Sun Hsin-Mei, Balas Benjamin
Department of Psychology, North Dakota State University, Fargo, ND 58105, USA.
Atten Percept Psychophys. 2012 Nov;74(8):1654-67. doi: 10.3758/s13414-012-0350-8.
Context affects multiple cognitive and perceptual processes. In the present study, we asked how the context of a set of faces would affect the perception of a target face's race in two distinct tasks. In Experiments 1 and 2, participants categorized target faces according to perceived racial category (Black or White). In Experiment 1, the target face was presented alone or with Black or White flanker faces. The orientation of flanker faces was also manipulated to investigate how face inversion effect would interact with the influences of flanker faces on the target face. The results showed that participants were more likely to categorize the target face as White when it was surrounded by inverted White faces (an assimilation effect). Experiment 2 further examined how different aspects of the visual context would affect the perception of the target face by manipulating flanker faces' shape and pigmentation, as well as their orientation. The results showed that flanker faces' shape and pigmentation affected the perception of the target face differently. While shape elicited a contrast effect, pigmentation appeared to be assimilative. These novel findings suggest that the perceived race of a face is modulated by the appearance of other faces and their distinct shape and pigmentation properties. However, the contrast and assimilation effects elicited by flanker faces' shape and pigmentation may be specific to race categorization, since the same stimuli used in a delayed matching task (Experiment 3) revealed that flanker pigmentation induced a contrast effect on the perception of target pigmentation.
情境会影响多种认知和感知过程。在本研究中，我们探讨了一组面孔的情境如何在两项不同任务中影响对目标面孔种族的感知。在实验1和实验2中，参与者根据感知到的种族类别（黑人或白人）对面孔进行分类。在实验1中，目标面孔单独呈现，或者与黑人或白人侧翼面孔一起呈现。侧翼面孔的朝向也被操控，以研究面孔倒置效应如何与侧翼面孔对目标面孔的影响相互作用。结果表明，当目标面孔被倒置的白人面孔包围时，参与者更有可能将其分类为白人（同化效应）。实验2通过操控侧翼面孔的形状、肤色以及朝向，进一步研究视觉情境的不同方面如何影响对目标面孔的感知。结果表明，侧翼面孔的形状和肤色对目标面孔感知的影响不同。形状引发了对比效应，而肤色似乎具有同化作用。这些新发现表明，面孔的感知种族受到其他面孔的外观及其独特的形状和肤色属性的调节。然而，侧翼面孔的形状和肤色引发的对比和同化效应可能特定于种族分类，因为在延迟匹配任务（实验3）中使用相同刺激时发现，侧翼肤色对目标肤色的感知产生了对比效应。
