Left-Side Bias Is Observed in Sequential Matching Paradigm for Face Processing

Modulation of the composite face effect by unintended emotion cues

Royal Society Open Science ◽

10.1098/rsos.160867 ◽

2017 ◽

Vol 4 (4) ◽

pp. 160867 ◽

Cited By ~ 3

Author(s):

Katie L. H. Gray ◽

Jennifer Murphy ◽

Jade E. Marsh ◽

Richard Cook

Keyword(s):

Face Processing ◽

Image Matching ◽

Composite Effect ◽

Holistic Face Processing ◽

Feature Information ◽

Task Irrelevant ◽

Sequential Matching ◽

Composite Face ◽

Perceived Emotion ◽

Emotion Cues

When upper and lower regions from different emotionless faces are aligned to form a facial composite, observers ‘fuse’ the two halves together, perceptually. The illusory distortion induced by task-irrelevant (‘distractor’) halves hinders participants' judgements about task-relevant (‘target’) halves. This composite-face effect reveals a tendency to integrate feature information from disparate regions of intact upright faces, consistent with theories of holistic face processing. However, observers frequently perceive emotion in ostensibly neutral faces, contrary to the intentions of experimenters. This study sought to determine whether this ‘perceived emotion’ influences the composite-face effect. In our first experiment, we confirmed that the composite effect grows stronger as the strength of distractor emotion increased. Critically, effects of distractor emotion were induced by weak emotion intensities, and were incidental insofar as emotion cues hindered image matching, not emotion labelling per se . In Experiment 2, we found a correlation between the presence of perceived emotion in a set of ostensibly neutral distractor regions sourced from commonly used face databases, and the strength of illusory distortion they induced. In Experiment 3, participants completed a sequential matching composite task in which half of the distractor regions were rated high and low for perceived emotion, respectively. Significantly stronger composite effects were induced by the high-emotion distractor halves. These convergent results suggest that perceived emotion increases the strength of the composite-face effect induced by supposedly emotionless faces. These findings have important implications for the study of holistic face processing in typical and atypical populations.

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The left-side bias is not unique to own-race face processing

Attention Perception & Psychophysics ◽

10.3758/s13414-021-02264-7 ◽

2021 ◽

Author(s):

Chenglin Li ◽

Zhiguo Wang ◽

Hui Bao ◽

Jianping Wang ◽

Shuang Chen ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Face Processing ◽

Side Bias

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Inverting line drawings of faces 1This manuscript was started in Stirling when the first author was staying there with a research Grant from the Swiss National Fond. We want to thank Alexia Knüsel and Anne Zbinden for their help in data collection and Adrian von Mühlenen who allowed to publish his face to illustrate the stimulus material. Moreover, we thank two anonymous reviewers for their comments.

Swiss Journal of Psychology ◽

10.1024//1421-0185.59.3.159 ◽

2000 ◽

Vol 59 (3) ◽

pp. 159-169 ◽

Cited By ~ 4

Author(s):

Helmut Leder ◽

Vicki Bruce

Keyword(s):

Face Processing ◽

General Pattern ◽

Line Drawing ◽

Short Term ◽

Line Drawings ◽

Configural Information ◽

The Face ◽

Edge Based ◽

Sequential Matching ◽

Research Grant

Two conditions which both disrupt faces processing, inversion and the transformation of the face into an edge-based line drawing, have each been explained at least partially in terms of a disruption of configural information. Five experiments are reported in which the combined effects of the two manipulations were investigated, to find out how the combination of both affects face processing. Moreover, two different tasks were used: sequential matching of person identity and free identification. The general pattern of result revealed that in both tasks effects of both manipulations are rather additive and thus it is concluded that both manipulations are disruptive through different sorts of information processing. It is discussed how at least two different kinds of configural information are involved in face processing. The comparison of the two tasks, identification and sequential matching, indicates that identification is the more critical condition as it cannot be based on inferences that are probably due to short-term representations of critical features - although both tasks reveal similar results.

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Face Inversion Effect Emerges Under Critical Configural Discrepancy

Swiss Journal of Psychology ◽

10.1024/1421-0185/a000018 ◽

2010 ◽

Vol 69 (3) ◽

pp. 161-167 ◽

Cited By ~ 3

Author(s):

Jisien Yang ◽

Adrian Schwaninger

Keyword(s):

Face Recognition ◽

Face Processing ◽

Underlying Mechanism ◽

Inversion Effect ◽

Configural Processing ◽

Major Contributor ◽

Face Inversion Effect ◽

Configural Information ◽

Face Inversion ◽

The Face

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.

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