Sunday Mackenzie A, Dodd Michael D, Tomarken Andrew J, Gauthier Isabel
Vanderbilt University, Department of Psychology, USA.
University of Nebraska-Lincoln, Department of Psychology and Center for Brain, Biology and Behavior, USA.
Vision Res. 2019 Apr;157:202-212. doi: 10.1016/j.visres.2017.12.007. Epub 2018 Sep 27.
Recent reports have shown that individuals from small hometowns show relatively poor face recognition ability as measured by the Cambridge Face Memory Test or CFMT (Balas & Saville, 2015, 2017), suggesting that the number of faces present in an individual's visual environment relates to that individual's face recognition ability. We replicate this finding in a sample from a different region (Nebraska) and with more variable age distribution. We extend the study by using another test of face recognition ability that does not require learning over trials, and with non-face object recognition tests that share the learning format with the CFMT. We find no hometown effect in these other tests, although more power would be required to show the CFMT effect is significantly larger. We use the same dataset to explore whether experience with more faces and cars in larger hometowns leads to specialization of these abilities. We find strong and substantial support for the hypothesis that the recognition abilities for faces and for cars are more independent from general object recognition in people from larger hometowns. This suggests that experience may be critical to the specialization of these abilities.
最近的报告显示，通过剑桥面部记忆测试（CFMT）测量，来自小镇的个体表现出相对较差的面部识别能力（巴拉斯和萨维尔，2015年，2017年），这表明个体视觉环境中出现的面孔数量与该个体的面部识别能力有关。我们在来自不同地区（内布拉斯加州）且年龄分布更具多样性的样本中重复了这一发现。我们通过使用另一种不需要通过多次试验学习的面部识别能力测试，以及与CFMT具有相同学习形式的非面部物体识别测试来扩展这项研究。我们发现在这些其他测试中不存在家乡效应，尽管需要更大的样本量才能表明CFMT效应显著更大。我们使用相同的数据集来探究在更大的家乡接触更多面孔和汽车的经历是否会导致这些能力的专门化。我们发现有强有力且充分的证据支持这样的假设：来自更大家乡的人对面孔和汽车的识别能力与一般物体识别能力的独立性更强。这表明经历可能对这些能力的专门化至关重要。
