Differences In Facial Recognition Research Articles

Better face-name recall is associated with better face recognition ability.

Face recognition is a highly developed and specialised human ability, distinct from other cognitive abilities. Previous studies examining individual differences in face recognition have focused on face perception and specialised perceptual mechanisms such as holistic face processing. However, the contribution of specific face memory processes to face recognition ability remains unclear. In 99 neurotypical individuals, we administered validated face perception assessments, three face memory tasks (old/new task, face-scene task, face-name/occupation task), and the Cambridge Face Memory Test (CFMT) to assess face recognition ability. We found that after accounting for face perception ability (which significantly predicted face recognition ability), face-name recall and recollection of faces in the face-scene task predicted unique variance in face recognition ability, with face-name recall being the strongest predictor. This highlights that associative memory mechanisms contribute to face recognition abilities and suggests that the ability to learn and recall proper names is particularly important to face recognition.

Face recognition's practical relevance: Social bonds, not social butterflies

Research on individual differences in face recognition has provided important foundational insights: their broad range, cognitive specificity, strong heritability, and resilience to change. Elusive, however, has been the key issue of practical relevance: do these individual differences correlate with aspects of life that go beyond the recognition of faces, per se? Though often assumed, especially in social realms, such correlates remain largely theoretical, without empirical support. Here, we investigate an array of potential social correlates of face recognition. We establish social relationship quality as a reproducible correlate. This link generalises across face recognition tasks and across independent samples. In contrast, we detect no robust association with the sheer quantity of social connections, whether measured directly via number of social contacts or indirectly via extraversion-related personality indices. These findings document the existence of a key social correlate of face recognition and provide some of the first evidence to support its practical relevance. At the same time, they challenge the naive assumption that face recognition relates equally to all social outcomes. In contrast, they suggest a focused link of face recognition to the quality, not quantity, of one's social connections.

The other-ethnicity effect in facial recognition of Tibetan and Han individuals: Evidence from behavioural and eye-movement data.

Studies have shown that facial recognition among racial groups exhibits not only an other-race effect but also an other-ethnicity effect within the same racial group. To explore differences in facial recognition and visual scanning patterns due to the other-ethnicity effect, behavioural and eye-movement data were used to investigate the other-ethnicity effect in the facial perception of Tibetan and Han Chinese individuals and whether the visual scanning patterns varied between them. Behavioural data revealed an other-ethnicity effect on facial recognition of Tibetan and Han individuals. Eye-movement data indicated that Tibetan and Han individuals fixated more on the eye and mouth regions when recognising Han faces and on the eye and nose regions when recognising Tibetan faces. The other-ethnicity effect appeared to influence facial recognition in Tibetan and Han individuals, who adopted similar visual scanning patterns when scanning the faces of individuals of their own ethnicity and those of other ethnicities.

A new Asian version of the CFMT: The Cambridge Face Memory Test - Chinese Malaysian (CFMT-MY).

The Cambridge Face Memory Test (CFMT) is one of the most important measures of individual differences in face recognition and for the diagnosis of prosopagnosia. Having two different CFMT versions using a different set of faces seems to improve the reliability of the evaluation. However, at the present time, there is only one Asian version of the test. In this study, we present the Cambridge Face Memory Test - Chinese Malaysian (CFMT-MY), a novel Asian CFMT using Chinese Malaysian faces. In Experiment 1, Chinese Malaysian participants (N = 134) completed two versions of the Asian CFMT and one object recognition test. The CFMT-MY showed a normal distribution, high internal reliability, high consistency and presented convergent and divergent validity. Additionally, in contrast to the original Asian CFMT, the CFMT-MY showed an increasing level of difficulties across stages. In Experiment 2, Caucasian participants (N = 135) completed the two versions of the Asian CFMT and the original Caucasian CFMT. Results showed that the CFMT-MY exhibited the other-race effect. Overall, the CFMT-MY seems to be suitable for the diagnosis of face recognition difficulties and could be used as a measure of face recognition ability by researchers who wish to examine face-related research questions such as individual differences or the other-race effect.

Self/other distinction in adolescents with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) assessed with a double mirror paradigm.

