acuity

A
  • Newborn infants have poor visual acuity but this ability rapidly increases during their first 6 months of life.
  • They nearly reach adult ability of visual acuity by 1 year old.
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13
Q

Visual Scanning

A

Ability to track objects in a fluid way

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14
Q

Visual Scanning

Newborn infant’s vision is also limited

Moving objects

A
  • For instance, infants that are younger than 2 months old won’t be track objects in a smooth way. They would tend to make a series of jerky eye movements to follow a moving object (Aslin, 1981)
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15
Q

Visual Scanning

Scanning abilities of infants

To see a whole object, it is required to scan across an object. Therefore, infants may have limited scanning abilities.

Geometric shape study

A
  • Salapatek (1975) tracked the eye movements of infants while they scanned a series of shapes such as triangles and circles.
  • They found that 1 month old infants tend to focus on a single or a limited number of features of a shape, particularly the boundary (outside edges) of a shape.
  • However, with 2 month old infants they have a preference to focus on internal features of the shape than its boundaries. Therefore, adopting a more comprehensive scanning strategery.
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16
Q

What does Salapatek (1975) findings have implaction for..

A

Face perception

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17
Q

Infant’s Colour Vision

Newborn infants have a limited colour detecting ability.

For instance,

(Adams et al. 1994)

A
  • Adams et al. (1994) showed that they could distinguish between white and red, but could not distinguish between white and other colours.
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18
Q

Infant’s Colour Vision

By 2 months old, infants can

(Teller et al., 1978)

A
  • able to distinguish white from several other colours such as blue, orange and some purples.
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19
Q

Infant’s Colour Vision

By 1 month old, an infant can..

A
  • Look longer at brighter and bold colours.
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20
Q

Infant’s colour vision

4 months old

Kellman & Arteberry, 2006

A
  • By 4 months old. infant’s colour vision is close to adult level.
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21
Q

How do we test for perceputal abilities?

(3)

A
  • Preference tests
  • Habituation tests
  • Conditioning
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22
Q

Preference test

A
  • The researchers will display two stiumli to an infant simultaneously.
  • For example, stimuli A and B together.
  • Then they will measure how long the infant looks at each stimuli.
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23
Q

Preference test

Does infant look at one more than the other?

Infant can discrminate between stimuli.

If infant looked equally both or infant looked at another stimuli longer than another one.

A
  • If an infant looks at both stimuli equally then this may imply that they do not differentiate between them
  • If the infants looks at one stimuli longer than another stimuli (looks at A longer than B), then it is infeered that the infant prefers that stimuli. Therefore, the researcher can conclude that the infant can differentiate between the two stimuli (since infant having a preference indicates that they can discrminate between the two stimuli) and that stimuli A is more stimulating to the infant.
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24
Q

Preference test can use technology such as..

A
  • Eye tracking technology
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25
Q

Example of preference test is Fantz (1961)

A
  • Series of circle stimuli that infants exposed to.
  • Example of circle stimuli is schematic face, stripped, bulls-eye or checkerboard patterns and coloured plain discs.
  • They found that, young infants could distinguish between patterned and unpatterened shapes. For instance, they fixated more on striped, bulls-eye or checkerboard patterns than plain discs.
  • Concluding that infants have an early preference for complex patterns.
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26
Q

Habituation Test

A
  • If an infant is shown stimulus A is repeatedly shown, then each time it is displayed the infant will spend fewer time looking at it. and lose interest This means that the infant habituates to the stimulus A.
  • When the stimulus A is changed into a different stimulus called B, then the infant will have renewed interest in this novel stimulus and start to looking at it for some time. (dishabituation)
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27
Q

Habituation Test

Possible Results

A
  • When researcher wants to know whether an infant can distinguish between two similar stimuli
  • Can display stimuli A until the infant has habituated to it.
  • Then display stimuli B.
  • If the infant does not spend some time looking at stimuli B or treats stimuli B as stimuli A in which they lose interest in it. Therefore, this infers that the infant cannot differentiate between infant A and B.
  • If the infant does begin to look at stimuli B, then it can be assumed from this dishabiutation that the infant is able to differentiate between stimuli A and B.
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28
Q

Conditioning

What is conditionning?

A
  • This is where infants will carry out target behaviours (set by researcher) if those behaviours have been reinforced.
29
Q

Conditioning example

A
  • Researcher condition infants to turn their head to one side by rewarding them whenever they perform this behaviour.
  • At the start of the experiment, the researcher will have to wait until the infant naturally turns their head to one side to reward them.
  • This rewards may be playing peek a boo or their caregiver appearing in front of them.
30
Q

Some researchers use infant’s response similar to the habituation and dishabtiutation paradigm.

