RESUMEN
Individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) can have difficulty recognizing emotional expressions. Here, we asked whether the underlying perceptual coding of expression is disrupted. Typical individuals code expression relative to a perceptual (average) norm that is continuously updated by experience. This adaptability of face-coding mechanisms has been linked to performance on various face tasks. We used an adaptation aftereffect paradigm to characterize expression coding in children and adolescents with autism. We asked whether face expression coding is less adaptable in autism and whether there is any fundamental disruption of norm-based coding. If expression coding is norm-based, then the face aftereffects should increase with adaptor expression strength (distance from the average expression). We observed this pattern in both autistic and typically developing participants, suggesting that norm-based coding is fundamentally intact in autism. Critically, however, expression aftereffects were reduced in the autism group, indicating that expression-coding mechanisms are less readily tuned by experience. Reduced adaptability has also been reported for coding of face identity and gaze direction. Thus, there appears to be a pervasive lack of adaptability in face-coding mechanisms in autism, which could contribute to face processing and broader social difficulties in the disorder.
Asunto(s)
Adaptación Fisiológica , Trastorno Autístico/fisiopatología , Trastorno Autístico/psicología , Emociones , Expresión Facial , Reconocimiento Facial , Adolescente , Niño , Femenino , Efecto Tardío Figurativo , Humanos , Masculino , Estimulación LuminosaRESUMEN
Diagnosis of developmental or congenital prosopagnosia (CP) involves self-report of everyday face recognition difficulties, which are corroborated with poor performance on behavioural tests. This approach requires accurate self-evaluation. We examine the extent to which typical adults have insight into their face recognition abilities across four experiments involving nearly 300 participants. The experiments used five tests of face recognition ability: two that tap into the ability to learn and recognize previously unfamiliar faces [the Cambridge Face Memory Test, CFMT; Duchaine, B., & Nakayama, K. (2006). The Cambridge Face Memory Test: Results for neurologically intact individuals and an investigation of its validity using inverted face stimuli and prosopagnosic participants. Neuropsychologia, 44(4), 576-585. doi:10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2005.07.001; and a newly devised test based on the CFMT but where the study phases involve watching short movies rather than viewing static faces-the CFMT-Films] and three that tap face matching [Benton Facial Recognition Test, BFRT; Benton, A., Sivan, A., Hamsher, K., Varney, N., & Spreen, O. (1983). Contribution to neuropsychological assessment. New York: Oxford University Press; and two recently devised sequential face matching tests]. Self-reported ability was measured with the 15-item Kennerknecht et al. questionnaire [Kennerknecht, I., Ho, N. Y., & Wong, V. C. (2008). Prevalence of hereditary prosopagnosia (HPA) in Hong Kong Chinese population. American Journal of Medical Genetics Part A, 146A(22), 2863-2870. doi:10.1002/ajmg.a.32552]; two single-item questions assessing face recognition ability; and a new 77-item meta-cognition questionnaire. Overall, we find that adults with typical face recognition abilities have only modest insight into their ability to recognize faces on behavioural tests. In a fifth experiment, we assess self-reported face recognition ability in people with CP and find that some people who expect to perform poorly on behavioural tests of face recognition do indeed perform poorly. However, it is not yet clear whether individuals within this group of poor performers have greater levels of insight (i.e., into their degree of impairment) than those with more typical levels of performance.
