Abstract
Visual adaptation is a powerful tool to probe the short-term plasticity of the visual system. Adapting to local features such as the oriented lines can distort our judgment of subsequently presented lines, the tilt aftereffect. The tilt aftereffect is believed to be processed at the low-level of the visual cortex, such as V1. Adaptation to faces, on the other hand, can produce significant aftereffects in high-level traits such as identity, expression, and ethnicity. However, whether face adaptation necessitate awareness of face features is debatable. In the current study, we investigated whether facial expression aftereffects (FEAE) can be generated by partially visible faces. We first generated partially visible faces using the bubbles technique, in which the face was seen through randomly positioned circular apertures, and selected the bubbled faces for which the subjects were unable to identify happy or sad expressions. When the subjects adapted to static displays of these partial faces, no significant FEAE was found. However, when the subjects adapted to a dynamic video display of a series of different partial faces, a significant FEAE was observed. In both conditions, subjects could not identify facial expression in the individual adapting faces. These results suggest that our visual system is able to integrate unrecognizable partial faces over a short period of time and that the integrated percept affects our judgment on subsequently presented faces. We conclude that FEAE can be generated by partial face with little facial expression cues, implying that our cognitive system fills-in the missing parts during adaptation, or the subcortical structures are activated by the bubbled faces without conscious recognition of emotion during adaptation.
Highlights
Because sensory systems exhibit short-term plasticity, prior experience can affect subsequent perception
New findings were observed for the bubbled face adaptors: the static emotion-recognizable adaptors produced a small facial expression aftereffect, whereas the static emotionunrecognizable adaptors produced no aftereffect
Each Facial Expression Aftereffect (FEAE) was calculated as the difference between the adaptation and baseline point of subjective equality (PSE), and the error bars are standard errors of means (SEM) of the average FEAEs calculated across subjects
Summary
Because sensory systems exhibit short-term plasticity, prior experience can affect subsequent perception. Facial Expression Aftereffect in Unrecognizable Dynamic Bubbled Faces of visual adaptation is the visual aftereffect–the bias in our judgment of a visual stimulus presented after adaptation. Xu et al [3] showed that adapting to an image of a mouth or a simple curve can bias the judgment of facial expressions of subsequently presented faces, the FEAE. This suggested that the FEAE does not require the full face as an adaptor and is spatially localized, the latter further evidenced by the finding that the aftereffect only occurred when the adapting and test mouths were in the same retinal-image location. Do other parts of the face contribute to the FEAE, and if so, under what circumstances?
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