Face Inversion Research Articles

Face processing in young adults with autism and ADHD: An event related potentials study.

Atypicalities in perception and interpretation of faces and emotional facial expressions have been reported in both autism and attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) during childhood and adulthood. Investigation of face processing during young adulthood (18 to 25 years), a transition period to full-fledged adulthood, could provide important information on the adult outcomes of autism and ADHD. In this study, we investigated event-related potentials (ERPs) related to visual face processing in autism, ADHD, and co-occurring autism and ADHD in a large sample of young adults (N = 566). The groups were based on the Diagnostic Interview for ADHD in Adults 2.0 (DIVA-2) and the Autism Diagnostic Observation Schedule-2 (ADOS-2). We analyzed ERPs from two passive viewing tasks previously used in childhood investigations: (1) upright and inverted faces with direct or averted gaze; (2) faces expressing different emotions. Across both tasks, we consistently found lower amplitude and longer latency of N170 in participants with autism compared to those without. Longer P1 latencies and smaller P3 amplitudes in response to emotional expressions and longer P3 latencies for upright faces were also characteristic to the autistic group. Those with ADHD had longer N170 latencies, specific to the face-gaze task. Individuals with both autism and ADHD showed additional alterations in gaze modulation and a lack of the face inversion effect indexed by a delayed N170. Alterations in N170 for autistic young adults is largely consistent with studies on autistic adults, and some studies in autistic children. These findings suggest that there are identifiable and measurable socio-functional atypicalities in young adults with autism.

The Printed Face: Masks in Contemporary Printmaking

The adaptation of faces in visual culture, anthropology, and other disciplines is possible due to their atemporal nature and their plastic, changeful form. It is inspired by the needs of “facial society” (Macho, 1996) with the societal fixation on self-fashioning. Belting calls the mask “the medium of the face” as it visually and symbolically represents the person’s self. Through changing facial expressions, gaze, and voice modulation, a face becomes a construct based on staging or fashioning, that is, a mask. Belting emphasises that the simple dialectic of mask and self is superficial as the latter cannot exist independently (Belting, 2017, pp. 17–18). Masks take various shapes, like imprints, collages, found objects, photography, sculpture, and digital art, to answer current political, sociological, or aesthetical problems. The contemporary artworks keep their visuality and semantics up to date, adapting the phenomena of digital selfies, COVID-19 face masks, advanced AI technology, or the ecological crisis.

The face inversion effect does not provide a pure measure of holistic face processing.

It is widely held that upright faces are processed more holistically than inverted faces and that this difference is reflected in the face inversion effect. It is not clear, however, how the inversion effect can best be measured, whether it is task specific, or even whether it specifically correlates with processing of upright faces. We examined these questions in a large sample (N = 420) who provided data on processing of upright and inverted stimuli in two different tasks with faces and one with objects. We find that the inversion effects are task dependent, and that they do not correlate better among face processing tasks than they do across face and object processing tasks. These findings were obtained regardless of whether inversion effects were measured by means of difference scores or regression. In comparison, only inversion effects based on regression predicted performance with upright faces in tasks other than those the inversion effects were derived from. Critically, however, inversion effects based on regression also predicted performance with inverted faces to a similar degree as they predicted performance with upright faces. Consequently, and contrary to what is commonly assumed, inversion effects do not seem to capture effects specific to holistic processing of upright faces. While the present findings do not bring us closer to an understanding of which changes in cognitive processing are induced by inversion, they do suggest that inversion effects do not reflect a unitary construct; an implicit assumption that seems to characterize much of the research regarding face processing.

Mixed halobenzenes also prefer face⋯face approaches of aromatic rings, revealing a new inversion symthon

Most mixed halobenzenes crystallise in ‘π–π’ stacks built from symthon I. However 1,2,3-trihalobenzenes prefer one face⋯face inversion (symthon III), as shown on the left, paired with one ‘halogen edge⋯face’ interaction, shown on the right.

Supplemental Material for Modulating Perceptual Learning Indexed by the Face Inversion Effect: Simulating the Application of Transcranial Direct Current Stimulation Using the MKM Model

Supplemental Material for Modulating Perceptual Learning Indexed by the Face Inversion Effect: Simulating the Application of Transcranial Direct Current Stimulation Using the MKM Model

Emotional response evoked by viewing facial expression pictures leads to higher temporal resolution.

