Adults' Performance on a Measure of Visual Closure

Abstract

The Mooney Closure Faces Test has been employed in several studies of right temporal-lobe function. However, the information provided by these studies is somewhat restricted because there has been no systematic attempt to determine what constitutes “normal” performance on this instrument. The present study attempts to rectify partially this situation by testing samples of three distinct populations (college students, vocational-technical students, and relatives of indigent patients) of neurologically intact subjects who differed in age, IQ, educational level, sex, and handedness. Regression showed all of these variables to be significantly correlated with performance on the Mooney Closure Faces Test. The final linear regression model was correlated 0.718 with the Mooney scores and resulted in predictions which were approximately 30% more accurate than those made using the mean of the entire sample alone.

Increased face detection responses on the mooney faces test in people at clinical high risk for psychosis

“…The CHR group was 41% male, and the HC group was 24% male. While this difference was not statistically significant, it is still possible that the difference could have affected group means on the MFT, given prior findings that perception of faces on the MFT may be more pronounced in males [38][39][40] , which is also what we observed. However, evidence that our findings are not due to a gender imbalance between groups is that although female subjects reported fewer faces than males overall, female CHR subjects reported significantly more faces in the upright condition than did HC females, and they reported more faces at a trend level in the inverted condition.…”

“…Gender differences and the group x gender interaction were examined using ANOVAs. These were explored because in non-clinical samples, it has been observed that males tend to report perceiving more faces than females on the MFT [38][39][40] . Pearson correlations were calculated both with and without the Hadi correction 56,57 to exclude the influence of outlying values.…”

A new Mooney test

“…The latter finding replicates that of Vigen and colleagues (1982), who also did not observe a significant difference in performance between handedness groups (total N = 100 college students). However, they did observe a significant correlation of performance with age, in that performance deteriorated with age, though for females only (Vigen, Goebel, & Embree, 1982). Although we currently did not observe a correlation of performance with age, for our new Mooney test any analyses of age should be interpreted with caution, since the performance measure depends partially on the participant's dexterity with using a mouse or track pad to click within the correct eye region, a skill on which participants of advanced ages might be impaired.…”

An online version of the Mooney Face Test: phenotypic and genetic associations

“…Foreman (1991), who observed a significantly shorter reaction time for males than for females. Vigen and colleagues reported that sex accounts for 8.5% of the variance in performance on the Mooney Face Test, additionally observing that females' performance declines with increasing age while that of males remains the same (Vigen et al, 1982). These results contrast with findings for other tests of face perception, where females seem to enjoy an advantage on both memory and non-memory based tests, although perhaps for female faces only (Megreya et al, 2011).…”