Asunto(s)
Cara , Reconocimiento Visual de Modelos/fisiología , Prosopagnosia/diagnóstico , Prosopagnosia/psicología , Reconocimiento en Psicología/fisiología , Adolescente , Adulto , Femenino , Humanos , Masculino , Persona de Mediana Edad , Pruebas Neuropsicológicas , Estimulación Luminosa , Autoinforme , Encuestas y Cuestionarios , Adulto JovenRESUMEN
Faces are adaptively coded relative to visual norms that are updated by experience. This coding is compromised in autism and the broader autism phenotype, suggesting that atypical adaptive coding of faces may be an endophenotype for autism. Here we investigate the nature of this atypicality, asking whether adaptive face-coding mechanisms are fundamentally altered, or simply less responsive to experience, in autism. We measured adaptive coding, using face identity aftereffects, in cognitively able children and adolescents with autism and neurotypical age- and ability-matched participants. We asked whether these aftereffects increase with adaptor identity strength as in neurotypical populations, or whether they show a different pattern indicating a more fundamental alteration in face-coding mechanisms. As expected, face identity aftereffects were reduced in the autism group, but they nevertheless increased with adaptor strength, like those of our neurotypical participants, consistent with norm-based coding of face identity. Moreover, their aftereffects correlated positively with face recognition ability, consistent with an intact functional role for adaptive coding in face recognition ability. We conclude that adaptive norm-based face-coding mechanisms are basically intact in autism, but are less readily calibrated by experience.
Asunto(s)
Adaptación Fisiológica/fisiología , Trastorno Autístico/complicaciones , Trastorno Autístico/psicología , Trastornos del Conocimiento/etiología , Discapacidades del Desarrollo/fisiopatología , Cara , Adolescente , Estudios de Casos y Controles , Niño , Discapacidades del Desarrollo/psicología , Femenino , Humanos , Masculino , Pruebas Neuropsicológicas , Reconocimiento Visual de Modelos/fisiología , Estimulación Luminosa , Reconocimiento en Psicología , Valores de ReferenciaRESUMEN
Adult face perception mechanisms are tuned to upright faces, and this orientation selectivity is central to adult expertise with upright faces. Children are less expert than adults, and it has been argued that their face mechanisms are less orientation selective than those of adults. Here we used face aftereffects to test this hypothesis by examining whether children's aftereffects show greater transfer across changes in orientation than do adults' aftereffects. We adapted 7- to 8-year-old children and adults to figural face distortions in both upright and inverted orientations and examined the size of resulting aftereffects in both upright and inverted test faces. If children's face mechanisms are less orientation selective than those of adults, then children's aftereffects should transfer more strongly across changes in orientation. We found no evidence to support this prediction. Children's and adults' aftereffects were similarly reduced by orientation differences between adapt and test. These results indicate that children, like adults, show a high degree of orientation selectivity in face shape coding and suggest that neural tuning to face orientation may be mature by 8 years of age. Our findings are consistent with an emerging view that many of the key attributes of specialized face perception emerge much earlier in development than previously thought.
Asunto(s)
Cara , Efecto Tardío Figurativo , Adolescente , Adulto , Factores de Edad , Niño , Desarrollo Infantil , Femenino , Humanos , Masculino , Orientación , Psicología Infantil , Reconocimiento en Psicología , Transferencia de Experiencia en Psicología , Adulto JovenRESUMEN
Despite their similarity as visual patterns, we can discriminate and recognize many thousands of faces. This expertise has been linked to 2 coding mechanisms: holistic integration of information across the face and adaptive coding of face identity using norms tuned by experience. Recently, individual differences in face recognition ability have been discovered and linked to differences in holistic coding. Here we show that they are also linked to individual differences in adaptive coding of face identity, measured using face identity aftereffects. Identity aftereffects correlated significantly with several measures of face-selective recognition ability. They also correlated marginally with own-race face recognition ability, suggesting a role for adaptive coding in the well-known other-race effect. More generally, these results highlight the important functional role of adaptive face-coding mechanisms in face expertise, taking us beyond the traditional focus on holistic coding mechanisms.
