Face perception
dmunger | August 15, 2007On our recent trip to Europe, we had a hard time getting the kids to smile for pictures. Most of our pictures of Nora ended up looking something like this (actually this one's a self portrait, but you get the idea):
Here her expression is basically neutral, and if it wasn't such a dramatic shot, it would be a bit boring.
When we could get her to smile, often the smile was inauthentic -- posed, or even sarcastic, like in this shot:
Here she's expressing mock excitement over her parents' excitement about the figure depicted in the statue: Leonardo Fibonacci, the great mathematician (click…
cogdaily | July 9, 2007This is a guest post by Christy Tucker, one of Greta's top student writers from Spring of 2007.
Take a look at the following paintings. How alike are they? How can you tell--which clues help you determine similarity? Now, which of these girls are related? If only two of these young girls are related, how would you determine which two? Would they be the same ones that you thought looked very similar?
Laurence Maloney and Maria Dal Martello studied observer's ratings of the similarity between two children's faces in relation to judgments on whether the two are siblings. Do we simply note…
cogdaily | June 25, 2007This is a guest post by Rivka Ihejirika, one of Greta's top student writers for Spring 2007
Do you find it harder to recognize the face of someone from a race other than your own? Does it take you longer to recall the face of someone from an unfamiliar race? Some researchers believe that we are born with a predisposition to process faces of those from our own race better than faces from other races. Other researchers believe that the own-race face bias is not innate, but we develop a preference for the race of those in our immediate environment. People of all ages demonstrate the bias to…
dmunger | May 8, 2007Take a look at these two pictures. Who is more dangerous?
It's not hard to decide, although I wouldn't hurt a fly, and Nora, even at age three, could be brutal with her sarcasm. Now, what's the most dangerous situation?
Again, an easy decision. While Carhenge is certainly an awe-inspiring monument (and perhaps Jim could scratch himself on one of those cars), Nora's descent of this rock spire gives me shivers.
You might think that there aren't many differences in how adults judge threats in examples such as this, but there is some reason to believe that older adults may have a different…
dmunger | April 26, 2007There is a considerable body of research showing that eye contact is a key component of social interaction. Not only are people more aroused when they are looked at directly, but if you consistently look at the person you speak to, you will have much more social influence over that person than you would if you averted your gaze.
The problem arises when you address a group of people. How do you pick who to engage visually? Most public speakers are encouraged to look around the room, alternating eye contact with individuals in the audience. But there's no way to look at everyone at once -- so…
dmunger | March 22, 2007The Kuleshov Effect, discovered nearly a century ago by Soviet filmmaker Lev Kuleshov, posits that the context in which we see an image of an actor's face will determine the emotion the face portrays. For example, take a look at this short little clip I made (QuickTime required). First you'll see a gray screen, then a photo, then a second gray screen, and another photo of a face, taken just after that person looked at the first photo:
What emotion would you say characterizes the second face? Is it neutral, subtly happy, or subtly sad?
Kuleshov's work suggests that most viewers will see that…
dmunger | March 15, 2007These two pictures represent the eye motions of two viewers as they scan a work of art with the goal of remembering it later. One of them is a trained artist, and the other is a trained psychologist. Can you tell which is which?
How about for this picture?
Art teachers have noted that when beginning students attempt to draw accurate portraits, they tend to exaggerate the size of key features: eyes and mouths are too big relative to the size of the head. Trained artists learn to ignore these temptations and draw the world as it really appears. Even world-famous artists such as Leonardo…
dmunger | February 13, 2007Take a look at this animation. One face will flash; then it will be followed by another face. Are the two faces the same or different? The change between faces could be a small one.
Did you notice a change? (You can repeat the movie once if you're not sure.) Let's make this one a poll:
Now try another animation:
Again, were the faces the same or different?
Most people are much better at identifying different human faces than identifying animal faces, which makes sense, since most people have more experience with other people than with animals.
Most adults are also better at distinguishing…
dmunger | November 22, 2006Do you recognize the person depicted in this video?
How about this one?
The first video is actually a "chimera," formed by fusing half-images of two well-known faces together, then animated using 3D projection software. The second video shows us just the top half of another famous person's head, rendered in the same way. If you're like most people, you have a much easier time recognizing the face in the second movie than you do either of the faces in the first one. But why?
I can assure you, both of the faces in the first movie are just as famous as the face in the second movie, and you're…
dmunger | October 30, 2006Face recognition is a task which humans do with little effort, even though in fact it's a tremendously difficult problem. To recognize a face, we need to be able to ignore traits that change over time, while focusing in on details that remain constant. A simple computer program, for example, would have difficulty recognizing that Jim frowning (before his fries arrive) is the same person as Jim smiling (after his fries arrive).