Self/other distinction (SOD), which refers to the ability to distinguish one's own body, actions, and mental representations from those of others, is an essential skill for effective social interaction. A large body of clinical evidence suggests that disruptions in SOD may be key to social communication deficits in individuals with autism spectrum disorders (ASD). In particular, egocentric biases have been found in cognitive, affective, behavioural, and motor domains. However, research in this area is scarce and consists of recognition paradigms that have used only static images; these methods may be insufficient for assessing SOD, given the increasing role of embodiment in our understanding of the pathophysiology of ASD. A single-centre, prospective pilot study was carried out to investigate, for the first time, self-recognition and SOD in seven adolescents with ASD compared with matched, typically developing controls (TDCs) using the "Alter Ego"TM double mirror paradigm. The participants viewed a double mirror in which their own face was gradually morphed into the face of an unfamiliar other (self-to-other sequence) or vice versa (other-to-self sequence); participants were instructed to indicate at which point the morph looked more like their own face than the other's face. Two judgement criteria were used: 1) M1: the threshold at which subjects started to recognize their own face during the other-to-self morphing sequence; 2) M2: the threshold at which subjects started to recognize the other's face during the self-to-other morphing sequence. Consistent with the predictions, the results showed that the participants with ASD exhibited earlier self-recognition in the other-to-self sequence and delayed other-recognition in the self-to-other sequence, suggesting an egocentric bias. SOD impairments were also marginally correlated with ASD severity, indicating earlier face recognition in more severely affected individuals. Furthermore, in contrast with that of TDCs, the critical threshold for switching between self and other varied with the direction of morphing in ASD participants. Finally, these differences in face recognition and SOD using mirrors, unlike previous research using static images, support the central place of bodily self-consciousness in SOD impairments. Although additional research is needed to replicate the results of this preliminary study, it revealed the first behavioural evidence of altered SOD in ASD individuals on an embodied, semiecological face-recognition paradigm. Implications for understanding ASD are discussed from a developmental perspective, and new research and therapeutic perspectives are presented.

Assessing individual differences in face recognition: No impact of task design features on the structure of this ability.

The ability to remember faces is essential for everyday life, with deficits indicative of some neurological conditions. Face recognition ability tasks vary considerably in their design (i.e., use of the same or a different picture for learning and recall and inclusion or exclusion of nonface characteristics), which is known to impact performance levels. However, it is unknown whether these design features cause additional cognitive abilities to be assessed. We preregistered three hypotheses, namely performance on face recognition tasks can best be explained by: (Hypothesis 1) a single general face recognition ability; (Hypothesis 2) a general face recognition ability and an unrelated ability representing one's capacity to ignore external information when recognizing faces; and (Hypothesis 3) a general face recognition ability, a separable unrelated ability to ignore external information, and a third unrelated ability representing one's capacity to recognize faces specifically when different photographs of the same individual are used. During a controlled laboratory session, N = 176 adults (Mage = 25.52 years) completed 16 face recognition tasks that comprised different versions of the aforementioned task designs. With confirmatory factor analysis, we found support for Hypothesis 1, indicating that the rank order of participants regarding their face recognition ability does not meaningfully differ due to the different task designs, indicating additional abilities are not needed. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

Supplemental Material for Assessing Individual Differences in Face Recognition: No Impact of Task Design Features on the Structure of This Ability

Supplemental Material for Assessing Individual Differences in Face Recognition: No Impact of Task Design Features on the Structure of This Ability

Gender differences in face recognition: The role of holistic processing

ABSTRACT Previous studies have found a female advantage in face recognition ability. The present study sought to replicate this finding in a large sample of 343 Danish psychology students using the Cambridge Face Memory Test (CFMT) and the Cambridge Face Perception Test (CFPT). Furthermore, we examined whether a potential female advantage could be explained by more efficient holistic processing indexed by the face inversion effect: a disproportionately larger effect of inversion on face than object processing (dFIE). Here we used the Cambridge Car Memory Test (CCMT) as the control task with cars as the object category. In accordance with previous studies, the results showed a female advantage in face processing both on the CFMT and the CFPT. No gender difference in the dFIE was found, however, indicating that more efficient holistic processing does not underlie the female advantage in face recognition.

Face perception predicts affective theory of mind in autism spectrum disorder but not schizophrenia or typical development.

Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and schizophrenia spectrum disorder (SCZ) have overlapping symptomatology related to difficulties with social cognition. Yet, few studies have directly compared social cognition in ASD, SCZ, and typical development (TD). The current study examined individual differences in face recognition and its relation to affective theory of mind (ToM) in each diagnostic group. Adults with ASD (n = 31), SCZ (n = 43), and TD (n = 47) between the ages of 18 and 48 years-old with full scale IQ above 80 participated in this study. The Reading the Mind in the Eyes Test (RMET) measured affective ToM, and the Benton Facial Recognition Test (BFRT) measured face perception. Adults with ASD and SCZ did not differ in their affective ToM abilities, and both groups showed affective ToM difficulties compared with TD. However, better face recognition ability uniquely predicted better affective ToM ability in ASD. Results suggest that affective ToM difficulties may relate to face processing in ASD but not SCZ. By clarifying the complex nature of individual differences in affective ToM and face recognition difficulties in these disorders, the present study suggests there may be divergent mechanisms underlying pathways to social dysfunction in ASD compared with SCZ. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).

Cultural Differences in Face Recognition and Potential Underlying Mechanisms.

The ability to recognize a face is crucial for the success of social interactions. Understanding the visual processes underlying this ability has been the focus of a long tradition of research. Recent advances in the field have revealed that individuals having different cultural backgrounds differ in the type of visual information they use for face processing. However, the mechanisms that underpin these differences remain unknown. Here, we revisit recent findings highlighting group differences in face processing. Then, we integrate these results in a model of visual categorization developed in the field of psychophysics: the RAP framework. On the basis of this framework, we discuss potential mechanisms, whether face-specific or not, that may underlie cross-cultural differences in face perception.

Age-related Differences in Expression Recognition of Faces with Direct and Averted Gaze Using Dynamic Stimuli

ABSTRACT Background: It is still an open to what extent the ecological validity of face stimuli modulates age-related differences in the recognition of facial expression; and to what extent eye gaze direction may play a role in this process. The present study tested whether age effects in facial expression recognition, also as a function of eye gaze direction, would be less pronounced in dynamic than static face displays. Method: Healthy younger and older adults were asked to recognize emotional expressions of faces with direct or averted eye gaze presented in static and dynamic format. Results: While there were no differences between the age groups in facial expression recognition ability across emotions, when considering individual expressions, age-related differences in the recognition of angry facial expressions were attenuated for dynamic compared to static stimuli. Conclusion: Our findings suggest a moderation effect of dynamic vs. static stimulus format on age-related deficits in the identification of angry facial expressions, suggesting that older adults may be less disadvantaged when recognizing angry facial expressions in more naturalistic displays. Eye gaze direction did not further modulate this effect. Findings from this study qualify and extend previous research and theory on age-related differences in facial expression recognition and have practical impact on study design by supporting the use of dynamic faces in aging research.

Guess who? Facial identity discrimination training improves face memory in typically developing children.

While vast individual differences in face recognition have been observed in adults, very little work has explored when these differences come online during development, their domain specificity, and their consistency across different aspects of face processing. These issues do not only have important theoretical implications for the cognitive and developmental psychological literatures, but may reveal critical windows of neuroplasticity for optimal remediation of face recognition impairments. Here, we describe the first formal remedial face training program that is suitable for children, modifying the popular game Guess Who. Eighty-one typical children Aged 4-11 years were randomly allocated to an experimental or active control training condition. Over 10 training sessions, experimental participants were required to discriminate between faces that differed in feature size or spacing across 10 levels of difficulty, whereas control participants continuously played the standard version of Guess Who within the same timeframe. Improvements in face memory but not face matching were observed in the experimental compared to the control group, but there were no gains on tests of object matching or memory. Face memory gains were maintained in a 1-month follow up, consistent across age, and larger for poorer perceivers. Thus, this study not only presents a promising means of improving face recognition skills in children, but also indicates a consistent period of plasticity that spans early childhood to preadolescence, implying early segregation of face versus object processing. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).