HAS Procedure

A
  • Infants suck an artifical dummy that is connected to a machine that measure the amplitude and sucking rate on the dummy.
  • Condition infant that if their sucking rate increases, they get a reward of a specific stimuli such peek a boo or their caregiver’s face.
31
Q

Some researchers use infant’s response similar to the habituation and dishabtiutation paradigm.

HAS Procedure

A
  • For example, infant increases their sucking rate more than their usual rate, they are rewarded by presenting a specific stimulus (A).
  • Therefore, the infant is conditioned to associate that whenever they increase their sucking rate they are rewarded by a specific stimulus.
  • If the stimulus A is continually presented, the infant will gradually lose interest to the point that their sucking rate is less frequent (habituated to stimulus A).
  • At this point, the experimenter can change the stimulus into a different novel stimulus.
  • If the infant’s sucking rate increases while hearing sound B therefore, the researcher can infer that the infant is able to distinguish between the 2 stimuli.
  • However, if their sucking rate does not increase, it shows the infant treats stimuli A and stimuli B the same.
32
Q

Face Perception: Key Questions

A
  • Why is it useful?
  • What abilities are we born with? (Nature vs Nurture)
  • How does it develop?

→ Is it a specialized ability?

→ When is it fully mature?

33
Q

Why is it useful? - face perception

A
  • What can you tell from a face?
  • Species
  • Sex
  • Race
  • Identity
  • Mood, Emotional state (Subtle)
  • Intent and truthfulness (Subtle)
  • It is crucial ability for successful social life and impacts social interactions
34
Q

Theoretical Approaches across developmental

Nature vs Nurture

Nativist vs Empiricsm

A
  • Nativisst argue that perceputal abilities are present at birth therefore they are innate.
  • On the other hand, empiricists argue that these abilities are learned and obtained through experience.
35
Q

Theoretical Approaches across developmental

Nature vs Nurture

Nativist vs Empiricsm

Are faces special?

A
  • From nativism point of view, there are special perceputal processes that are organised at birth.
  • From an empircist view, infants perceive faces the same way they perceive other objects. Their face perception becomes specalised after experience.
36
Q

Arguging for innate face preference

Fantz (1961)

A
  • The earliest study of facial recognition ability in infants was studied by Fantz (1961) in which they displayed three types of facial stimuli to 1-15 week old infants
  • 3 padles with three different types of face stimuli.
  • One stimuli was a schematic face
  • Second face stimuli was a schematic face in which their facial features were scrambled.
  • The third face stimuli had a solid area that covered a quarter of the stimuli
  • Findings:
  • Fantz found that infants had a slight preference for the schematic face as compared to the jumbled face. However, infants had a stronger preference for schematic face and jumbled face over the solid pattern face.
  • Fantz inferred that infants had a preference for complex patterns as the schematic face and jumbled face stimuli had higher complexity as compared to the solid pattern face.
37
Q

Innate face preference?

Maurer and Barrera (1981) overcame the issue of complexity by adding controls for it.

Method

A
  • 1 to 2 month old infants were shown a series of three face stimuli.
  • One stimulus was a schematic face, the second stimulus was a symmetrical scrambled face , the third face was an asymmetrical scrambled face.
  • All the faces had same complexity as they all had the same facial features.
38
Q

Innate face preference?

Maurer and Barrera (1981) overcame the issue of complexity by adding controls for it.

Results + Conclusion

A
  • They found that in 1 month old there was no difference in their looking times between the 3 stimuli.
  • However, 2 month olds, looked longer at the schematic face than the other two stimuli, therefore concluding that the preference for faces at 2 months is more than just a preference for complex stimuli.
39
Q

Innate face preference

However, other researchers using different research techniques found that newborn infants can recognise faces.

Goren et al. (1975)

A
  • Goren et al. used a different procedure in which newborn infants laid on their back and presented with moving stimuli instead of static.
  • Gorn et al. moved the stimuli using an arc from one side of the infant to another.
  • The infant’s eye and head movements were measured how long they tracked each stimulus.
  • 3 types of stimuli was used. One stimuli was a schematic face, one was a scrambled face and one was blank/
  • The findings showed that with newborn infants, they tracked the schematic face more than the scrambled and blank stimuli.
  • Goren et al concluded that therefore newborn infants have an ability to detect and track facial stimuli.
40
Q

Why is Goren et al study better?