We examined the effects of emotional response, with different levels of valence and arousal, on the temporal resolution of visual processing by using photos of various facial expressions. As an index of the temporal resolution of visual processing, we measured the minimum lengths of the noticeable durations for desaturated photographs using the method of constant stimuli by switching colorful facial expression photographs to desaturated versions of the same photographs. Experiments 1 and 2 used facial photographs that evoke various degrees of arousal and valence. Those photographs were prepared not only in an upright orientation but also in an inverted orientation to reduce emotional response without changing the photographs' image properties. Results showed that the minimum duration to notice monochrome photographs for anger, fear, and joy was shorter than that for a neutral face when viewing upright face photographs but not when viewing inverted face photographs. For Experiment 3, we used facial expression photographs to evoke various degrees of arousal. Results showed that the temporal resolution of visual processing increased with the degree of arousal. These results suggest that the arousal of emotional responses evoked by viewing facial expressions might increase the temporal resolution of visual processing.

Face identity and facial expression representations with adaptation paradigms: New directions for potential applications.

Adaptation and aftereffect are well-known procedures for exploring our neural representation of visual stimuli. It has been reported that they occur in face identity, facial expressions, and low-level visual features. This method has two primary advantages. One is to reveal the common or shared process of faces, that is, the overlapped or discrete representation of face identities or facial expressions. The other is to investigate the coding system or theory of face processing that underlies the ability to recognize faces. This study aims to organize recent research to guide the reader into the field of face adaptation and its aftereffect and to suggest possible future expansions in the use of this paradigm. To achieve this, we reviewed the behavioral short-term aftereffect studies on face identity (i.e., who it is) and facial expressions (i.e., what expressions such as happiness and anger are expressed), and summarized their findings about the neural representation of faces. First, we summarize the basic characteristics of face aftereffects compared to simple visual features to clarify that facial aftereffects occur at a different stage and are not inherited or combinations of low-level visual features. Next, we introduce the norm-based coding hypothesis, which is one of the theories used to represent face identity and facial expressions, and adaptation is a commonly used procedure to examine this. Subsequently, we reviewed studies that applied this paradigm to immature or impaired face recognition (i.e., children and individuals with autism spectrum disorder or prosopagnosia) and examined the relationships between their poor recognition performance and representations. Moreover, we reviewed studies dealing with the representation of non-presented faces and social signals conveyed via faces and discussed that the face adaptation paradigm is also appropriate for these types of examinations. Finally, we summarize the research conducted to date and propose a new direction for the face adaptation paradigm.

Dynamics of relationships between mentors and beginning teachers

This research investigates the relationships that are established between mentor teachers (PM) and beginning teachers (PD) in order to insert the beginning teachers into the school organization and how they are influenced by the institutional management. The specific objectives of the research were the following: (1) Identifying the perception of beginning teachers regarding the difficulties of adapting to the demands of the school environment; (2) Identifying the perception of mentor teachers who work with beginning teachers on the activities of a quality mentorship; (3) Making correlations between the opinions of mentors and novice teachers regarding their strengths and the ability to face adaptation difficulties; The qualitative design consisted of conducting two focus groups with PD and PM. The debut period is considered the most decisive stage in a teacher's professional life. From the first day of school, PD faces the teaching reality that often differs from the perceptions of the teaching profession developed during initial training. The research shows that the teachers in the sample experienced: establishing teacher authority and self-positioning as a teacher, time management, problems with discipline in a classroom, lack of skills to develop curriculum and lesson plans, difficulties in communicating with parents. The article includes critical analysis, opinions on the contradiction at the moment between the legislation and the reality at the school level on the didactic mentoring and the PD insertion.

