Crookes Kate, Ewing Louise, Gildenhuys Ju-Dith, Kloth Nadine, Hayward William G, Oxner Matt, Pond Stephen, Rhodes Gillian
ARC Centre of Excellence in Cognition and its Disorders, School of Psychology, University of Western Australia, Perth, Australia.
Department of Psychological Sciences, Birkbeck, University of London, London, United Kingdom.
PLoS One. 2015 Nov 4;10(11):e0141353. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0141353. eCollection 2015.
The use of computer-generated (CG) stimuli in face processing research is proliferating due to the ease with which faces can be generated, standardised and manipulated. However there has been surprisingly little research into whether CG faces are processed in the same way as photographs of real faces. The present study assessed how well CG faces tap face identity expertise by investigating whether two indicators of face expertise are reduced for CG faces when compared to face photographs. These indicators were accuracy for identification of own-race faces and the other-race effect (ORE)-the well-established finding that own-race faces are recognised more accurately than other-race faces. In Experiment 1 Caucasian and Asian participants completed a recognition memory task for own- and other-race real and CG faces. Overall accuracy for own-race faces was dramatically reduced for CG compared to real faces and the ORE was significantly and substantially attenuated for CG faces. Experiment 2 investigated perceptual discrimination for own- and other-race real and CG faces with Caucasian and Asian participants. Here again, accuracy for own-race faces was significantly reduced for CG compared to real faces. However the ORE was not affected by format. Together these results signal that CG faces of the type tested here do not fully tap face expertise. Technological advancement may, in the future, produce CG faces that are equivalent to real photographs. Until then caution is advised when interpreting results obtained using CG faces.
由于能够轻松生成、标准化和操作面部，计算机生成（CG）刺激在面部处理研究中的应用正在迅速增加。然而，令人惊讶的是，对于CG面部是否与真实面部照片的处理方式相同，研究却非常少。本研究通过调查与面部照片相比，CG面部的两个面部专业指标是否降低，来评估CG面部在多大程度上利用了面部身份专业知识。这些指标是识别本种族面部的准确性和异族效应（ORE）——即已确立的发现，本种族面部比其他种族面部被更准确地识别。在实验1中，白种人和亚洲参与者完成了一项针对本种族和其他种族真实及CG面部的识别记忆任务。与真实面部相比，CG面部的本种族面部总体准确性大幅降低，并且CG面部的ORE显著且大幅减弱。实验2用白种人和亚洲参与者研究了本种族和其他种族真实及CG面部的知觉辨别。同样，与真实面部相比，CG面部的本种族面部准确性显著降低。然而，ORE不受格式影响。这些结果共同表明，这里测试的那种CG面部并没有充分利用面部专业知识。未来，技术进步可能会产生与真实照片等效的CG面部。在此之前，在解释使用CG面部获得的结果时建议谨慎。
