Bruce V, Burton A M, Hanna E, Healey P, Mason O, Coombes A, Fright R, Linney A
Department of Psychology, University of Nottingham, UK.
Perception. 1993;22(2):131-52. doi: 10.1068/p220131.
People are remarkably accurate (approaching ceiling) at deciding whether faces are male or female, even when cues from hair style, makeup, and facial hair are minimised. Experiments designed to explore the perceptual basis of our ability to categorise the sex of faces are reported. Subjects were considerably less accurate when asked to judge the sex of three-dimensional (3-D) representations of faces obtained by laser-scanning, compared with a condition where photographs were taken with hair concealed and eyes closed. This suggests that cues from features such as eyebrows, and skin texture, play an important role in decision-making. Performance with the laser-scanned heads remained quite high with 3/4-view faces, where the 3-D shape of the face should be easiest to see, suggesting that the 3-D structure of the face is a further source of information contributing to the classification of its sex. Performance at judging the sex from photographs (with hair concealed) was disrupted if the photographs were inverted, which implies that the superficial cues contributing to the decision are not processed in a purely 'local' way. Performance was also disrupted if the faces were shown in photographic negatives, which is consistent with the use of 3-D information, since negation probably operates by disrupting the computation of shape from shading. In 3-D, the 'average' male face differs from the 'average' female face by having a more protuberant nose/brow and more prominent chin/jaw. The effects of manipulating the shapes of the noses and chins of the laser-scanned heads were assessed and significant effects of such manipulations on the apparent masculinity or femininity of the heads were revealed. It appears that our ability to make this most basic of facial categorisations may be multiply determined by a combination of 2-D, 3-D, and textural cues and their interrelationships.
即便发型、妆容和胡须等线索被降至最低限度，人们在判断面孔是男性还是女性时仍具有极高的准确性（接近上限）。本文报告了旨在探究我们对面孔性别进行分类能力的感知基础的实验。与头发被遮住且眼睛闭上的照片条件相比，当要求受试者判断通过激光扫描获得的三维（3-D）面部表征的性别时，他们的准确性要低得多。这表明眉毛和皮肤纹理等特征所提供的线索在决策过程中起着重要作用。对于3/4视角的面部，激光扫描头部的判断表现仍然相当高，在这种视角下，面部的三维形状应该最容易看清，这表明面部的三维结构是有助于其性别的分类的另一个信息来源。如果照片倒置，从照片（头发被遮住）判断性别的表现就会受到干扰，这意味着有助于决策的表面线索并非以纯粹“局部”的方式进行处理。如果面孔以负片形式呈现，表现也会受到干扰，这与使用三维信息是一致的，因为底片可能是通过干扰从阴影中计算形状来起作用的。在三维空间中，“平均”男性面孔与“平均”女性面孔的不同之处在于，男性面孔有更突出的鼻子/眉毛以及更明显的下巴/下颚。研究评估了对激光扫描头部的鼻子和下巴形状进行操控的效果，结果显示这种操控对头部明显的男性化或女性化特征有显著影响。看来我们进行这种最基本的面部分类的能力可能由二维、三维和纹理线索及其相互关系的组合多重决定。
