Facing the facts: Naive participants have only moderate insight into their face recognition and face perception abilities.

A reliable self-report measure to assess the broad spectrum of face recognition ability (FRA) from developmental prosopagnosia (DP) to super-recognition would make a valuable contribution to initial screening of large populations. We examined the performance of 96 naive participants and seven super-recognisers (SRs) using a range of face and object processing tasks and a newly developed 20-item questionnaire, the Stirling Face Recognition Scale (SFRS). Overall, our findings suggest that young adults have only moderate insight into their FRA, but those who have been previously informed of their (exceptional) performance, the SRs, estimate their FRA accurately.

Saccades and smooth pursuit eye movements trigger equivalent gaze-cued orienting effects.

Research has established that a perceived eye gaze produces a concomitant shift in a viewer's spatial attention in the direction of that gaze. The two experiments reported here investigate the extent to which the nature of the eye movement made by the gazer contributes to this orienting effect. On each trial in these experiments, participants were asked to make a speeded response to a target that could appear in a location toward which a centrally presented face had just gazed (a cued target) or in a location that was not the recipient of a gaze (an uncued target).

Fixation patterns, not clinical diagnosis, predict body size over-estimation in eating disordered women and healthy controls.

Objective: A core feature of anorexia nervosa (AN) is an over-estimation of body size. Women with AN have a different pattern of eye-movements when judging bodies, but it is unclear whether this is specific to their diagnosis or whether it is found in anyone over-estimating body size.

Method: To address this question, we compared the eye movement patterns from three participant groups while they carried out a body size estimation task: (i) 20 women with recovering/recovered anorexia (rAN) who had concerns about body shape and weight and who over-estimated body size, (ii) 20 healthy controls who had normative levels of concern about body shape and who estimated body size accurately (iii) 20 healthy controls who had normative levels of concern about body shape but who did over-estimate body size.

Holistic face processing can inhibit recognition of forensic facial composites.

Facial composite systems help eyewitnesses to show the appearance of criminals. However, likenesses created by unfamiliar witnesses will not be completely accurate, and people familiar with the target can find them difficult to identify. Faces are processed holistically; we explore whether this impairs identification of inaccurate composite images and whether recognition can be improved.

That looks familiar: attention allocation to familiar and unfamiliar faces in children with autism spectrum disorder.

Introduction: Existing eye-tracking literature has shown that both adults and children with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) show fewer and slower fixations on faces. Despite this reduced saliency and processing of other faces, recognition of their own face is reported to be more "typical" in nature. This study uses eye-tracking to explore the typicality of gaze patterns when children with ASD attend their own faces compared to other familiar and unfamiliar faces.

Configural and featural information in facial-composite images.

Eyewitnesses are often invited to construct a facial composite, an image created of the person they saw commit a crime that is used by law enforcement to locate criminal suspects. In the current paper, the effectiveness of composite images was investigated from traditional feature systems (E-FIT and PRO-fit), where participants (face constructors) selected individual features to build the face, and a more recent holistic system (EvoFIT), where they 'evolved' a composite by repeatedly selecting from arrays of complete faces. Further participants attempted to name these composites when seen as an unaltered image, or when blurred, rotated, linearly stretched or converted to a photographic negative.

Face recognition and description abilities in people with mild intellectual disabilities.

Background: People with intellectual disabilities (ID) are as likely as the general population to find themselves in the situation of having to identify and/or describe a perpetrator's face to the police. However, limited verbal and memory abilities in people with ID might prevent them to engage in standard police procedures.

Method: Two experiments examined face recognition and description abilities in people with mild intellectual disabilities (mID) and compared their performance with that of people without ID.

Spontaneous and cued gaze-following in autism and Williams syndrome.

Background: From a young age the typical development of social functioning relies upon the allocation of attention to socially relevant information, which in turn allows experience at processing such information and thus enhances social cognition. As such, research has attempted to identify the developmental processes that are derailed in some neuro-developmental disorders that impact upon social functioning. Williams syndrome (WS) and autism are disorders of development that are characterized by atypical yet divergent social phenotypes and atypicalities of attention to people.

Whole-face procedures for recovering facial images from memory.

Research has indicated that traditional methods for accessing facial memories usually yield unidentifiable images. Recent research, however, has made important improvements in this area to the witness interview, method used for constructing the face and recognition of finished composites. Here, we investigated whether three of these improvements would produce even-more recognisable images when used in conjunction with each other.

The organization of conspecific face space in nonhuman primates.

Humans and chimpanzees demonstrate numerous cognitive specializations for processing faces, but comparative studies with monkeys suggest that these may be the result of recent evolutionary adaptations. The present study utilized the novel approach of face space, a powerful theoretical framework used to understand the representation of face identity in humans, to further explore species differences in face processing. According to the theory, faces are represented by vectors in a multidimensional space, the centre of which is defined by an average face.

The 'double face' illusion.

We report three experiments intended to characterise aspects of the 'double face' illusion, formed by replicating the eyes and mouth below the originals. Such doubled faces are disturbing to look at. We find there are wide individual differences in the ability to detect that a face has been doubled when presented briefly and masked.

Recovering faces from memory: the distracting influence of external facial features.

Recognition memory for unfamiliar faces is facilitated when contextual cues (e.g., head pose, background environment, hair and clothing) are consistent between study and test.

Adaptation to antifaces and the perception of correct famous identity in an average face.

