Face Perception and Cognition PDF

Face Perception and Cognition as a Test Case Daniel C. Hyde Psychology 216 Nativism vs. Empiricism 2  Nativism vs. Empiricism Philosophical positions on the nature vs. nurture debate as it relates to cognitive development – E...

Face Perception and Cognition as a Test Case Daniel C. Hyde Psychology 216 Nativism vs. Empiricism 2  Nativism vs. Empiricism Philosophical positions on the nature vs. nurture debate as it relates to cognitive development – Empiricism = Nurture Knowledge is derived from experience and learning. 3  What is the nature of human development? Empiricist Views John Locke (1690) – The mind is initially a blank slate William James (1890) – Described the infant experience “as one great blooming, buzzing confusion” 4  Nativism vs. Empiricism Philosophical positions on the nature vs. nurture debate as it relates to development – Empiricism = Nurture Knowledge or abilities are derived from experience and learning. – Nativism = Nature Knowledge or abilities are innate rather than acquired by learning – Genetically-programmed – Not learned 5  What is the nature of human development? Nativist Views Kant (and others): Humans are born with rich structures to support learning 6  Core Knowledge Hypothesis (Spelke, Carey, Baillargeon, others) – Humans have a rich set of innate cognitive capacities Language/Language Learning Quantity/Quantitative Reasoning Space/Spatial reasoning Understanding objects/Physical reasoning Understanding other people/Psychological reasoning – These core abilities, combined with our general ability to learn and remember, form the foundation for human cognition and its development. 7 Face Perception and Cognition as a Test Case 8  Test Case for Cognitive Development: Face Perception and Cognition One way in which we learn about, understand, and predict actions of other people is through their faces Humans can perceive, distinguish, and remember faces – Doing so is essential for social interaction and learning How do these abilities arise? – What, if any, face processing abilities are innate? – What develops? How does experience shape face processing development?  Mature face processing system A specialized system for processing, recognizing, and remembering faces – Differentiating faces from non-faces (objects, scenes, etc.) – Distinguishing between/remembering individual faces – Distinguishing complex social cues for interaction (emotion, threat, like me or not…)  What does it mean to be specialized? – Distinct system for carrying out certain tasks (but not others) In this case, processing, distinguishing, and remembering faces Distinct from perception and memory for other categories of things (e.g., objects) Human adults appear to have a specialized system for face processing. 11  Evidence for a specialized system: inversion Strong expectations about how a face should be arranged/oriented—right-side up Evidence for a specialized system: configuration Strong expectations about how a face should be arranged/oriented Evidence for a specialized system: face selective cortical regions (fusiform face area/FFA) Humans Monkeys  Evidence for a specialized system: prosopagnosia Deficit specific to faces – Significantly diminished ability to recognize and remember faces with intact ability to remember other types of things – Cannot recognize people’s faces, including family Can result from brain damage to face selective regions of the temporal lobe – Have to rely on other social cues or “tricks” to navigate daily encounters. Can be congenital-developmental  Specialization down to the level of single cells: tuned to particular faces: Pamela Anderson Neuron: Brain cell that responds more to Pamela Anderson than other faces Wide-variety of contexts (cartoon, different views, written name, Quian Quiroga et al., 2005)  Evidence for a specialized system: Race Own Race Bias (see Meissner & Brigham, 2001) Demo: Perceptual discrimination of faces Same or different? Evidence for a specialized system: species-specificity  Demo: Ready? Judge whether two sequentially presented faces are the “same” or “different”  Origins: Where does this specialized system for faces come from? Mature brains are specialized to process, identify, remember, discriminate faces Where does sensitivity, selectivity, and specialization come from? – Present from birth? – Develops through experience with faces? – Develops later in life through biological maturation? Newborns 22  Newborns * preference 23  Newborns * preference 24 Neonatal facial preferences for configuration? (Johnson et al., 1991)  Infants prefer to follow configurations that resemble real faces over scrambled parts/non- faces (Johnson et al., 1991) How specific is processing at birth? Cassia et al., 2004: preferential looking study Exact configuration not necessary for infants: Any top-heavy, face-like configuration, OK Exact configuration matters for adults: developmental change here.  