Reducing the perceptual field of view does not cause the face inversion effect

Reducing the perceptual field of view does not cause the face inversion effect

Investigating the origins of the face inversion effect with an extraordinary participant

Investigating the origins of the face inversion effect with an extraordinary participant

Individual differences in the tuning of the face adaptation aftereffect to the preferred fixation location on the face

Individual differences in the tuning of the face adaptation aftereffect to the preferred fixation location on the face

Effects of Natural Scene Inversion on Visual-evoked Brain Potentials and Pupillary Responses: A Matter of Effortful Processing of Unfamiliar Configurations

The inversion of a picture of a face hampers the accuracy and speed at which observers can perceptually process it. Event-related potentials and pupillary responses, successfully used as biomarkers of face inversion in the past, suggest that the perception of visual features, that are organized in an unfamiliar manner, recruits demanding additional processes. However, it remains unclear whether such inversion effects generalize beyond face stimuli and whether indeed more mental effort is needed to process inverted images. Here we aimed to study the effects of natural scene inversion on visual evoked potentials and pupil dilations. We simultaneously measured responses of 47 human participants to presentations of images showing upright or inverted natural scenes. For inverted scenes, we observed relatively stronger occipito-temporo-parietal N1 peak amplitudes and larger pupil dilations (on top of an initial orienting response) than for upright scenes. This study revealed neural and physiological markers of natural scene inversion that are in line with inversion effects of other stimulus types and demonstrates the robustness and generalizability of the phenomenon that unfamiliar configurations of visual content require increased processing effort.

The face inversion effect or the face upright effect?

The face inversion effect (FIE) refers to the observation that presenting stimuli upside-down impairs the processing of faces disproportionally more than other mono-oriented objects. This has been taken as evidence that processing of faces and objects differ qualitatively. However, nearly all FIE studies are based on comparing individuation of upright faces, which most people are rather good at, with individuation of objects most people are much less familiar with individuating (e.g., radios and airplanes). Consequently, the FIE may mainly reflect differences between categories in how they are processed prior to inversion, with within-category discrimination of upright faces being a much more familiar task than within-category discrimination among members belonging to other object classes. We tested this hypothesis by comparing inversion effects for faces and objects using object recognition tasks that do not require within-category discrimination (object decision and old/new recognition memory tasks). In all tasks (seven with objects and two with faces) we find credible inversion effects, but in no instance were these effects significantly larger for faces than for objects. This suggests that the FIE can be a product of familiarity with the type of identification process required in the upright conditions rather than some process that is selectively affected for faces when stimuli are inverted.

Faster social attention disengagement in individuals with higher autism traits

ABSTRACT Introduction Atypical visual and social attention has often been associated with clinically diagnosed autism spectrum disorder (ASD), and with the broader autism phenotype. Atypical social attention is of particular research interest given the importance of facial expressions for social communication, with faces tending to attract and hold attention in neurotypical individuals. In autism, this is not necessarily so, where there is debate about the temporal differences in the ability to disengage attention from a face. Method Thus, we have used eye-tracking to record saccadic latencies as a measure of time to disengage attention from a central task-irrelevant face before orienting to a newly presented peripheral nonsocial target during a gap-overlap task. Neurotypical participants with higher or lower autism-like traits (AT) completed the task that included central stimuli with varied expressions of facial emotion as well as an inverted face. Results High AT participants demonstrated faster saccadic responses to detect the nonsocial target than low AT participants when disengaging attention from a face. Furthermore, faster saccadic responses were recorded when comparing disengagement from upright to inverted faces in low AT but not in high AT participants. Conclusions Together, these results extend findings of atypical social attention disengagement in autism and highlight how differences in attention to faces in the broader autism phenotype can lead to apparently superior task performance under certain conditions. Specifically, autism traits were linked to faster attention orienting to a nonsocial target due to the reduced attentional hold of the task irrelevant face stimuli. The absence of an inversion effect in high AT participants also reinforces the suggestion that they process upright or inverted faces similarly, unlike low AT participants for whom inverted faces are thought to be less socially engaging, thus allowing faster disengagement.

Face inversion does not affect the reversed congruency effect of gaze.