A
  • As generally infants see faces moving in the environment rather than being static s
41
Q

Early face preference

Johnson et al. (1991)

A
  • Johnson et al. (1991) replicated Goren’s et al study.
  • They confirmed Goren et al. findings that newborn infants track the schematic face significantly more than the other two stimuli.
  • However, with 3 month old infants, they no longer spent more time tracking the schematic face more as compared to the other two stimuli.
  • For example, infants prefer a schematic moving face showing that they have a face preference at birth but this preference is not present after 3 months. If infants are shown a static face (like Maurer & Barrera , 1981), they do not show a face preference until they are 2 months old.
  • To explain these previous findings, they proposed that early facial recognition is based on a 2 process model.
  • CONSPEC: This is an early system (happens within the subcortical system) that biases infants to orient towards faces and seek them out.
  • CONLEARN: This sub cortical system is then taken over by a more mature system (in visual cortex) that has more precise facial recognition.
42
Q

Over the last few years, extensive evidence has shown that young infants have good facial-recognition skills and can learn faces rapidly.

What else can newborns do?

A
  • They have the ability to recongise the identity of novel individuals (Turati et al., 2008)
  • They can recognise eye-gaze (Farroni et al., 2002).
  • By showing different pictures of individuals looking to the side or directly. Infants tend to look more at the pictures of individuals with a more directed eye gaze than those with averted eye gaze.
  • Field et al., 1982 showed that infants can recognise expressions as they dishabituated when the facial expression changes.
  • Newborn infants (less than a week old) have a preference for attractive faces as they had a longer looking time at attractive faces than unattractive faces (Slater et al., 2000)
43
Q

What else can a newborn do?

Discriminating mother’s face.

A
  • Newborn infants are also able to discriminate their mother’s face (Bushnell, 2001; Pascalis et al. 1995).
  • Walton et al. (1992) showed this using the HAS procedure (High Amplitude Sucking) in 1-4 day old infants.
  • These infants were shown a video that contained their mother face as well as a female face. The female had a similar face to the mother but was unfamiliar to them.
  • Both adults had a neutral expression and the use of video meant that there were no olfactory cues for the infant.
  • Firstly the infants were shown one face on the video, if they began sucking then the face would remain on the screen. However, if they did not suck, then the second face would show on the screen and remainained on the video as long as the infants sucked.
  • Walton et al measured the sucking rate to keep their mother’s face and the female’s face.
  • Results showed that sucking rate increased to keep their mother’s face on the video screen.
44
Q

How are the infants doing this?

How are infants able to have good facial-recognition skills and learn faces rapidly.

Pascalis et al. (1995)

A
  • Newborn infants preference for mother’s face was removed once the hairline and outer features of the face was blocked.
  • Therefore implies that newborns use those outer features to recognise and identify faces.
45
Q

How are the infants doing this?

How are infants able to have good facial-recognition skills and learn faces rapidly.

Turati et al. (2006)

A
  • They used the habituation and dishabituation paradigm over a series of 3 conditions.
  • The first condition involves faces that have full facial features including their face and hairline being visible.
  • The second condition is where the outer contours of the faces and hairline are occluded (inner features condition)
  • The third condition is where the outer features of the faces are included but their inner facial features are blurred (outer-features condition).
  • Results showed that infants ability to discminrate in full-face condition , able to do in inner and outer feature condition. However, their ability to discrminate faces was better in the full-face condition as compared to the outer-feature condition.
  • Overall, it shows that infants use both outer and inner features to discrminate faces.
46
Q

PAUSE.. infants demonstrate an early preference for faces as well as certain types of faces and able to discrminate between different faces.

DOES THIS MEAN THAT FACE PERCEPTION MUST BE INNATE TO SOME EXTENT?

Sugita et al’s study

Aim and Method

A
  • Suggestive but not conclusive.
  • Recent monkey studies provide information on whether a facial processing system is a perceptual process organised at birth or whether it is orginated from a general system that becomes specalised with experience over time.
  • Sugita et al. wanted to investigate how early deprivation affects the facial recognition in monkeys.
  • Newborn macaquate monkeys were separated from their mothers immediately after birth and reared by human caregivers.
  • Their enclosures were decorated with imitation flowers and colour toys to provide a visual environment for the monkeys
  • During the face deprivation period of 6 to 24 months, the human caregivers wore a face mask whenever they interacted with the monkeys
47
Q

Effect of the environment

VPC task

Pascalis et al.

Can be explained by face-space

A
  • Example of Pascalis using the preference technique
  • He tested 6 months, 9 months and adults ability to differentiate monkey faces and human faces.
  • He used a visual paired comparison task in which generally participants are shown image A during the formalisation phase, Once this phase is over, the participants are shown image A and image B simultaneously.
  • If participants looked at image B longer than Image A, then the researcher can infer that the participants is able to distinguish between these two images.
48
Q

Effect of the environment

VPC task

Pascalis et al.

