Department of Psychology, Royal Holloway, University of London, Egham, England.
Department of Psychology, University of York, Heslington, England.
Cogn Emot. 2021 Aug;35(5):890-901. doi: 10.1080/02699931.2021.1901657. Epub 2021 Mar 18.
It is well-documented that face perception - including facial expression and identity recognition ability - declines with age. To date, however, it is not yet well understood whether this age-related decline reflects face-specific effects, or instead can be accounted for by well-known declines in general intelligence. We examined this issue using a relatively large, healthy, age-diverse (18-88 years) sample ( = 595) who were assessed on well-established measures of face perception and general intelligence. Replicating previous work, we observed that facial expression recognition, facial identity recognition, and general intelligence all showed declines with age. Of importance, the age-related decline of expression and identity recognition was present even when the effects of general intelligence were statistically controlled. Moreover, facial expression and identity ability each showed significant unique associations with age. These results indicate that face perception ability becomes poorer as we age, and that this decline is to some extent relatively focal in nature. Results are in line with a hierarchical structure of face perception ability, and suggest that age appears to have independent effects on the general and specific face processing levels within this structure.
众所周知，面部感知能力（包括面部表情和身份识别能力）会随着年龄的增长而下降。然而，迄今为止，人们还不完全清楚这种与年龄相关的下降是反映了特定于面部的影响，还是可以用众所周知的一般智力下降来解释。我们使用了一个相对较大的、健康的、年龄多样化的（18-88 岁）样本（n=595），对他们进行了面部感知和一般智力的成熟测试，以此来研究这个问题。我们复制了之前的研究结果，观察到面部表情识别、面部身份识别和一般智力都随着年龄的增长而下降。重要的是，即使在统计上控制了一般智力的影响，表达和身份识别的年龄相关性下降仍然存在。此外，面部表情和身份识别能力都与年龄有显著的独特关联。这些结果表明，随着年龄的增长，面部感知能力会变差，而且这种下降在某种程度上是相对集中的。研究结果与面部感知能力的层次结构一致，表明年龄似乎对该结构中的一般和特定面部处理水平有独立的影响。
