Expert Face Recognition: The Influence of Experience

同一个人的两张照片可能看起来非常不同，而两个不同的人的照片可能看起来非常相似。因此，准确的人脸识别既需要区分（将人区分开来），也需要身份匹配（当一个人的外表发生变化时识别出来）。我的研究目的是了解在整个生命周期中专家面部识别发展的潜在机制。为此，我采取了两种方法。首先，我研究了人脸识别及其潜在机制在整个生命周期中是如何变化的（例如，当儿童遇到越来越多的新面孔时以及在老年时）。其次，我比较了成年人从他们有丰富经验（例如，自己的种族，年轻人）和很少经验（其他种族，老年人）的类别中识别面孔身份的能力。我建议使用三种方法来做到这一点。第一个重点是一个很大程度上被忽视的挑战：在外表自然变化（发型、化妆、观点的变化）的情况下识别一张脸。这是护照官员面临的挑战，也是我们在邻居戴上新眼镜时认出她的能力。当面孔不熟悉时，尤其是儿童和成年人看到其他种族的面孔时，这样做是困难的。我将研究人脸变得足够熟悉以允许这种识别的过程，以及该过程如何在整个生命周期中发生变化，并在不同的人脸类别中有所不同。第二项研究关注的是对面部特征的两个线索——脸型和面部纹理——的依赖是否会随着熟悉程度、感知者年龄和面部类别的变化而变化。成年人依靠脸型（五官的形状和间距）来认识新的同族面孔，但依靠面部纹理（肤色）来识别他们，这种模式在优秀的识别器中最为明显。我将操纵形状和纹理线索的显著性，以检查面部识别中与年龄相关的差异是否可以归因于学习过程中对面部形状的敏感性降低和/或随着面部变得熟悉而无法依赖纹理。我将进行一项平行研究，以检查是否同样的模式可能是对其他种族/年龄面孔的识别能力低下的基础。第三个项目侧重于视觉工作记忆的局限性如何影响人脸识别。学习一张新面孔需要感知者存储单独的实例和/或建立一个平均值；这两种机制都需要观察者对面部进行编码，这种能力反映在视觉工作记忆中。我将测量工作记忆的容量和精度，并在不同年龄组（儿童、年轻人、老年人）和面孔类别（例如，年轻人和老年人的面孔；自己和其他种族的面孔）之间进行比较。总之，这些结果将提供关于面部感知如何在整个生命周期中对环境输入进行微调的新见解。

Two pictures of the same person can look very different and pictures of two different people can look very similar. Thus, accurate face recognition requires both discrimination (telling people apart) and identity matching (recognizing a person when his/her appearance changes). The objective of my research is to understand the mechanisms underlying the development of expert face recognition across the lifespan. To do so, I take two approaches. First, I examine how face recognition and the underlying mechanisms change across the lifespan (e.g., as children encounter an increasing number of new faces and during old age). Second, I compare adults’ ability to recognize identity in faces from categories with which they have abundant (e.g., own-race, young adult) vs. minimal (other-race, older adult) experience. I propose doing so using three approaches. The first focuses on a largely ignored challenge: Recognizing a face despite natural variability in appearance (changes in hairstyle, makeup, viewpoint). This is the challenge faced by passport officers and an ability that allows us to recognize our neighbour when she dons new glasses. Doing so is difficult when faces are unfamiliar, especially for children and for adults viewing other-race faces. I will investigate the process by which a face becomes sufficiently familiar to allow such recognition and how that process changes across the lifespan and differs across face categories. The second focuses on whether reliance on two cues to facial identity—face shape and face texture—varies as a function of familiarity, perceiver age, and face category. Adults rely on face shape (feature shape and spacing) to learn new own-race faces but face texture (skin tone) to recognize them, a pattern most evident in good recognizers. I will manipulate the salience of shape versus texture cues to examine whether age-related differences in face recognition can be attributed to reduced sensitivity to face shape during learning and/or a failure to rely on texture as a face becomes familiar. I will conduct a parallel study to examine whether the same pattern might underlie poor recognition of other-race/age faces. The third project focuses on how limitations in visual working memory affect face recognition. Learning a new face requires the perceiver to store separate instances and/or to build an average; both mechanisms require the observer to encode a face, an ability that is reflected in visual working memory. I will measure the capacity and precision of working memory and compare these across age groups (children, young adults, older adults) and face categories (e.g., young vs. older adult faces; own- vs. other-race faces). Together, the results will provide novel insights about how face perception becomes finely tuned to environmental input across the lifespan.