Even Before Birth? Human fetus prefers upright vs. inverted configuration (Reid et al., 2017) – Projected stimuli on abdomen of women ~36 weeks pregnant – Used ultrasound to track fetus head movement as experimenters moved image back and forth – Fetuses showed more tracking behavior to upright vs. inverted configurations. Suggests postnatal experience is not necessary to develop upright- configuration preference 28  Summary of Neonatal Face Preferences From birth attracted to/interest in faces (Johnson et al., 1991) General configuration & top-heaviness are important to determining what is a face—what to attend to (Cassia et al., 2004) Exact configuration not yet in place The fact that these preferences are present at birth (or before) suggests they do not arise from face experience Infant Face Perception: Role of Nurture How does face processing change with experience and over development?  Remembering Individual Faces (Familiarize) Even young infants can distinguish between novel and familiar faces, suggesting they can remember individual faces Method: Preferential Looking – Familiarize to a particular face – Pair novel and familiar face Assume infant would prefer (Paired Test) to look at something new compared to something old – If infants prefer the novel face, conclude they can recognize the familiar face and distinguish it from novel face Can use this method to study other dimensions of face processing/memory 31  Face processing changes over the first year of life (race) Perceptual narrowing for familiar faces Abilities tuned to own race faces over the first year – Kelly et al., 2007 3 months white infants can distinguish between multiple races (white, Asian, etc.) By 9 months, can only distinguish between white faces DO NOT DISTRIBUTE: For educational use in UIUC Psyc 216 Only 6-month-old preferences depend on specific environment, not own race Bar-Haim et al., 2004  Face processing changes over the first year of life (species) Perceptual narrowing for familiar species of faces – Abilities tuned to own species over the first year Scott, Pascalis, and others – 3-month-old infants can distinguish between faces of own species and between faces of other species (monkeys) – By 9 months, only human faces  Extended experience changes pruning/narrowing for faces (Pascalis et al., 2005) Continued experience with other-species (monkey) faces impeded perceptual narrowing – Experimental group (6 m olds) shown a book of monkey faces every night retained ability to discriminate monkey faces at 9 months – Control group that did not read the book/no experience with monkey faces, lost ability to discriminate monkey faces (as typically happens)  How does face processing develop? Specialized system from birth? – Neonatal preferences Fine tuning of general-purpose perceptual abilities based on experience? – Perceptual narrowing effects (e.g., own race, own species) Is this an experience-expectant OR experience-dependent process? Controlled rearing studies (Sugita reading) allow us to probe the question further – What happens in the absence of face experience?  Sugita, 2008, PNAS (reading for quiz today) Controlled-rearing study of monkeys – Different groups deprived of face input for up to 2 years – Tested abilities after deprivation – Then exposed to either monkey or human faces – Compared performance to control group with typical monkey face experience Even before face exposure, deprived monkeys preferred to look at faces compared to objects – Suggest basic propensity for face processing and preference is innate – Deprivation length didn’t matter Face-type of first exposure influenced preference – Face processing tuned to individual experience – Either preferred human or monkey depending on exposure type – Preference persisted long after first exposure  So,…based on results of Sugita study… are face processing abilities experience-expectant or experience-dependent? Why? 38 Some Translational Implications 39 Relevance of basic face processing research for clinical child development and education – Developmental prosopagnosia Born with deficit specific to processing and remembering faces (but not other visual/cognitive deficits) – Autism Differences in attentional biases and engagement with faces – Neglected Orphans (e.g. Romania) Relative sparing of face despite extreme deprivation in face experience  Prosopagnosia Basic science of face processing has allowed us to discover, detect, diagnose prosopagnosia Using basic vision science-psychophysics to test for sensitivity and memory to faces – Widespread and easy access to screening Distinction between developmental prosopagnosia and deficits acquired as a result of brain damage – Developmental prosopagnosia further informs our understanding of the basic mechanism 41  Autism Autism: disorder of neurological development – characterized by Impaired social interaction Impaired communication Restricted or repetitive behaviors – 1 in 44 children receive a diagnosis on the