Abstract
The internal face prototype is thought to be a construction of the average of every previously viewed face (Schwaninger et al., 2003). However, the influence of the most frequently encountered faces (i.e., personally familiar faces) has been generally understated. The current research explored the face distortion aftereffect in unfamiliar, famous, and personally familiar (each subject’s parent) faces. Forty-eight adult participants reported whether faces were distorted or not (distorted by shifting the eyes in the vertical axis) of a series of images that included unfamiliar, famous, and personally familiar faces. The number of faces perceived to be “odd” was measured pre- and post-adaptation to the most extreme distortion. Participants were adapted to either an unfamiliar, famous, or personally familiar face. The results indicate that adaptation transferred from unfamiliar faces to personally familiar faces more so than the converse and aftereffects did not transfer from famous faces to unfamiliar faces. These results are indicative of representation differences between unfamiliar, famous, and personally familiar faces, whereby personally familiar faces share representations of both unfamiliar and famous faces.
Highlights
The internal face prototype is thought to be a construction of the average of every previously viewed face (Schwaninger et al, 2003)
A brief overview will be presented highlighting (1) the processes involved during face recognition, (2) the face distortion aftereffect (FDAE) in unfamiliar and familiar faces, and (3) why personally familiar faces are especially important in the study of adaptation effects
FACE PERCEPTION AND RECOGNITION Neural substrates found in a wide variety of brain areas are involved in face processing (Taylor et al, 2009) and enable humans an unrivaled expert ability to tell apart the small differences between countless unfamiliar faces even though as a visual pattern they are very similar
Summary
The internal face prototype is thought to be a construction of the average of every previously viewed face (Schwaninger et al, 2003). FACE DISTORTION AFTEREFFECTS IN PERSONALLY FAMILIAR AND UNFAMILIAR FACES Face aftereffects have been looked at extensively over the past decade since Webster and MacLin’s (1999) pioneering study. To date these aftereffects have only been tested using unfamiliar or famous faces (e.g., Zhao and Chubb, 2001; Carbon and Leder, 2005, 2006; Hills et al, 2010b). The present research aimed to explore the face distortion aftereffect (FDAE) using stimuli even more familiar to participants than famous people; personally familiar faces. It is thought that this prototype needs to have both flexibility and stability to cope with the www.frontiersin.org
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