The fact that we have little difficulty recognizing our friends and family regardless of their facial expressions has led researchers to speculate that recognizing…
dmunger | September 27, 2006
Thousands of police departments use face composite software to help create a picture of crime suspects. You've probably seen one of the systems in use on TV: witnesses build a picture of the suspect by choosing each individual facial feature -- hair, eyes, nose, and so on. But what happens when the suspect is captured and the witness is asked to identify the real perpetrator in a lineup? Does the witness remember the actual face they saw at the crime scene, or the composite face created at the police station? A recent study has found that the process of creating a face composite can have a…
dmunger | July 18, 2006Is beauty a universal standard? Or is it in the eye of the beholder? Some research on attractiveness, including some we've discussed on CogDaily, suggests that "average" faces are the most attractive, and that most people agree on what makes a pretty face.
But Johannes Hönekopp has recently questioned the statistics behind these studies. Consider a hypothetical study that asks participants to rate the attractiveness of Leonardo DiCaprio and George Clooney on a scale of 1 to 10. From one perspective, nearly all judges might give both faces extremely high marks. Taken from this point of view, a…
dmunger | May 18, 2006Take a look at this photo:
What emotion would you say I'm expressing here? Let's make this one a poll (make sure you answer before you read any farther):
In 1872, Charles Darwin argued that facial expressions must have evolved just as surely as eyes or noses (you can read an excerpt from his work on emotional expressions in Greta's book The History of Psychology: Fundamental Questions). Later research has shown that there are several universally understood facial expressions, and that these expressions can be defined and described specifically so that anyone can imitate them and make their…
dmunger | April 11, 2006Yesterday's post brings up an interesting question: How can you be unaware of having even seen an image, and yet be able to make reliable judgments about that image? That article is just one example of a variety of situations in which people can be unaware of seeing something, even immediately after being given a quick glimpse of it, yet behave as if they have seen it.
We discussed how visual images can be "masked" -- flashed quickly and then followed by another image which is displayed for a longer period. Though observers had no conscious recollection of seeing faces, they still could make…
dmunger | April 10, 2006How long does it take to decide if someone's attractive? It might be before you even know you looked.
Researchers can use a masking technique to show an image of a human face subliminally -- without the observer being aware of seeing it. To do it, they first show a scrambled face (39 milliseconds). Next, the face itself (13 milliseconds), a blank screen (13 milliseconds), and a cartoon face (39 milliseconds). I've tried to duplicate the technique using an animated GIF file, but I think it's beyond the capability of an ordinary web browser.
Click here to see it
Did you see a human face? I had…
dmunger | April 6, 2006Standup comics have long made vice president Dick Cheney the butt of their jokes, suggesting that he's never seen in public with the President because he inhabits some fortified underground bunker so as to avoid terrorists or some other unidentified threat, or that he's actually a cyborg, secretly controlling the government from his dark, hidden lair. But recent research in visual attention suggests that there might be another reason Cheney wouldn't want to be seen near the President. It may be that by standing next to a more famous person, your own appeal is diminished.
I'm actually only…
dmunger | April 3, 2006Babies as young as three months old will follow the eyes of an adult to look at the same thing the adult is looking at. This behavior makes sense from an evolutionary perspective: if a predator or other danger looms, we can learn from the actions of others (though it's unclear exactly what a three-month old would do to escape a ravenous bear).
But if the gaze-following behavior is really a survival adaptation, wouldn't we be more likely to follow someone's gaze if they also had a fearful facial expression? After all, if someone's glancing to the side with a cheerful smile, we don't expect…
dmunger | January 25, 2006 Disney's purchase of Pixar makes it clear that computer-generated (CGI) animation appears to be the wave of the future in movies. But one difficulty with CGI animation is conveying realistic emotions. While film animators (whether they use computers or not) can use artistic license to achieve the desired effects, when "emotions" are generated exclusively by computer, it can be difficult to identify the key factors in conveying that emotion.
We've discussed avatars, for example, as one way that computers can automate human interaction. Artificial intelligence -- lifelike simulators of human…
dmunger | July 22, 2005I've created a quick animation of distorted pictures of my son Jim, together with some normal ones. Take a minute or so to watch the animation, then decide if the last picture you're shown looks "normal" to you. Click on the normal (but pre-eyeglasses and braces) photo of Jim below to begin:
I'll let you know whether or not the final picture was distorted in the comments.
A large body of research has found that we perceive faces that are closer to the average as more beautiful than distinctive faces. We've written about one such study here, but even more surprisingly other experiments have…