In a spatial Stroop task, the eye-gaze target produces the reversed congruency effect-responses become shorter when the gaze direction and its location are incongruent than when they are congruent. The present study examined the face inversion effect on the gaze spatial Stroop task to clarify whether the holistic face processing or part-based processing of the eyes is responsible for the reversed congruency effect. In Experiment 1, participants judged the gaze direction of the upright or inverted face with a neutral expression presented either in the left or right visual field. In Experiment 2, we examined whether face inversion interacted with facial expressions (i.e., angry, happy, neutral, and sad). Face inversion disrupted holistic face processing, slowing down the overall performance relative to the performance with upright faces. However, face inversion did not affect the reversed congruency effect. These results further support the parts-based processing account and suggest that while faces are processed holistically, the reversed congruency effect, relying on the extracted local features (i.e., eyes), may be processed in a part-based manner.

Temporal dynamics of face adaptation.

The appearance of a face can be strongly affected by adaptation to faces seen previously. A number of studies have examined the time course of these aftereffects, but the integration time over which adaptation pools signals to control the adaptation state remains uncertain. Here we examined the effects of temporal frequency on face gender aftereffects induced by a pair of faces alternating between the two genders to assess when the aftereffects were pooled over successive faces versus driven by the last face seen. In the first experiment, we found that temporal frequencies between 0.25 and 2.00 Hz all failed to produce an aftereffect, suggesting a fairly long integration time. In the second experiment, we therefore probed slower alternation rates of 0.03 to 0.25 Hz. A rate of 0.0625 Hz (i.e., 8 seconds per face) was required to generate significant aftereffects from the last presented face and was consistent with an average time constant of 15 to 20 seconds for an exponentially decaying integration window. This integration time is substantially longer than found previously for analogous effects for alternating colors, and thus points to a potentially slower mechanism of adaptation for faces compared with chromatic adaptation.

Robots engage face-processing less strongly than humans.

Robot faces often differ from human faces in terms of their facial features (e.g., lack of eyebrows) and spatial relationships between these features (e.g., disproportionately large eyes), which can influence the degree to which social brain [i.e., Fusiform Face Area (FFA), Superior Temporal Sulcus (STS); Haxby et al., 2000] areas process them as social individuals that can be discriminated from other agents in terms of their perceptual features and person attributes. Of interest in this work is whether robot stimuli are processed in a less social manner than human stimuli. If true, this could undermine human-robot interactions (HRIs) because human partners could potentially fail to perceive robots as individual agents with unique features and capabilities-a phenomenon known as outgroup homogeneity-potentially leading to miscalibration of trust and errors in allocation of task responsibilities. In this experiment, we use the face inversion paradigm (as a proxy for neural activation in social brain areas) to examine whether face processing differs between human and robot face stimuli: if robot faces are perceived as less face-like than human-faces, the difference in recognition performance for faces presented upright compared to upside down (i.e., inversion effect) should be less pronounced for robot faces than human faces. The results demonstrate a reduced face inversion effect with robot vs. human faces, supporting the hypothesis that robot faces are processed in a less face-like manner. This suggests that roboticists should attend carefully to the design of robot faces and evaluate them based on their ability to engage face-typical processes. Specific design recommendations on how to accomplish this goal are provided in the discussion.

Deliberate control of facial expressions in a go/no-go task: An ERP study

In two studies we investigate the role of affective factors and top-down processes underlying production and deliberate control of emotional facial expressions and its neural underpinnings. In Study 1 we examine facial expressions of joy, fear and disgust depending on the emotional content of the visual stimuli (upright faces, inverted faces, emotion inducing pictures without faces). In Study 2 we focus on expressions of joy and disgust depending on gaze direction (with and without eye contact) in a more natural setting with a real person as stimulus. We hypothesized that the more automatic processes are induced by stimuli (e.g., arousal, mimicry or social cues like eye contact) the harder it is to control facial expressions; particularly expressions of joy compared to fear and disgust. In both studies we used go/no-go tasks and showed faster RTs for conditions with upright faces or eye contact, respectively. We also found faster RTs for expressions of joy than of fear and disgust. In Study 1 participants showed more errors in no-go trials for expressions of joy than for expressions of fear and disgust, indicating worse top-down control for expressions of joy than of fear or disgust. An ERP analysis of the no-go P3 in Study 1 revealed larger amplitudes for upright faces compared with both inverted faces and emotion inducing pictures and larger amplitudes for expressions of joy than for disgust. This indicates greater demand of top-down control when automatic mimicry processes are activated and some degree of specificity to particular facial expressions. In Study 2 more errors in no-go trials in conditions with eye contact only for expressions of joy indicate mimicry could be larger for expressions with high affiliative intent like expressions of joy, and reduced mimicry for negative expressions. All results indicate that facial expressions buffered by automatic processes (e.g., mimicry) have a greater need for top-down control, especially expressions of joy compared to expressions of fear and disgust.

