scholarly journals The development of race effects in face processing from childhood through adulthood: Neural and behavioral evidence

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Golijeh Golarai ◽  
Dara G. Ghahremani ◽  
Anders C. Greenwood ◽  
John D. E. Gabrieli ◽  
Jennifer L. Eberhardt
2017 ◽  
Vol 29 (4) ◽  
pp. 664-676 ◽  
Author(s):  
Clara Colombatto ◽  
Gregory McCarthy

Research about the neural basis of face recognition has investigated the timing and anatomical substrates of different stages of face processing. Scalp-recorded ERP studies of face processing have focused on the N170, an ERP with a peak latency of ∼170 msec that has long been associated with the initial structural encoding of faces. However, several studies have reported earlier ERP differences related to faces, suggesting that face-specific processes might occur before N170. Here, we examined the influence of face inversion and face race on the timing of face-sensitive scalp-recorded ERPs by examining neural responses to upright and inverted line-drawn and luminance-matched white and black faces in a sample of white participants. We found that the P100 ERP evoked by inverted faces was significantly larger than that evoked by upright faces. Although this inversion effect was statistically significant at 100 msec, the inverted-upright ERP difference peaked at 138 msec, suggesting that it might represent an activity in neural sources that overlap with P100. Inverse modeling of the inversion effect difference waveform suggested possible neural sources in pericalcarine extrastriate visual cortex and lateral occipito-temporal cortex. We also found that the inversion effect difference wave was larger for white faces. These results are consistent with behavioral evidence that individuals process the faces of their own races more configurally than faces of other races. Taken together, the inversion and race effects observed in the current study suggest that configuration influences face processing by at least 100 msec.


2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniel D Dilks ◽  
Peter Cook ◽  
Samuel K Weiller ◽  
Helen P Berns ◽  
Mark H Spivak ◽  
...  

Recent behavioral evidence suggests that dogs, like humans and monkeys, are capable of visual face recognition. But do dogs also exhibit specialized cortical face regions similar to humans and monkeys? Using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) in six dogs trained to remain motionless during scanning without restraint or sedation, we found a region in the canine temporal lobe that responded significantly more to movies of human faces than to movies of everyday objects. Next, using a new stimulus set to investigate face selectivity in this predefined candidate dog face area, we found that this region responded similarly to images of human faces and dog faces, yet significantly more to both human and dog faces than to images of objects. Such face selectivity was not found in dog primary visual cortex. Taken together, these findings: 1) provide the first evidence for a face-selective region in the temporal cortex of dogs, which cannot be explained by simple low-level visual feature extraction; 2) reveal that neural machinery dedicated to face processing is not unique to primates; and 3) may help explain dogs’ exquisite sensitivity to human social cues.


2016 ◽  
Vol 28 (11) ◽  
pp. 1728-1736 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sarah Jessen ◽  
Tobias Grossmann

Face evaluation is a key aspect of face processing in humans, serving important functions in regulating social interactions. Adults and preschool children readily evaluate faces with respect to a person's trustworthiness and dominance. However, it is unclear whether face evaluation is mainly a product of extensive learning or a foundational building block of face perception already during infancy. We examined infants' sensitivity to facial signs of trustworthiness (Experiment 1) and dominance (Experiment 2) by measuring ERPs and looking behavior in response to faces that varied with respect to the two facial attributes. Results revealed that 7-month-old infants are sensitive to facial signs of trustworthiness but not dominance. This sensitivity was reflected in infants' behavioral preference and in the modulation of brain responses previously linked to emotion detection from faces. These findings provide first evidence that processing faces with respect to trustworthiness has its origins in infancy and shed light on the behavioral and neural correlates of this early emerging sensitivity.


2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniel D Dilks ◽  
Peter Cook ◽  
Samuel K Weiller ◽  
Helen P Berns ◽  
Mark H Spivak ◽  
...  

Recent behavioral evidence suggests that dogs, like humans and monkeys, are capable of visual face recognition. But do dogs also exhibit specialized cortical face regions similar to humans and monkeys? Using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) in six dogs trained to remain motionless during scanning without restraint or sedation, we found a region in the canine temporal lobe that responded significantly more to movies of human faces than to movies of everyday objects. Next, using a new stimulus set to investigate face selectivity in this predefined candidate dog face area, we found that this region responded similarly to images of human faces and dog faces, yet significantly more to both human and dog faces than to images of objects. Such face selectivity was not found in dog primary visual cortex. Taken together, these findings: 1) provide the first evidence for a face-selective region in the temporal cortex of dogs, which cannot be explained by simple low-level visual feature extraction; 2) reveal that neural machinery dedicated to face processing is not unique to primates; and 3) may help explain dogs’ exquisite sensitivity to human social cues.


2010 ◽  
Vol 69 (3) ◽  
pp. 161-167 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jisien Yang ◽  
Adrian Schwaninger

Configural processing has been considered the major contributor to the face inversion effect (FIE) in face recognition. However, most researchers have only obtained the FIE with one specific ratio of configural alteration. It remains unclear whether the ratio of configural alteration itself can mediate the occurrence of the FIE. We aimed to clarify this issue by manipulating the configural information parametrically using six different ratios, ranging from 4% to 24%. Participants were asked to judge whether a pair of faces were entirely identical or different. The paired faces that were to be compared were presented either simultaneously (Experiment 1) or sequentially (Experiment 2). Both experiments revealed that the FIE was observed only when the ratio of configural alteration was in the intermediate range. These results indicate that even though the FIE has been frequently adopted as an index to examine the underlying mechanism of face processing, the emergence of the FIE is not robust with any configural alteration but dependent on the ratio of configural alteration.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document