FOR 1097: Person Perception

有效地分析和表示与人相关的信息是人类社会感知面临的最重要挑战之一。例如，面孔告诉我们许多与社会相关的信息，包括一个人的身份、情感、性别、年龄、种族背景或关注的焦点。面孔知觉的认知模型承认了这些不同知觉方面之间的一定程度的功能独立性，其中每一个方面都可能受到刺激中不同类型的诊断信息的调节。认知神经科学开始揭示面部感知背后的神经机制，但将这些数据与认知和社会心理学的模型相结合的工作还很少。目前的申请者已经开始成功地就这一综合观点进行合作。在这个研究单元中，我们结合了多层次的方法论方法来促进人的知觉的心理和神经基础的统一理论。在一个紧密协调的研究计划中，我们调查(1)基本的知觉过程，(2)关于人的社会和情感信息的处理，(3)特定人群中的人的知觉。考察以往面孔经验的瞬时效应对面孔感知的认知模型尤其有影响。虽然对启动的研究以及最近关于适应的研究正在形成涉及面孔知觉各个方面的神经机制和表征的理论，但这两种现象之间的确切关系仍有待确定。一个高度相关的开放问题是面孔学习--即知觉和神经机制如何为最初不熟悉的面孔创造稳定的表征。这种声音携带着大量类似于面部的非语言社交信息，在过去几乎没有得到科学上的关注。因此，目前的研究需要反映听觉人的知觉的重要性。来自人脸和声音的动态多模式信息通常被组合在一起，以塑造我们对身份或社会群体成员的感知(例如，性别、种族、地区)。面孔和声音也可能是高度强烈的情感刺激，即使在没有注意力的情况下也可能被处理。最后，由于人口结构的变化，老年人的个人感知和记忆可能会在未来变得更加普遍。这个研究单位综合了认知和社会视角，以独特的方式研究人的知觉，使用了实验心理学、社会心理学和认知神经科学的一系列方法。我们的最终目标是开发一个关于人类与人相关的社会信息处理的统一帐户。

The efficient analysis and representation of person-related information is one of the most important challenges for human social perception. Faces, for instance, inform us about a large variety of socially relevant information including a persons identity, emotions, gender, age, ethnic background or focus of attention. Cognitive models of face perception acknowledge a degree of functional independence between these different aspects of perception, each of which may be mediated by different types of diagnostic information in the stimulus. Cognitive neuroscience is beginning to reveal the neural mechanisms that underlie face perception, but there has been little work on integrating those data with models from cognitive and social psychology. The present applicants have begun to successfully collaborate on this integrative view. In this Research Unit, we combine a multilevel methodological approach to promote a unified theory of the psychological and neural bases of person perception. In a closely coordinated research programme, we investigate (1) basic perceptual processes, (2) the processing of social and emotional information about people and (3) person perception in specific populations. Examining the transient effects of previous experience with faces has been particularly influential for cognitive models of face perception. While research on priming, and recently on adaptation, is shaping theories about the neural mechanisms and representations involved in various aspects of face perception, the precise relationship between these two phenomena remains to be determined. A highly relevant open issue is face learning - the question how perceptual and neural mechanisms create stable representations for initially unfamiliar faces. The voice - which carries a wealth of nonverbal social information similar to faces - has received little scientific attention in the past. Current research thus needs to reflect the importance of auditory person perception. Dynamic multimodal information from faces and voices is often combined to shape our perception of identity or social group membership (e.g., gender, ethnicity, region). Faces and voices also can be highly potent emotional stimuli, which may be processed even in the absence of attention. Finally, person perception and memory for elderly people may become more prevalent in the future as a result of demographic changes. This Research Unit integrates cognitive and social perspectives for investigating person perception in a unique manner, using a range of methods from experimental psychology, social psychology and the cognitive neurosciences. Our ultimate aim is to develop a unified account of the processing of person-related social information in humans.