Recent trends in nitrogen cycle and eco-efficient nitrogen management strategies in aerobic rice system.

Rice (Oryza sativa L.) is considered as a staple food for more than half of the global population, and sustaining productivity under a scarcity of resources is challenging to meet the future food demands of the inflating global population. The aerobic rice system can be considered as a transformational replacement for traditional rice, but the widespread adaptation of this innovative approach has been challenged due to higher losses of nitrogen (N) and reduced N-use efficiency (NUE). For normal growth and developmental processes in crop plants, N is required in higher amounts. N is a mineral nutrient and an important constituent of amino acids, nucleic acids, and many photosynthetic metabolites, and hence is essential for normal plant growth and metabolism. Excessive application of N fertilizers improves aerobic rice growth and yield, but compromises economic and environmental sustainability. Irregular and uncontrolled use of N fertilizers have elevated several environmental issues linked to higher N losses in the form of nitrous oxide (N2O), ammonia (NH3), and nitrate (NO3–), thereby threatening environmental sustainability due to higher warming potential, ozone depletion capacities, and abilities to eutrophicate the water resources. Hence, enhancing NUE in aerobic rice has become an urgent need for the development of a sustainable production system. This article was designed to investigate the major challenge of low NUE and evaluate recent advances in pathways of the N cycle under the aerobic rice system, and thereby suggest the agronomic management approaches to improve NUE. The major objective of this review is about optimizing the application of N inputs while sustaining rice productivity and ensuring environmental safety. This review elaborates that different soil conditions significantly shift the N dynamics via changes in major pathways of the N cycle and comprehensively reviews the facts why N losses are high under the aerobic rice system, which factors hinder in attaining high NUE, and how it can become an eco-efficient production system through agronomic managements. Moreover, it explores the interactive mechanisms of how proper management of N cycle pathways can be accomplished via optimized N fertilizer amendments. Meanwhile, this study suggests several agricultural and agronomic approaches, such as site-specific N management, integrated nutrient management (INM), and incorporation of N fertilizers with enhanced use efficiency that may interactively improve the NUE and thereby plant N uptake in the aerobic rice system. Additionally, resource conservation practices, such as plant residue management, green manuring, improved genetic breeding, and precision farming, are essential to enhance NUE. Deep insights into the recent advances in the pathways of the N cycle under the aerobic rice system necessarily suggest the incorporation of the suggested agronomic adjustments to reduce N losses and enhance NUE while sustaining rice productivity and environmental safety. Future research on N dynamics is encouraged under the aerobic rice system focusing on the interactive evaluation of shifts among activities and diversity in microbial communities, NUE, and plant demands while applying N management measures, which is necessary for its widespread adaptation in face of the projected climate change and scarcity of resources.

Configural properties of face portraits change between childhood and adulthood

Adult observers are sensitive to the configuration of facial features within a face, able to distinguish between relative differences in feature spacing, and detecting deviations from typical facial appearance. How does the representation of the typical configuration of facial features develop? While there is a great deal of work describing children’s developing abilities to detect differences in feature spacing across face images, there is substantially less work examining what children think constitutes a typical arrangement of facial features. In the current study, we investigated this issue using a production task in which adults and 5- to 10-year-old children created a face “portrait” by arranging the eyes, nose, and mouth of a standard face within an empty outline. Using this simple task, we found differences in face configuration across age groups, such that children of all ages made far larger errors than adult participants, expanding facial features outward from the center of the face more than adults. These results were not affected by face inversion, potentially implying a domain-general rather than face-specific process. We also found that children of all ages endorsed the correct configuration as a best likeness in a perceptual task. We discuss these results in terms of ongoing debate regarding the extent to which configural processing is a meaningful component of face recognition and the conclusions we can draw from production paradigms as compared to purely perceptual tasks.