Psychological and Neural Perspectives on the Role of Motion in Face Recognition

Abstract

In the real world, faces are in constant motion. Recently, researchers have begun to consider how facial motion affects memory for faces. The authors offer a theoretical framework that synthesizes psychological findings on memory for moving faces. Three hypotheses about the possible roles of facial motion in memory are evaluated. In general, although facial motion is helpful for recognizing familiar/famous faces, its benefits are less certain with unfamiliar faces. Importantly, the implicit social signals provided by a moving face (e.g., gaze changes, expression, and facial speech) may mediate the effects of facial motion on recognition. Insights from the developmental literature, which highlight the significance of attention in the processing of social information from faces, are also discussed. Finally, a neural systems framework that considers both the processing of socially relevant motion information and static feature-based information is presented. This neural systems model provides a useful framework for understanding the divergent psychological findings.