Richards Rachel M, Ellis Andrew W
Department of Psychology, University of York, York YO10 5DD, UK.
Perception. 2008;37(11):1700-19. doi: 10.1068/p6023.
Two experiments are reported in which participants made familiarity decisions (Is this face familiar or not?) or gender decisions (Is this face male or female?) to the same sets of faces presented as whole faces or as internal features only. The experimental items on which the analysis was performed were famous and unfamiliar male faces that differed on rated masculinity. The famous faces also differed on age of acquisition (AoA). The experimental male faces were combined with an equal number of famous and unfamiliar female faces for presentation to participants. In experiment 1 we found faster and more accurate familiarity decisions to whole male faces than to internal features; also an interaction between AoA and masculinity such that familiarity decisions were both faster and more accurate to high- than to low-masculinity faces when those faces were late-acquired, but not when they were early-acquired. In experiment 2 we found the same benefit for whole faces over internal features and the same interaction between AoA and masculinity in gender decisions. The similarity between the effects of AoA and masculinity in familiarity and gender decisions is more readily accounted for by models of face processing which posit a close relationship between gender and identity processing than by models which maintain that those aspects of face perception are dealt with by quite separate processing streams. We propose that gender decisions, like familiarity decisions, are semantic judgments (rather than judgments based on the analysis of the surface features of faces), and that the shared basis of the two forms of decision explains why they show similar influences of AoA and masculinity.
本文报告了两项实验，实验中参与者针对以完整面部或仅以内部特征呈现的同一组面部做出熟悉度判断（这张脸熟悉吗？）或性别判断（这张脸是男性还是女性？）。进行分析的实验项目是在阳刚气质评分上存在差异的著名男性面孔和不熟悉的男性面孔。这些著名面孔在获得年龄（AoA）上也存在差异。实验中的男性面孔与数量相等的著名女性面孔和不熟悉的女性面孔组合在一起呈现给参与者。在实验1中，我们发现对完整男性面孔的熟悉度判断比对内部特征的判断更快、更准确；还发现了获得年龄和阳刚气质之间的一种交互作用，即当那些面孔是晚获得的时，对高阳刚气质面孔的熟悉度判断比对低阳刚气质面孔的判断更快且更准确，但当它们是早获得的时则不然。在实验2中，我们发现完整面孔相对于内部特征同样具有优势，并且在性别判断中获得年龄和阳刚气质之间存在相同的交互作用。在熟悉度和性别判断中，获得年龄和阳刚气质效应之间的相似性，用那些假定性别与身份加工之间存在密切关系的面部加工模型来解释，比用那些认为面部感知的这些方面由完全独立的加工流来处理的模型更容易。我们提出，性别判断与熟悉度判断一样，都是语义判断（而不是基于对面部表面特征分析的判断），并且这两种判断形式的共同基础解释了为什么它们显示出获得年龄和阳刚气质的相似影响。
