Faces are among the most important visual stimuli we perceive, informing us not only about a person’s identity, but also about their mood, sex, age and direction of gaze The ability to extract this information within a fraction of a second of viewing a face is important for normal social interactions and has probably played a critical role in the survival of our primate ancestors Considerable evidence from behavioural, neuropsychological and neurophysiological investigations supports the hypothesis that humans have specialized cognitive and neural mechanisms dedicated to the perception of faces (the face-specificity hypothesis) Here, we review the literature on a region of the human brain that appears to play a key role in face perception, known as the fusiform face area (FFA) Section 1 outlines the theoretical background for much of this work The face-specificity hypothesis falls squarely on one side of a longstanding debate in the fields of cognitive science and cognitive neuroscience concerning the extent to which the mind/brain is composed of: (i) special-purpose (‘domain-specific’) mechanisms, each dedicated to processing a specific kind of information (eg faces, according to the face-specificity hypothesis), versus (ii) general-purpose (‘domain-general’) mechanisms, each capable of operating on any kind of information Face perception has long served both as one of the prime candidates of a domain-specific process and as a key target for attack by proponents of domain-general theories of brain and mind Section 2 briefly reviews the prior literature on face perception from behaviour and neurophysiology This work supports the face-specificity hypothesis and argues against its domain-general alternatives (the individuation hypothesis, the expertise hypothesis and others) Section 3 outlines the more recent evidence on this debate from brain imaging, focusing particularly on the FFA We review the evidence that the FFA is selectively engaged in face perception, by addressing (and rebutting) five of the most widely discussed alternatives to this hypothesis In §4, we consider recent findings that are beginning to provide clues into the computations conducted in the FFA and the nature of the representations the FFA extracts from faces We argue that the FFA is engaged both in detecting faces and in extracting the necessary perceptual information to recognize them, and that the properties of the FFA mirror previously identified behavioural signatures of face-specific processing (eg the face-inversion effect) Section 5 asks how the computations and representations in the FFA differ from those occurring in other nearby regions of cortex that respond strongly to faces and objects The evidence indicates clear functional dissociations between these regions, demonstrating that the FFA shows not only functional specificity but also area specificity We end by speculating in § 6o n some of the broader questions raised by current research on the FFA, including the developmental origins of this region and the question of whether faces are unique versus whether similarly specialized mechanisms also exist for other domains of high-level perception and cognition

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The fusiform face area: a cortical region specialized for the perception of faces.

Experience plays a crucial role in the development of face processing In the study reported here, we investigated how faces observed within the visual environment affect the development of the face-processing system during the 1st year of life We assessed 3-, 6-, and 9-month-old Caucasian infants' ability to discriminate faces within their own racial group and within three other-race groups (African, Middle Eastern, and Chinese) The 3-month-old infants demonstrated recognition in all conditions, the 6-month-old infants were able to recognize Caucasian and Chinese faces only, and the 9-month-old infants' recognition was restricted to own-race faces The pattern of preferences indicates that the other-race effect is emerging by 6 months of age and is present at 9 months of age The findings suggest that facial input from the infant's visual environment is crucial for shaping the face-processing system early in infancy, resulting in differential recognition accuracy for faces of different races in adulthood

/pdf/the-other-race-effect-develops-during-infancy-evidence-of-bm0ma0d9qz.pdf

The Other-Race Effect Develops During Infancy Evidence of Perceptual Narrowing

A standard visual preference task was used to examine 3-month-olds' looking times at own-race versus other-race faces as a function of environmental exposure to faces from the two categories. Participants were Caucasian infants living in a Caucasian environment, African infants living in an African environment, and African infants living in a predominantly Caucasian environment. The results indicate that preference for own-race faces is present as early as 3 months of age, but that this preference results from exposure to the prototypical facial environment.

Nature and Nurture in Own-Race Face Processing

Recognizing individual faces outside one's race poses difficulty, a phenomenon known as the other-race effect. Most researchers agree that this effect results from differential experience with same-race (SR) and other-race (OR) faces. However, the specific processes that develop with visual experience and underlie the other-race effect remain to be clarified. We tested whether the integration of facial features into a whole representation-holistic processing-was larger for SR than OR faces in Caucasians and Asians without life experience with OR faces. For both classes of participants, recognition of the upper half of a composite-face stimulus was more disrupted by the bottom half (the composite-face effect) for SR than OR faces, demonstrating that SR faces are processed more holistically than OR faces. This differential holistic processing for faces of different races, probably a by-product of visual experience, may be a critical factor in the other-race effect.

https://perso.unifr.ch/roberto.caldara/pdfs/Michel_PS_06.pdf

Holistic Processing Is Finely Tuned for Faces of One's Own Race

A continuing debate in language acquisition research is whether there are critical periods (CPs) in development during which the system is most responsive to environmental input. Recent advances in neurobiology provide a mechanistic explanation of CPs, with the balance between excitatory and inhibitory processes establishing the onset and molecular brakes establishing the offset of windows of plasticity. In this article, we review the literature on human speech perception development within the context of this CP model, highlighting research that reveals the interplay of maturational and experiential influences at key junctures in development and presenting paradigmatic examples testing CP models in human subjects. We conclude with a discussion of how a mechanistic understanding of CP processes changes the nature of the debate: The question no longer is, “Are there CPs?” but rather what processes open them, keep them open, close them, and allow them to be reopened.

Critical Periods in Speech Perception: New Directions

Early experience with faces of a given racial type facilitates visual recognition for this type of face relative to others. To assess whether this so-called other-race effect can be reversed by subsequent experience with new types of faces, we tested adults of Korean origin who were adopted by European Caucasian families when they were between the ages of 3 to 9. The adoptees performed a face recognition task with photographs of Caucasian and Asian faces. They performed exactly like a control group of French participants, identifying the Caucasian faces better than the Asiatic ones. In contrast, a control group of Koreans showed the reverse pattern. This result indicates that the face recognition system remains plastic enough during childhood to reverse the other-race effect.

Valérie A.G. Ventureyra

Papers

Reversibility of the Other-Race Effect in Face Recognition During Childhood

The loss of first language phonetic perception in adopted Koreans

In search of the lost language: The case of adopted Koreans in France

In search of the lost language