Department of Psychology, University of Stirling, Stirling FK9 4LA, Scotland, UK.
Cognition. 2011 Jan;118(1):116-22. doi: 10.1016/j.cognition.2010.09.011. Epub 2010 Oct 30.
A face appears normal when it approximates the average of a population. Consequently, exposure to faces biases perceptions of subsequently viewed faces such that faces similar to those recently seen are perceived as more normal. Simultaneously inducing such aftereffects in opposite directions for two groups of faces indicates somewhat discrete representations for those groups. Here we examine how labelling influences the perception of category in faces differing in colour. We show category-contingent aftereffects following exposure to faces differing in eye spacing (wide versus narrow) for blue versus red faces when such groups are consistently labelled with socially meaningful labels (Extravert versus Introvert; Soldier versus Builder). Category-contingent aftereffects were not seen using identical methodology when labels were not meaningful or were absent. These data suggest that human representations of faces can be rapidly tuned to code for meaningful social categories and that such tuning requires both a label and an associated visual difference. Results highlight the flexibility of the cognitive visual system to discriminate categories even in adulthood.
当一张脸接近人群的平均水平时，它看起来就很正常。因此，接触到的人脸会影响随后看到的人脸的感知，使得与最近看到的人脸相似的人脸被认为更正常。同时，对于两组人脸，以相反的方向产生这种后效，表明这些组的表示有些离散。在这里，我们研究了在颜色不同的面孔中，标签是如何影响对类别的感知的。当使用具有社会意义的标签（外向者与内向者；士兵与建筑者）一致地标记蓝色和红色面孔之间的眼睛间距（宽与窄）时，我们展示了在暴露于不同眼睛间距的面孔后出现的与类别相关的后效。当标签没有意义或不存在时，使用相同的方法学没有观察到与类别相关的后效。这些数据表明，人类对面孔的表示可以快速调整为编码有意义的社会类别，这种调整需要标签和相关的视觉差异。研究结果强调了认知视觉系统的灵活性，即使在成年后也能区分类别。