Previous experiments have examined exposure to anti-identities (faces that possess traits opposite to an identity through a population average), finding that exposure to antifaces enhances recognition of the plus-identity images. Here we examine adaptation to antifaces using famous female celebrities. We demonstrate: that exposure to a color and shape transformed antiface of a celebrity increases the likelihood of perceiving the identity from which the antiface was manufactured in a composite face and that the effect shows size invariance (experiment 1), equivalent effects are seen in internet and laboratory-based studies (experiment 2), adaptation to shape-only antifaces has stronger effects on identity recognition than adaptation to color-only antifaces (experiment 3), and exposure to male versions of the antifaces does not influence the perception of female faces (experiment 4).

Familiarity effects in the construction of facial-composite images using modern software systems.

We investigate the effect of target familiarity on the construction of facial composites, as used by law enforcement to locate criminal suspects. Two popular software construction methods were investigated. Participants were shown a target face that was either familiar or unfamiliar to them and constructed a composite of it from memory using a typical 'feature' system, involving selection of individual facial features, or one of the newer 'holistic' types, involving repeated selection and breeding from arrays of whole faces.

BMI not WHR modulates BOLD fMRI responses in a sub-cortical reward network when participants judge the attractiveness of human female bodies.

In perceptual terms, the human body is a complex 3d shape which has to be interpreted by the observer to judge its attractiveness. Both body mass and shape have been suggested as strong predictors of female attractiveness. Normally body mass and shape co-vary, and it is difficult to differentiate their separate effects.

Developmental changes in the engagement of episodic retrieval processes and their relationship with working memory during the period of middle childhood.

We examined the development of children's engagement of the episodic retrieval processes of recollection and familiarity and their relationship with working memory (WM). Ninety-six children (24 in four groups aged 8, 9, 10, and 11 years) and 24 adults performed an episodic memory (EM) task involving old/new, remember/know (R/K), and source memory judgements and numerous WM tasks that assessed verbal and spatial components of WM and delayed short-term memory (STM). Developmental changes were observed in EM with younger children (8-, 9-, 10-year-olds) making fewer remember responses than 11-year-olds and adults while 11-year-olds did not differ from adults.

Similar neural adaptation mechanisms underlying face gender and tilt aftereffects.

Visual aftereffects have been found for a wide variety of stimuli, ranging from oriented lines to human faces, but previous results suggested that face aftereffects were qualitatively different from orientation (tilt) aftereffects. Using computational models, we predicted that these differences were due to the limited range of faces used in previous studies. Here we report psychophysical results verifying this prediction.

Adaptation may cause some of the face caricature effect.

One of the ways to demonstrate a caricature preference is to ask participants to adjust a face image over a range from anti-caricature to caricature until it shows the best likeness to a specific individual. Since facial adaptation, whereby exposure to a face influences subsequent perception of faces, is rapid, it is possible that adaptation promotes the selection of a caricatured image. We tested whether giving participants a reference average face image, to counteract any adaptation, would reduce the degree of caricature selected for famous faces.

Improving the quality of facial composites using a holistic cognitive interview.

Witnesses to and victims of serious crime are normally asked to describe the appearance of a criminal suspect, using a Cognitive Interview (CI), and to construct a facial composite, a visual representation of the face. Research suggests that focusing on the global aspects of a face, as opposed to its facial features, facilitates recognition and improves composite quality; also, that the CI enables more effective use of a composite system. The current study evaluated a novel "holistic" Cognitive Interview (H-CI).

Do faces capture the attention of individuals with Williams syndrome or autism? Evidence from tracking eye movements.

The neuro-developmental disorders of Williams syndrome (WS) and autism can reveal key components of social cognition. Eye-tracking techniques were applied in two tasks exploring attention to pictures containing faces. Images were (i) scrambled pictures containing faces or (ii) pictures of scenes with embedded faces.

Viewing it differently: social scene perception in Williams syndrome and autism.

The genetic disorder Williams syndrome (WS) is associated with a propulsion towards social stimuli and interactions with people. In contrast, the neuro-developmental disorder autism is characterised by social withdrawal and lack of interest in socially relevant information. Using eye-tracking techniques we investigate how individuals with these two neuro-developmental disorders associated with distinct social characteristics view scenes containing people.

Parallel approaches to composite production: interfaces that behave contrary to expectation.

This paper examines two facial composite systems that present multiple faces during construction to more closely resemble natural face processing. A 'parallel' version of PRO-fit was evaluated, which presents facial features in sets of six or twelve, and EvoFIT, a system in development, which contains a holistic face model and an evolutionary interface. The PRO-fit parallel interface turned out not to be quite as good as the 'serial' version as it appeared to interfere with holistic face processing.

Older carers in ageing societies:an evaluation of a respite care program for older carers in Western Australia.

The Australian Red Cross Older Carers Program was developed in 2003 to support the unique needs of "older carers" aged 65 and older (50 if Indigenous) who care for a person (a care recipient, usually a family member) aged 18 or older who have a permanent disability. The aim of the program was to provide intensive case planning, management, and volunteer support that would assist older carers to more readily access respite and continue their caring role in the home. To help achieve this end, ongoing individualised and holistic assistance involving older carers in decision making was an integral component of the Older Carers Program, as was the use of regular home visits by program staff.

Robust representations for face recognition: the power of averages.

We are able to recognise familiar faces easily across large variations in image quality, though our ability to match unfamiliar faces is strikingly poor. Here we ask how the representation of a face changes as we become familiar with it. We use a simple image-averaging technique to derive abstract representations of known faces.

The role of masculinity and distinctiveness in judgments of human male facial attractiveness.

Masculinity and distinctiveness have been found to influence the attractiveness of human male faces. The relationship between masculinity and distinctiveness, however, has received little attention. In Expt 1, we examine how current averaging techniques and manipulated sexual dimorphism influence ratings of attractiveness, masculinity, and distinctiveness.