Gender Differences in Familiar Face Recognition and the Influence of Sociocultural Gender Inequality

Are gender differences in face recognition influenced by familiarity and socio-cultural factors? Previous studies have reported gender differences in processing unfamiliar faces, consistently finding a female advantage and a female own-gender bias. However, researchers have recently highlighted that unfamiliar faces are processed less efficiently than familiar faces, which have more robust, invariant representations. To-date, no study has examined whether gender differences exist for familiar face recognition. The current study addressed this by using a famous faces task in a large, web-based sample of > 2000 participants across different countries. We also sought to examine if differences varied by socio-cultural gender equality within countries. When examining raw accuracy as well when controlling for fame, the results demonstrated that there were no participant gender differences in overall famous face accuracy, in contrast to studies of unfamiliar faces. There was also a consistent own-gender bias in male but not female participants. In countries with low gender equality, including the USA, females showed significantly better recognition of famous female faces compared to male participants, whereas this difference was abolished in high gender equality countries. Together, this suggests that gender differences in recognizing unfamiliar faces can be attenuated when there is enough face learning and that sociocultural gender equality can drive gender differences in familiar face recognition.

Effects of male postpartum depression on father-infant interaction: The mediating role of face processing.

It is estimated that postpartum depression affects up to 25% of men. Despite such high prevalence, the majority of studies on postpartum depression are focused on mothers, and the role of paternal depression and its effects on infant development have been overlooked by researchers and clinicians. The present study aimed to fill this gap by investigating the effect of paternal postpartum depression on father-infant interactions. In addition, we examined whether differences in face recognition mediated the effects of paternal postpartum depression on father-infant interactions. A total of 61 father-infant dyads (17 postpartum depression, 44 controls) took part in the study. Results revealed that compared to controls, fathers with postpartum depression had a worse pattern of interaction with their infants on measures of responsiveness, mood, and sensitivity; they also had greater difficulty in recognizing happy adult faces, but greater facility in recognizing sad adult faces. Depressed fathers attributed greater intensities to sad adult and infant faces. The tendency to attribute greater intensity to sad adult faces was confirmed as a partial mediator of the effect of paternal postpartum depression on measures of father responsiveness and as a full mediator of the effects of paternal depression on father sensitivity. Clinical implications and suggestions for further studies are discussed.

Arterial spin labeling provides a reliable neurobiological marker of autism spectrum disorder

BackgroundResearch on neurobiological markers of autism spectrum disorder (ASD) has been elusive. However, radionuclide studies of cerebral blood flow (CBF) have shown decreased blood flow (hypoperfusion) in the temporal lobes of individuals with ASD across ages and intelligence. This observation fits with current neuroscientific models that implicate temporal regions in social perception and social cognition. Arterial spin labeled perfusion MRI allows noninvasive quantification of regional CBF as part of a multimodal MRI protocol. This method is almost entirely absent from ASD research to date. Our a priori hypothesis was that children with ASD would present with hypoperfusion in the temporal lobes—most notably the fusiform gyrus (given its prominent role in ASD social perception deficits). We also sought to examine the reproducibility of CBF measures, and their relationship to individual differences in facial recognition and ASD symptoms.MethodsA total of 58 males (33 with ASD) between the ages of 12 and 17 years participated in the study. All children completed two arterial spin labeling and structural (T1) scans using a 3 T Siemens Verio scanner approximately 8 weeks apart, as well as behavioral testing at time 1 that included diagnostic measures and the Benton Facial Recognition Test. CBF was the key dependent variable, as was facial recognition performance, and ASD symptoms. The two scans were used for reliability analyses.ResultsThe ASD group showed hypoperfusion in the bilateral fusiform gyrus and in right inferior temporal gyrus. Intra-class correlations showed moderate to good reliability across time within both groups, and no diagnostic group × time interactions. CBF in the left fusiform gyrus was significantly positively correlated with facial recognition. No significant correlations were observed with core ASD symptoms.ConclusionsArterial spin labeling revealed hypoperfusion in children with ASD in regions critical to social perception and cognition. The left fusiform gyrus plays an important role in facial recognition, and greater CBF in this region was correlated with more normative facial recognition performance in children with ASD. This study takes an important first step in establishing CBF of the temporal lobes as a reliable marker of ASD.

Global precedence effects account for individual differences in both face and object recognition performance.

There has been an increase in studies adopting an individual difference approach to examine visual cognition and in particular in studies trying to relate face recognition performance with measures of holistic processing (the face composite effect and the part-whole effect). In the present study we examine whether global precedence effects, measured by means of non-face stimuli in Navon's paradigm, can also account for individual differences in face recognition and, if so, whether the effect is of similar magnitude for faces and objects. We find evidence that global precedence effects facilitate both face and object recognition, and to a similar extent. Our results suggest that both face and object recognition are characterized by a coarse-to-fine temporal dynamic, where global shape information is derived prior to local shape information, and that the efficiency of face and object recognition is related to the magnitude of the global precedence effect.