autism spectrum (CDC, 2018) – Children with autism Often display difficulty making eye contact Often appear to be uninterested in typical social interaction or social play Often prefer to look at geometric shapes or mechanical items over faces/social stimuli  Individuals with autism spontaneously look at different parts of the face Avoid gaze/eyes Eg., Frazier et al., 2016;  Spontaneous face processing in the brain of individuals with autism – Tend to spontaneously engage different brain regions – Do not spontaneously engage fusiform face regions (FFA, labeled FG here) typically associated with face processing (e.g., Pierce et al., 2001)  Is face processing impaired in autism? Individuals with autism appear to go about examining a face in the same way as individuals w/o autism when encouraged to do so However, spontaneous face processing may be different – Tend to spontaneously look at different regions of the face/head – Tend to spontaneously engage different brain regions – Do not (or do not the same extent) spontaneously engage fusiform face regions (FFA – Individuals with autism are quantitatively worse at face discrimination than typical peers May influence type of input received early in development—setting development down a different path (active development rather than passive development) Some limitations to our understanding Non-representative samples – Almost all studies use very high-functioning individuals with autism Only include those that are willing to cooperate, can understand all the directions – Tend to be those less severely impacted Very limited knowledge of – Origin and/or implications of differential face processing patterns in autism  Using reliable patterns of looking to diagnose autism? Eye-tracking study by Pierce et al., 2010 Method – 14-month-olds shown movies with geometric patterns AND children dancing – Measured proportion of looking to each video Results – 50 out of 51 typically-developing children preferred the video of children dancing – 100% of children watching the shape video more than 70% of the time were classified as having an autism spectrum disorder  Use of heightened interest in mechanical/geometric objects to encourage face processing Simon Baron-Cohen and colleagues The Transporters DVD Take advantage of interest in moving/working parts and objects Encourage interest in faces by placing faces on trains Method for learning about emotion and social interaction Potentially change input  Deprivation: Romanian Orphans Romania had a vast number of unwanted children institutionalized in orphanages – In 1989 between 100,000-200,000 – Estimated ½ million raised in orphanages – About 20,000 as of 2010 Resulted in a severe lack of physical care/attention for these orphans – Ratio of 1 caregiver to up to 20 infants – Spent a majority of time laying in crib without human contact – Natural Experiment: Deprived of typical levels of face content and expression  Natural study of social deprivation (e.g., Nelson et al., 2007) Randomly assigned children to foster care or remain in institutions/compared to children growing up in typical family environment Measured cognitive, physical, and behavioral development Three main findings – Children reared in institutions showed diminished intellectual performance (often severe disabilities) compared to controls – Children assigned to foster care made significant gains in development – Sensitive period of intervention Generally, those that were placed before 2 years had much better social and cognitive outcomes than those placed after 2 years The earlier the placement the better the outcome Romanian Orphans: Relative Sparing of Face Processing Moulson et al., 2015 Institutionalized and foster care groups of children were similar in discrimination of face emotions (sad, fearful, angry) – Institutionalized children: Only slightly impaired in ability to recognize happy emotion in faces Both performed well in using emotion to answer social questions about people (who to befriend, who to help, etc.) Conclusion: Basic facial processing and emotional coding is relatively robust to even severe deprivation of face experience 51  Relevance to clinical and educational settings Model of typical development helps us understanding atypical development Some applications of experimental techniques for diagnosis and intervention Some further insight into the nature and origin of face processing abilities gained from studying atypical development and disorders. 52  Summary and Conclusions Humans start out life with biases that turns attention towards faces as well as the ability to distinguish between all faces Over the first year of life, the brain tunes itself to the types of faces we are encounter Controlled rearing studies/natural experiments show us that nature controls the initial biases and experience further specializes the brain Information learned from studies of face processing is applicable to clinical and education settings