School of Psychological Science, University of Western Australia, Crawley, WA, Australia.
School of Psychological Science, University of Western Australia, Crawley, WA, Australia.
Vision Res. 2021 May;182:9-19. doi: 10.1016/j.visres.2021.01.004. Epub 2021 Feb 9.
Serial dependence of facial identity is a type of bias where the perceived identity of a face is biased towards a previously presented face. There are individual differences in serial dependence strength and tuning (how the strength varies depending on stimuli similarity), and previous research has shown that both stronger and more narrowly tuned serial dependence of facial identity is associated with better face recognition abilities. These results are consistent with the idea that this bias plays a functional role in face perception. It is important, therefore, to determine whether serial dependence of facial identity reflects a high-level face-coding mechanism acting on the identity of a face or instead predominantly reflects a bias in low-level features, which are also subject to serial dependence. We first sought evidence that serial dependence of facial identity survived changes in low-level visual features, by varying face viewpoint between successive stimuli. We found that serial dependence persisted across changes in viewpoint, arguing against an entirely low-level locus for this bias. We next tested whether the bias was affected by inversion, as sensitivity to inversion is argued to be a characteristic of high-level face-selective processing. Serial dependence was stronger and more narrowly tuned for upright than inverted faces. Taken together, our results are consistent with the view that serial dependence of facial identity affects high-level visual representations and may reflect a face-coding mechanism that is operating at the level of facial identity.
面部身份的序列依赖性是一种偏见，即人们对面部身份的感知会偏向于之前呈现过的面部。个体之间在序列依赖性的强度和调谐（强度如何根据刺激相似性而变化）方面存在差异，先前的研究表明，更强和更窄的面部身份序列依赖性与更好的面孔识别能力有关。这些结果与这种偏见在面孔感知中起着功能作用的观点一致。因此，重要的是要确定面部身份的序列依赖性是否反映了作用于面孔身份的高级面部编码机制，或者是否主要反映了也受到序列依赖性影响的低级特征的偏见。我们首先通过在连续刺激之间改变面孔视角来寻找证据，证明面部身份的序列依赖性在低级视觉特征发生变化后仍然存在。我们发现，序列依赖性在视角变化中仍然存在，这排除了这种偏见完全存在于低级水平的可能性。接下来，我们测试了这种偏见是否受到反转的影响，因为反转敏感性被认为是高级面孔选择性加工的特征。与倒置面孔相比，直立面孔的序列依赖性更强且调谐更窄。综上所述，我们的结果一致表明，面部身份的序列依赖性会影响高级视觉表征，可能反映了作用于面部身份的面部编码机制。
