Two identical top halves of a face are perceived as being different when their bottom halves belong to different faces, showing that the parts of a face cannot be perceived independently from the whole face. When this visual illusion is inserted in a matching task, observers make more mistakes and/or are slower at matching identical top face halves aligned with different bottom halves than when the bottom halves are spatially offset: The composite face effect. This composite face paradigm has been used in more than 60 studies that have provided information about the specificity and nature of perceptual integration between facial parts (“holistic face perception”), the impairment of this process in acquired prosopagnosia, its developmental course, temporal dynamics, and neural basis. Following a review of the main contributions made with the paradigm, I explain its rationale and strengths, and discuss its methodological parameters, making a number of proposals for its optimal use and refinement in order to improve our understanding of holistic face perception. Finally, I explain how this standard composite face paradigm is fundamentally different than the application to facial parts of a congruency/interference paradigm that has a long tradition in experimental psychology since Stroop (1935), and which was originally developed to measure attentional and response interference between different representations rather than perceptual integration. Moreover, a version of this congruency/interference paradigm used extensively over the past years with composite faces lacks a baseline measure and has decisional, attentional, and stimulus confounds, making the findings of these studies impossible to interpret in terms of holistic perception. I conclude by encouraging researchers in this field to concentrate fully on the standard composite face paradigm, gaze contingency, and other behavioural measures that can help us take one of the most important challenges of visual perception research: Understanding the neural mechanisms of holistic face perception.

http://files.face-categorization-lab.webnode.com/200001399-2785f2b6d6/Rossion_2013_VisualCognition.pdf

The composite face illusion: A whole window into our understanding of holistic face perception

We review the literature on sex differences and the own-gender bias in face recognition. By means of a meta-analysis, we found that girls and women remember more faces than boys and men do (g=0.36), and more female faces (g=0.55), but not more male faces (g=0.08); however, when only male faces are presented, girls and women outperform boys and men (g=0.22). In addition, there is female own-gender bias (g=0.57), but not a male own-gender bias (g= − 0.03), showing that girls and women remember more female than male faces. It is argued that girls and women have an advantage in face processing and episodic memory, resulting in sex differences for faces, and that the female own-gender bias may stem from an early perceptual expertise for female faces, which may be strengthened by reciprocal interactions and psychological processes directing girls' and women's interest to other females.

Sex differences and the own-gender bias in face recognition: A meta-analytic review

Self-report plays a key role in the identification of developmental prosopagnosia (DP), providing complementary evidence to computer-based tests of face recognition ability, aiding interpretation of scores. However, the lack of standardized self-report instruments has contributed to heterogeneous reporting standards for self-report evidence in DP research. The lack of standardization prevents comparison across samples and limits investigation of the relationship between objective tests of face processing and self-report measures. To address these issues, this paper introduces the PI20; a 20-item self-report measure for quantifying prosopagnosic traits. The new instrument successfully distinguishes suspected prosopagnosics from typically developed adults. Strong correlations were also observed between PI20 scores and performance on objective tests of familiar and unfamiliar face recognition ability, confirming that people have the necessary insight into their own face recognition ability required by a self-report instrument. Importantly, PI20 scores did not correlate with recognition of non-face objects, indicating that the instrument measures face recognition, and not a general perceptual impairment. These results suggest that the PI20 can play a valuable role in identifying DP. A freely available self-report instrument will permit more effective description of self-report diagnostic evidence, thereby facilitating greater comparison of prosopagnosic samples, and more reliable classification.

https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/pdf/10.1098/rsos.140343

The 20-item prosopagnosia index (PI20): a self-report instrument for identifying developmental prosopagnosia.

Facial identity and expression play critical roles in our social lives. Faces are therefore frequently used as stimuli in a variety of areas of scientific research. Although several extensive and well-controlled databases of adult faces exist, few databases include children’s faces. Here we present the Dartmouth Database of Children’s Faces, a set of photographs of 40 male and 40 female Caucasian children between 6 and 16 years-of-age. Models posed eight facial expressions and were photographed from five camera angles under two lighting conditions. Models wore black hats and black gowns to minimize extra-facial variables. To validate the images, independent raters identified facial expressions, rated their intensity, and provided an age estimate for each model. The Dartmouth Database of Children’s Faces is freely available for research purposes and can be downloaded by contacting the corresponding author by email.

/pdf/the-dartmouth-database-of-children-s-faces-acquisition-and-4wv44ocjt8.pdf

The Dartmouth Database of Children's Faces: Acquisition and Validation of a New Face Stimulus Set.

The Vanderbilt Expertise Test reveals domain-general and domain-specific sex effects in object recognition

Many research questions require a within-class object recognition task matched for general cognitive requirements with a face recognition task. If the object task also has high internal reliability, it can improve accuracy and power in group analyses (e.g., mean inversion effects for faces vs. objects), individual-difference studies (e.g., correlations between certain perceptual abilities and face/object recognition), and case studies in neuropsychology (e.g., whether a prosopagnosic shows a face-specific or object-general deficit). Here, we present such a task. Our Cambridge Car Memory Test (CCMT) was matched in format to the established Cambridge Face Memory Test, requiring recognition of exemplars across view and lighting change. We tested 153 young adults (93 female). Results showed high reliability (Cronbach's alpha = .84) and a range of scores suitable both for normal-range individual-difference studies and, potentially, for diagnosis of impairment. The mean for males was much higher than the mean for females. We demonstrate independence between face memory and car memory (dissociation based on sex, plus a modest correlation between the two), including where participants have high relative expertise with cars. We also show that expertise with real car makes and models of the era used in the test significantly predicts CCMT performance. Surprisingly, however, regression analyses imply that there is an effect of sex per se on the CCMT that is not attributable to a stereotypical male advantage in car expertise.

/pdf/the-cambridge-car-memory-test-a-task-matched-in-format-to-5chplcr7si.pdf

The Cambridge Car Memory Test: A task matched in format to the Cambridge Face Memory Test, with norms, reliability, sex differences, dissociations from face memory, and expertise effects

Raka Tavashmi

Papers

The Cambridge Car Memory Test: A task matched in format to the Cambridge Face Memory Test, with norms, reliability, sex differences, dissociations from face memory, and expertise effects