Findings

A
  • 6 month old infants looked significantly longer at the noval face stimuli as compared to the familiar face. This was the case for both human and monkey faces.
  • However for both 9 months old and adults, they had a significant higher looking time for the novel human face as compared to the familiar human face. However, there was no significant difference in their looking times in both the novel and familiar monkey face.
  • their facial processing system experience ‘perceptual narrowing’ in order to become more specialised in discriminating human faces.
  • However, Pascalis et al. 2005 if 9 month olds exposed to monkey faces they were able to discrminate them.
49
Q

Effect of environment

Other race effects.

A
  • Adults are better at distinguishing faces of their own race than faces that belong to other racial groups.
  • This effect is referred as the other-race effect
  • Pascalis et al. (2012)
  • After 3 month old, they prefer their own race faces than faces belonging to other races (Kelley et al. 2005).
  • Adopted
  • Sangrigoli et al. (2005) demonstrated that Korean adults that were adopted in a Caucasian family between the ages of 3-9 years old were more accurate in discriminating Causcasian faces than Korean faces.
    *
50
Q

Effect of Environment → Early social experience

A
  • Infants showed they are better at discriminating and recognising female faces than another gender of faces.
  • This is thought to the effect of exposure to primary care-giver as exposed to female caregiver.
  • Preference for female faces in 3-month-old and not newborn infants (Quinn et al. 2008)
  • However, if fathers were the primary caregiver of the infant than they show more preference of male faces (Quinn et al. 2002).
  • Institiualised children show deficits in identifying facial emotions (Wismer Fries & Pollak, 2004)
  • Children raised in abusive environment show bias for angry faces (Pollak et al. 2000) for faces they see more often.
    *
51
Q

When does it mature?

A
  • More recent research suggest that there are adult-like mechanisms take place much earlier (Crookes and McKone, 2009) as young as 4-5 years old.
  • Suggesting that increases reflect development of general cognitive abilities like concentration, attention and memory.
52
Q

When does this mature?

A
  • Early research shows that there are qualitative changes (the way we process face → late maturation) later in childhood and adoscelene
  • For example, adult mechanisms of face perception.
  • Disproportionate inversion effect where adult more accurate when faces are upright. This effect is larger for face than non-face objects.
  • Holistic processing as integrating information from all regions of face and code spacing between face and features.
53
Q

Beyond infancy→ adults are experts.

A
  • Can recognise faces as being familiar or not familiar within 0.5 seconds.
  • Can retain information on a large number of faces such as studies showing yearbook show 90% recognise yearbook photos with class size of 900 and 35 years later.
  • If adults are expert then when does this expertise emerge, some research suggest that not until 30+ years for face recognition, why does it take this long?
54
Q

Late maturation vs Early maturation

Two key theories

Face specific perceptual development

A
  • Face specific perceptual development theory (late maturation) is that the development of the face-specific mechanism (e.g holistic processing) is ongoing and continues to develop into late childhood and adolescence. Face perception gets better due to increased exposure to faces.
55
Q

Atypical facial perception

A
  • ASD and social recognition, imparied in recognising familiar faces, remembering faces, and interpreting eye-gaze and emotion.
  • William’s Syndrome can process unfamiliar faces atypically and have a prolonged face gaze (Riby et al. 2008)
  • Prosopagnosia (face blindess) has they have damage or abnormalities in right fusiform gyrus due to stroke or brain injury or born from it (congential prosopagnsia). There is different severity of this.
56
Q

What else?

A
  • Genetic differences as twin studies show strong genetic influence
  • However, this depends on face and task as there is a difference between familiar and unfamiliar faces (Young and Burton, 2018).
57
Q

PAUSE.. infants demonstrate an early preference for faces as well as certain types of faces and able to discrminate between different faces.

DOES THIS MEAN THAT FACE PERCEPTION MUST BE INNATE TO SOME EXTENT?

Sugita et al’s study

Results

A
  • The macaquate infant monkeys showed a preference for faces as compared to non-face objects.
  • Supporting this idea that there is an innate face preference.
58
Q

When does it mature?

Susilo et al. (2013)

A
  • Tested 2,000 18-33 year old
  • Over faces and art.
  • Controlled for non-face visual recognition, sex and own race bias.
  • There was a positive association between age and facial recognition abilities supporting with late maturation hypothesis.
59
Q

Other race effects

Why does it happen?

