Face aftereffect in haptic perception

Abstract

Adaptation to a face belonging to a facial category, such as expression, causes a subsequently neutral face to be perceived as belonging to an opposite facial category. This is referred to as the face aftereffect (FAE) (Leopold et al., 2001; Rhodes et al., 2004; Webster et al., 2004). The FAE is generally thought of as being a visual phenomenon. However, recent studies have shown that humans can haptically recognize a face (Kilgour and Lederman, 2002; Lederman et al., 2007). Here, I investigated whether FAEs could occur in haptic perception of faces. Three types of facial expressions (happy, sad and neutral) were generated using a computer-graphics software, and three-dimensional masks of these faces were made from epoxy-cured resin for use in the experiments. An adaptation facemask was positioned on the left side of a table in front of the participant, and a test facemask was placed on the right. During adaptation, participants haptically explored the adaptation facemask with their eyes closed for 20 s, after which they haptically explored the test facemask for 5 s. Participants were then requested to classify the test facemask as either happy or sad. The experiment was performed under two adaptation conditions: (1) with adaptation to a happy facemask and (2) with adaptation to a sad facemask. In both cases, the expression of the test facemask was neutral. The results indicate that adaptation to a haptic face that belongs to a specific facial expression causes a subsequently touched neutral face to be perceived as having the opposite facial expression, suggesting that FAEs can be observed in haptic perception of faces.