Awad Deema, Clifford Colin W G, White David, Mareschal Isabelle
Department of Biological and Experimental Psychology, School of Biological and Chemical Sciences, Queen Mary University of London, London E1 4NS, UK.
The School of Psychology, UNSW Sydney, Sydney, New South Wales 2052, Australia.
R Soc Open Sci. 2020 Dec 23;7(12):200936. doi: 10.1098/rsos.200936. eCollection 2020 Dec.
Perception is context dependent. For example, the perceived orientation of a bar changes depending on the presence of oriented bars around it. Contextual effects have also been demonstrated for more complex judgements, such as facial attractiveness or expression, although it remains unclear how these contextual facial effects depend on the types of faces surrounding the target face. To examine this, we measured the perceived age (a quantifiable measure) of a target face in the presence of differently aged faces in the surround. Using a unique database of standardized passport photos, participants were asked to estimate the age of a target face which was viewed either on its own or surrounded by two different identity flanker faces. The flanker faces were either both younger or both older than the target face, with different age offsets between flankers and targets of ±5, ±10, ±15, ±20 years. We find that when a target face is surrounded by younger faces, it systematically appears younger than when viewed on its own, and when it is surrounded by older faces, it systematically appears older than when viewed on its own. Surprisingly, we find that the magnitude of the flanker effects on perceived age of the target is asymmetric with younger flankers having a greater influence than older flankers, a result that may reflect the participants' own-age bias, since all participants were young. This result holds irrespective of gender or race of the faces and is consistent with averaging.
感知是依赖于背景的。例如，一条线的感知方向会因其周围线的方向而改变。背景效应在更复杂的判断中也得到了证实，比如面部吸引力或表情，尽管目前尚不清楚这些背景面部效应如何依赖于目标面部周围的面部类型。为了探究这一点，我们测量了在周围存在不同年龄面部的情况下目标面部的感知年龄（一种可量化的指标）。使用一个由标准化护照照片组成的独特数据库，要求参与者估计单独呈现的目标面部或被两个不同身份的侧翼面部环绕的目标面部的年龄。侧翼面部要么都比目标面部年轻，要么都比目标面部年长，侧翼面部与目标面部之间有±5、±10、±15、±20岁的不同年龄差值。我们发现，当目标面部被较年轻的面部环绕时，它系统性地显得比单独观看时更年轻；而当它被较年长的面部环绕时，它系统性地显得比单独观看时更年长。令人惊讶的是，我们发现侧翼面部对目标面部感知年龄的影响程度是不对称的，较年轻的侧翼面部比较年长的侧翼面部影响更大，这一结果可能反映了参与者自身年龄偏差，因为所有参与者都是年轻人。无论面部的性别或种族如何，这一结果都成立，并且与平均化一致。