‘Face space’

A
  • Argued that the development of facial recognition occurs in a ‘face space’ (Ellis 1991; Humphreys & Johnson, 2007; Johnson & Ellis, 1995;Nishmura et al., 2008; Valentine, 1991).
  • This ‘face space’ is a multidimensional space’ in which the origin of the space represents the average of all the faces experienced by the individual. The more the face is similar to the average face then the closer it is to the origin but the faces that are more distinct are further away from the origin.
  • This face space has been used to explain the other race effect as participants had poorer individuation other race- individuals than their own race-individualis due to their face space dimensions becoming more tuned to their frequently observed faces (own race faces) , leading to errors for other-race faces (Crookes and McKone 2009)
60
Q

What things can other infant do..?

Despite this early expertise of face recognition, research has shown that there is significant

A
  • amount of research showing that this facial recognition system continues throughout childhood into adolescence.
61
Q

What things can other infant do..?

Despite this early expertise of face recognition, research has shown that there is significant

A
  • amount of research showing that this facial recognition system continues throughout childhood into adolescence.
62
Q

Late maturation vs Early maturation

Two key theories

General cognitive development theory

A
  • Argue that performance on facial recognition task increases later as general cognitive factors such as memory ability, narrowing of visual attention and concentration improve.
  • They argue that adult-like mechanisms of face perception take place as young as 4-5 year olds
63
Q

Support for general cognitive development theory

Lundy, Jackson and Haaf (2001)

A
  • They found that children’s poor ability to match the identity of faces in the presence of distractors was removed when the faces were made longer.
  • Therefore, this shows that poor visual acuity and the difficulty to narrow the focus of visual attention contribute to children’s poor performance in this task.
64
Q

Face specific perceptual development

Facial recognition development occur in ‘face’ space.

A
  • Argued that the development of facial recognition occurs in a ‘face space’ (Ellis 1991; Humphreys & Johnson, 2007; Johnson & Ellis, 1995;Nishmura et al., 2008; Valentine, 1991).
  • This ‘face space’ is a multidimensional space’ in which the origin of the space represents the average of all the faces experienced by the individual. The more the face is similar to the average face then the closer it is to the origin but the faces that are more distinct are further away from the origin.
  • Therefore that’s why preference for attractive faces since attractive faces are more averaged (Rhodes, Sumich & Bylatt, 1999) and other race effect.
  • In development, face space theories is that the ‘face space’ dimensions are determined through experience and more tuned throughout life.
    *
65
Q

Face specific perceptual development

Novel faces.

A
  • Third element of the development in face-specific process is the development of perceputally encoding a novel face.
  • Carey that young children do not form representations of newly encountered faces as effectively as adults do. Adults shown that
66
Q

Face specific perceptual development theory

These improvements in facial recognition in face-specific perceptual development theory are due to holistic processing…

A
  • The holistic processing includes the integration of the information across an entire face and the ability to process exact spaces between facial features (Crookes & McKone, 2009).
    *
67
Q

Face specific perceptual development theory

These improvements in facial recognition in face-specific perceptual development theory are due to holistic processing…

The holistic processing is associated with the inversion effect

A
  • The inversion effect is when faces are recognised more rapidly when they are upright than when they are upside down (Pascalis et al. 2012).
68
Q

Face specific perceptual developmental theory

The assumption on why the inversion effect occurs is due to the way holistic processing operates and works only for upright faces as individuals remember inverted faces more poorly as compared to inverted on-face objects (Diamond & Caret , 1986, Robins & McKone , 2007)

Holistic processing research

Young and Hellawell → Composite effect

Kanwisher & Duchaine, 2007

A
  • Young Hellawell and Hay, in their composite effect they aligned a top half of a face (e.g George Bush) with a bottom half of another face (e.g Tony Blair) to produce a ‘new face. Participants showed difficulty to name the top half of the face when it is aligned with the bottom half.
  • These holistic effects for upright faces are absent for recongising inverted and scrambled faces (Kanwisher &Duchaine, 2007)
69
Q

Face specific perceptual development

Showing holistic processing begins in children at age 10 years old

Meinhardt et al. (2017)

A
  • Used series of stimuli to study the development of composite effect.
  • Used series of human stimuli where the top half of a face was aligned with the bottom half of another face.
  • Also used non-face objects such as watches where they aligned the top half of a clock with the bottom half of another clock.
  • Results showed that in younger adults showed a significantly larger composite effect with faces but not with watches.
  • On the other hand, both older adults and 10 year old children showed composite effect for both face and watches with a slightly higher composite effect for watches.
  • Therefore, this shows that children have an adult-like holistic processing ability by the age of 10 years old.

PSY2001: Developmental Psychology PSY STAGE 2 (6 decks)

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