Abstract
Despite the increasing interest in twin studies and the stunning amount of research on face recognition, the ability of adult identical twins to discriminate their own faces from those of their co-twins has been scarcely investigated. One’s own face is the most distinctive feature of the bodily self, and people typically show a clear advantage in recognizing their own face even more than other very familiar identities. Given the very high level of resemblance of their faces, monozygotic twins represent a unique model for exploring self-face processing. Herein we examined the ability of monozygotic twins to distinguish their own face from the face of their co-twin and of a highly familiar individual. Results show that twins equally recognize their own face and their twin’s face. This lack of self-face advantage was negatively predicted by how much they felt physically similar to their co-twin and by their anxious or avoidant attachment style. We speculate that in monozygotic twins, the visual representation of the self-face overlaps with that of the co-twin. Thus, to distinguish the self from the co-twin, monozygotic twins have to rely much more than control participants on the multisensory integration processes upon which the sense of bodily self is based. Moreover, in keeping with the notion that attachment style influences perception of self and significant others, we propose that the observed self/co-twin confusion may depend upon insecure attachment.
Highlights
Self-face recognition is crucial for sense of identity and for building and maintaining selfawareness [1,2,3,4]
Results of the repeated measure ANOVA in the Twin group showed a main effect of Orientation (F1,19 = 95.441, p = 0.000; η2 = 0.834) with better performance in recognizing Upright with respect to Inverted face stimuli (0.047 ± 0.021; p = 0.000)
Results of the repeated measure ANOVA in the Control group showed a main effect of Orientation (F1,9 = 59.412, p = 0.000; η2 = 0.868), with better performance in recognizing Upright (0.052 ± 0.023) with respect to Inverted (0.041 ± 0.022; p = 0.000) face stimuli and a main effect of Identity (F2,18 = 25.183, p = 0.000; η2 = 0.737) showing that, unlike twins, controls were better at recognizing their own face (0.065± 0.017) than both Friend-1 (0.037 ± 0.021; p = 0.000) and Friend-2 (0.037 ± 0.019 p = 0.000) faces (Fig. 2A, lower panel)
Summary
Self-face recognition is crucial for sense of identity and for building and maintaining selfawareness [1,2,3,4]. Converging behavioral, neuropsychological and cognitive neuroscience studies have shown that one's own face has a robust representation ([7], but see [8]) and receives special brain processing, at least in the species that are endowed with self-recognition abilities. People respond to and recognize faster one’s own face with respect to famous [11,12] and friend’s faces [13,14,15,16]. This self-face advantage is found for both upright and inverted faces [13]. Configural information, and featural information can make important contributions to self-face processing [20]
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