The inversion, part-whole, and composite effects reflect distinct perceptual mechanisms with varied relationships to face recognition.

Face recognition is thought to rely on specific mechanisms underlying a perceptual bias toward processing faces as undecomposable wholes. This face-specific "holistic processing" is commonly quantified using 3 measures: the inversion, part-whole, and composite effects. Consequently, many researchers assume that these 3 effects measure the same cognitive mechanism(s) and these mechanisms contribute to the wide range of individual differences seen in face recognition ability. We test these assumptions in a large sample (N = 282), with individual face recognition abilities measured by the well-validated Cambridge Face Perception Test. Our results provide little support for either assumption. The small to nonexistent correlations among inversion, part-whole, and composite effects (correlations between -.03 and .28) fail to support the first assumption. As for the second assumption, only the inversion effect moderately predicts face recognition (r = .42); face recognition was weakly correlated with the part-whole effect (r = .25) and not correlated with the composite effect (r = .04). We rule out multiple artifactual explanations for our results by using valid tasks that produce standard effects at the group level, demonstrating that our tasks exhibit psychometric properties suitable for individual differences studies, and demonstrating that other predicted correlations (e.g., between face perception measures) are robust. Our results show that inversion, part-whole, and composite effects reflect distinct perceptual mechanisms, and we argue against the use of the single, generic term holistic processing when referring to these effects. Our results also question the contribution of these mechanisms to individual differences in face recognition. (PsycINFO Database Record

Preference for novel faces in male infant monkeys predicts cerebrospinal fluid oxytocin concentrations later in life

The ability to recognize individuals is a critical skill acquired early in life for group living species. In primates, individual recognition occurs predominantly through face discrimination. Despite the essential adaptive value of this ability, robust individual differences in conspecific face recognition exist, yet its associated biology remains unknown. Although pharmacological administration of oxytocin has implicated this neuropeptide in face perception and social memory, no prior research has tested the relationship between individual differences in face recognition and endogenous oxytocin concentrations. Here we show in a male rhesus monkey cohort (N = 60) that infant performance in a task used to determine face recognition ability (specifically, the ability of animals to show a preference for a novel face) robustly predicts cerebrospinal fluid, but not blood, oxytocin concentrations up to five years after behavioural assessment. These results argue that central oxytocin biology may be related to individual face perceptual abilities necessary for group living, and that these differences are stable traits.

Age-related differences in face recognition: Neural correlates of repetition and semantic priming in young and older adults.

Difficulties in person recognition are among the common complaints associated with cognitive ageing. The present series of experiments therefore investigated face and person recognition in young and older adults. The authors examined how within-domain and cross-domain repetition as well as semantic priming affect familiar face recognition and analyzed both behavioral and event-related brain potential (ERP) measures to identify specific processing stages of age-related deficits. During repetition priming (Experiments 1 and 2), the authors observed evidence of an age-related deficit in behavioral priming and clear reductions of both the N250r and the N400 ERP priming effects in older participants. At the same time, both semantic priming (Experiment 3) and the associated N400 ERP effect of semantic priming were largely intact in older adults. The authors suggest that ageing selectively affects the access to domain-general representations of familiar people via bottom-up perceptual processing units. At the same time, accessing domain-general representations via top-down semantic units seems to be relatively preserved in older adults. (PsycINFO Database Record

Individual Differences in Face Recognition: A Decade of Discovery

Given the vital role face recognition plays in human social interaction, variations in this ability hold inherent interest and potential consequence. Yet the science of such differences has long lagged behind that of differences in other cognitive domains. In particular, although scattered case reports of catastrophic face-recognition deficits due to brain damage date back more than a century, for many decades, virtually no attention was paid to naturally occurring individual differences in face recognition. This past decade, in contrast, has seen a remarkable acceleration of research into these naturally occurring differences, spurred by the creation and validation of high-quality measures, open sharing of these measures, new options for remote testing, and a concerted move toward larger and more multivariate investigations. In this article, I recount six fundamental insights gained during the past decade about individual differences in face recognition—concerning their broad range, cognitive specificity, strong heritability, resilience to change, life-span trajectory, and practical relevance. Insights like these support a richer understanding of individual social experience and could enable more informed individual and institutional decision making.