Asunto(s)
Aptitud , Discriminación en Psicología , Cara , Individualidad , Reconocimiento Visual de Modelos , Reconocimiento en Psicología , Adolescente , Adulto , Asiático/psicología , Atención , Femenino , Efecto Tardío Figurativo , Humanos , Masculino , Persona de Mediana Edad , Práctica Psicológica , Identificación Social , Estadística como Asunto , Población Blanca/psicología , Adulto JovenRESUMEN
Our ability to discriminate and recognize thousands of faces despite their similarity as visual patterns relies on adaptive, norm-based, coding mechanisms that are continuously updated by experience. Reduced adaptive coding of face identity has been proposed as a neurocognitive endophenotype for autism, because it is found in autism and in relatives of individuals with autism. Autistic traits can also extend continuously into the general population, raising the possibility that reduced adaptive coding of face identity may be more generally associated with autistic traits. In the present study, we investigated whether adaptive coding of face identity decreases as autistic traits increase in an undergraduate population. Adaptive coding was measured using face identity aftereffects, and autistic traits were measured using the Autism-Spectrum Quotient (AQ) and its subscales. We also measured face and car recognition ability to determine whether autistic traits are selectively related to face recognition difficulties. We found that men who scored higher on levels of autistic traits related to social interaction had reduced adaptive coding of face identity. This result is consistent with the idea that atypical adaptive face-coding mechanisms are an endophenotype for autism. Autistic traits were also linked with face-selective recognition difficulties in men. However, there were some unexpected sex differences. In women, autistic traits were linked positively, rather than negatively, with adaptive coding of identity, and were unrelated to face-selective recognition difficulties. These sex differences indicate that autistic traits can have different neurocognitive correlates in men and women and raise the intriguing possibility that endophenotypes of autism can differ in males and females.
Asunto(s)
Adaptación Fisiológica , Trastorno Autístico/complicaciones , Cara , Trastornos de la Memoria/etiología , Reconocimiento en Psicología/fisiología , Caracteres Sexuales , Adolescente , Adulto , Discriminación en Psicología , Femenino , Humanos , Masculino , Persona de Mediana Edad , Pruebas Neuropsicológicas , Reconocimiento Visual de Modelos/fisiología , Estimulación Luminosa , Análisis de Regresión , Adulto JovenRESUMEN
Most of what we know about what makes a face attractive and why we have the preferences we do is based on attractiveness ratings of static images of faces, usually photographs. However, several reports that such ratings fail to correlate significantly with ratings made to dynamic video clips, which provide richer samples of appearance, challenge the validity of this literature. Here, we tested the validity of attractiveness ratings made to static images, using a substantial sample of male faces. We found that these ratings agreed very strongly with ratings made to videos of these men, despite the presence of much more information in the videos (multiple views, neutral and smiling expressions and speech-related movements). Not surprisingly, given this high agreement, the components of video-attractiveness were also very similar to those reported previously for static-attractiveness. Specifically, averageness, symmetry and masculinity were all significant components of attractiveness rated from videos. Finally, regression analyses yielded very similar effects of attractiveness on success in obtaining sexual partners, whether attractiveness was rated from videos or static images. These results validate the widespread use of attractiveness ratings made to static images in evolutionary and social psychological research. We speculate that this validity may stem from our tendency to make rapid and robust judgements of attractiveness.
Asunto(s)
Belleza , Cara , Juicio , Adolescente , Adulto , Estética , Femenino , Humanos , Masculino , Grabación de Cinta de Video , Adulto JovenRESUMEN
Perceptual adaptation not only produces striking perceptual aftereffects, but also enhances coding efficiency and discrimination by calibrating coding mechanisms to prevailing inputs. Attention to simple stimuli increases adaptation, potentially enhancing its functional benefits. Here we show that attention also increases adaptation to faces. In Experiment 1, face identity aftereffects increased when attention to adapting faces was increased using a change detection task. In Experiment 2, figural (distortion) face aftereffects increased when attention was increased using a snap game (detecting immediate repeats) during adaptation. Both were large effects. Contributions of low-level adaptation were reduced using free viewing (both experiments) and a size change between adapt and test faces (Experiment 2). We suggest that attention may enhance adaptation throughout the entire cortical visual pathway, with functional benefits well beyond the immediate advantages of selective processing of potentially important stimuli. These results highlight the potential to facilitate adaptive updating of face-coding mechanisms by strategic deployment of attentional resources.