refined Face_perception Information, explanation, recent texts, monographs, and related patents.
Information & explanations, latest texts & monographs on Face_perception (including recent related patents.)


Face perception

Face perception is the process by which the brain and mind understand and interpret the face, particularly the human face. The face is an important site for the identification of others and conveys significant social information. Probably because of the importance of its role in social interaction, psychological processes involved in face perception are known to be present from birth, complex, involve large and widely distributed areas in the brain and can be selectively damaged to cause a specific impairment in understanding faces known as prosopagnosia. Table of contents showTocToggle("show","hide") 1 Development of face perception 2 Adult face perception 2.1 Controversies 3 Artificial face perception 4 See also 5 Further reading 6 References Development of face perception Whilst there is no question that the majority of face perception skills developed by adults are not present in babies, there is evidence of an innate tendency to pay attention to faces from birth. It is known that early perceptual experience is crucial to the development of visual perception and this orienting response undoubedtly encourages the rapid development of face specific skills such as the ability to identify friendly others and relatively complex pre-verbal communication. By two months of age face perception has developed so specific areas of the brain are known to be activated by viewing faces1 Adult face perception Theories about the processes involved in adult face perception have largely come from two sources; research on normal adult face perception and the study of impairments in face perception that are caused by brain injury or neurological illness. One of the most widely accepted theories of face perception2 argues that understanding faces involves several stages; from basic perceptual manipulations on the sensory information to derive details about the person (such as age, gender or attractiveness), to being able to recall meaningful details such as their name and any relevant past experiences of the individual. This model (developed by psychologists Vicki Bruce and Andrew Young) argues that face perception might involve several independent subprocess working in unison.
  • A 'view centred description' is derived from the perceptual input. Simple physical aspects of the face are used to work out age, gender or simple facial expressions. Most analysis at this stage is on feature-by-feature basis.
  • This initial information is used to create a structural model of the face, which allows it to be compared to other faces in memory, and across views. This explains why that the same person seen seen from a novel angle can still be recognised. This structural encoding can be seen to be specific for upright faces as demonstrated by the Thatcher effect.
  • The structurally encoded representation is transferred to notional 'face recognition units' which in conjunction with 'person identity nodes' allow the person to be identified by information from semantic memory. Interestingly, the ability to produce someone's name when presented with their face has been shown to be selectively damaged in some cases of brain injury, suggesting that naming may be a separate process from being able to produce other information about a person.
    • The study of prosopagnosia (an impairment in recognising faces which is usually caused by brain injury) has been particularly helpful in understanding how normal face perception might work. Individuals with prosopagnosia may differ in their abilities to understand faces, and it has been the investigation of these differences which has suggested that several stage theories might be correct. Face perception is an ability which involves a great deal of the brain, however some areas have been shown to be particularly important. Brain imaging studies typically show a great deal of activity in an area of the temporal lobe known as the fusiform gyrus, an area also known to cause prosopagnosia when damaged (particularly when damage occurs on both sides). This evidence has led to a particular interest in this area and it is sometimes referred to as the fusiform face area for that reason. Controversies Whilst a great deal of resources seem to be used by the mind and brain to understand the face, opinion is divided whether we genuinely develop specific skills for understanding faces, or whether face perception is just part of a general skill for making within-category discriminations, such as recognising and differentiating between similar animals or plants. Proponents of this view argue that the differences seen between faces and non-face objects in experimental studies are due to faces being particularly difficult to distinguish. Although we often assume that faces are relatively unique, statistically they are quite similar, so a great deal of cognitive effort is needed to differentiate them. According to this view, faces are nothing more than a particularly difficult class of perceptual object which we have learnt to distinguish, much as we would learn to distinguish between other similar objects if much of our communication and survivial depended on it. Artificial face perception A great deal of effort has been put into developing software that can recognise human faces. Much of the work has been done by a branch of artificial intelligence known as computer vision which uses findings from the psychology of face perception to inform software design. See, for example, Smiling faces are better for face recognition. See also Further reading
    • Bruce, V. and Young, A. (2000) In the Eye of the Beholder: The Science of Face Perception. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0198524390
    References 1Nelson, C.A. (2001) The development and neural bases of face recognition. Infant and Child Development, 10, 3-18. 2Bruce, V. & Young, A. (1986) Understanding face recognition. The British Journal of Psychology, 77 (3), 305-327.
    This article is adapted from from Wikipedia All Wikipedia article text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License

    The Face by Dan McNeill

    The Face in the Mirror : The Search for the Origins of Consciousness by Julian Keenan

    Your Many Faces by Virginia M. Satir

    In the Eye of the Beholder: The Science of Face Perception by Vicki Bruce

    Making Faces, Playing God: Identity and the Art of Transformational Makeup by Thomas Morawetz

    Reading Faces by Leopold Bellack

    In the Eye of the Beholder: The Science of Face Perception by Vicki Bruce

    Face Language 2000 E-Z 10 Second Personality Speed Reading System : Advanced Social Technology for Today's World by Jon E. Prescott

    MPEG-4 Facial Animation: The Standard, Implementation and Applications by Igor S. Pandzic

    Face, Harmony and Social Structure: Analysis of Organizational Behavior Across Cultures by P. Christopher Earley

    Danger Ahead : The Risks You Really Face on Life's Highway by Larry Laudan

    Attention and Pattern Recognition by Nick Lund

    Face and Mind (Oxford Cognitive Science Series , No 2) by Andrew Young

    Making Faces, Playing God: Identity and the Art of Transformational Makeup by Thomas Morawetz

    Perception of Faces, Objects, and Scenes: Analytic and Holistic Processes (Advances in Visual Cognition) by Mary A. Peterson


    Recent Face_perception related patents

    From USPTO:
    6009209: Automated removal of red eye effect from a digital image

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