Publications by authors named "John R Towler"

Article Synopsis
  • The study investigated whether trait alexithymia could uniquely predict abilities in facial expression discrimination and labeling, beyond the influence of dark triad traits (narcissism, Machiavellianism, and psychopathy) in a sample of 236 individuals.
  • Findings revealed that while both autistic traits and dark triad traits were correlated with facial expression recognition abilities, alexithymic traits did not add any unique predictive value.
  • The results suggest that dark triad and autistic traits, along with general cognitive ability, play essential roles in facial expression recognition, while alexithymia does not contribute additional unique variance.
View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Individuals with developmental prosopagnosia (DP) experience severe face memory deficits that are often accompanied by impairments in face perception. Images of human facial features are better discriminated between when they are presented in the locations on the visual field that they typically appear in while viewing human faces in daily life, than in locations which they do not typically appear (i.e.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

In non-clinical populations, facial features (eyes, nose, mouth) may vary in their contribution to face identity perception. Changes to whole faces are easier to detect than changes to individual features, and eye changes are typically easier to detect than mouth changes, which in turn are easier to detect than nose changes. However, how this differs for people with face recognition difficulties (developmental prosopagnosia; DP) and for individuals with superior face recognition abilities (super-recognisers; SR) is not clear; although findings from previous studies have suggested differences, the nature of this difference is not understood.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Neuropsychological and neuroimaging studies have demonstrated a role for the amygdala in processing the perceived trustworthiness of faces, but it remains uncertain whether its responses are linear (with the greatest response to the least trustworthy-looking faces), or quadratic (with increased fMRI signal for the dimension extremes). It is also unclear whether the trustworthiness of the stimuli is crucial or if the same response pattern can be found for faces varying along other dimensions. In addition, the responses to perceived trustworthiness of face-selective regions other than the amygdala are seldom reported.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF