Correction: Bayesian regression explains how human participants handle parameter uncertainty.

[This corrects the article DOI: 10.1371/journal.pcbi.

Psychophysical profiles in super-recognizers.

Facial identity matching ability varies widely, ranging from prosopagnosic individuals (who exhibit profound impairments in face cognition/processing) to so-called super-recognizers (SRs), possessing exceptional capacities. Yet, despite the often consequential nature of face matching decisions-such as identity verification in security critical settings-ability assessments tendentially rely on simple performance metrics on a handful of heterogeneously related subprocesses, or in some cases only a single measured subprocess. Unfortunately, methodologies of this ilk leave contributions of stimulus information to observed variations in ability largely un(der)specified.

Bayesian regression explains how human participants handle parameter uncertainty.

Accumulating evidence indicates that the human brain copes with sensory uncertainty in accordance with Bayes' rule. However, it is unknown how humans make predictions when the generative model of the task at hand is described by uncertain parameters. Here, we tested whether and how humans take parameter uncertainty into account in a regression task.

The effect of training with inverted faces on the selective use of horizontal structure.

A growing body of evidence demonstrates that selective processing of structure conveyed by horizontally oriented spatial frequency components is associated with upright face discrimination accuracy and the magnitude of the face inversion effect. In this study, we examined whether the increase in discrimination accuracy for inverted faces that is known to result from practice would coincide with more selective processing of horizontal structure in inverted faces. To assess this hypothesis, our observers practiced discrimination of inverted faces for three training sessions and we measured accuracy, efficiency relative to an ideal observer, and horizontal selectivity before and after training.

The role of horizontal facial structure on the N170 and N250.

Recent studies have shown that horizontal facial structure is important for face identification (Dakin and Watt, 2009; Goffaux and Dakin, 2010). Also, sensitivity to horizontal structure is associated with the size of the face inversion effect (Pachai et al., 2013).

The Bandwidth of Diagnostic Horizontal Structure for Face Identification.

Horizontally oriented spatial frequency components are a diagnostic source of face identity information, and sensitivity to this information predicts upright identification accuracy and the magnitude of the face-inversion effect. However, the bandwidth at which this information is conveyed, and the extent to which human tuning matches this distribution of information, has yet to be characterized. We designed a 10-alternative forced choice face identification task in which upright or inverted faces were filtered to retain horizontal or vertical structure.

Personal familiarity enhances sensitivity to horizontal structure during processing of face identity.

What makes identification of familiar faces seemingly effortless? Recent studies using unfamiliar face stimuli suggest that selective processing of information conveyed by horizontally oriented spatial frequency components supports accurate performance in a variety of tasks involving matching of facial identity. Here, we studied upright and inverted face discrimination using stimuli with which observers were either unfamiliar or personally familiar (i.e.

How best to unify crowding?

In crowding, the perception of an object deteriorates in the presence of nearby elements. Obviously, crowding is a ubiquitous phenomenon, as elements are rarely seen in isolation. One of the main characteristics of crowding is that the elements themselves are not rendered invisible, but their features are averaged[1] or substituted[2] with those of neighboring elements.

An attentional bias for LEGO® people using a change detection task: Are LEGO® people animate?

Animate objects have been shown to elicit attentional priority in a change detection task. This benefit has been seen for both human and nonhuman animals compared with inanimate objects. One explanation for these results has been based on the importance animate objects have served over the course of our species' history.

The influences of face inversion and facial expression on sensitivity to eye contact in high-functioning adults with autism spectrum disorders.

We examined the influences of face inversion and facial expression on sensitivity to eye contact in high-functioning adults with and without an autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Participants judged the direction of gaze of angry, fearful, and neutral faces. In the typical group only, the range of directions of gaze leading to the perception of eye contact (the cone of gaze) was narrower for upright than inverted faces.

Sensitivity to Information Conveyed by Horizontal Contours is Correlated with Face Identification Accuracy.

We measured thresholds in a 1-of-10 face identification task in which stimuli were embedded in orientation-filtered Gaussian noise. For upright faces, the threshold elevation produced by the masking noise varied as a function of noise orientation: significantly greater masking was obtained with horizontal noise than with vertical noise. However, the orientation selectivity of masking was significantly less with inverted faces.