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

Abstract

The Mooney Face Test is a widely used test of face perception, but was originally designed to be administered by personal interview. We have developed a three-alternative forced-choice version for online testing. We tested 397 healthy adults between the ages of 18 and 42 (M=24 years). There was a wide range of performance (64-100% correct; M=89.6%). We observed a significant sex difference favoring males (.31 standard deviation; p =.004). In addition, independently of sex, higher 2D:4D digit ratios were significantly associated with higher scores (ρ=.14, p=.006). A genome-wide association study (GWAS) for a subset of 370 participants identified an association between Mooney performance and a polymorphism in the RAPGEF5 gene (rs1522280; p=9.68×10(-8)). This association survives a permutation test (p=.031).

A new Mooney test

“…We observed a significant sex difference favoring males (Mann-Whitney U = 12,279, p = 2.87 × 10 -6 ; x fem = 75.1 %, x mal = 81.7 %-a difference of 0.40 SDs), confirming previous findings using the classical Mooney stimuli (Foreman, 1991;Verhallen et al, 2014). We did not observe a significant correlation between performance and age (Spearman's ρ = .04, p = .47), even when sex was regressed out from both variables (Spearman's ρ = .01, p = .84).…”

“…In a previous study (Verhallen et al, 2014)-using the original 40 Mooney stimuli (Mooney, 1957) in a 3AFC paradigm-we observed a marked ceiling effect in performance, in that almost 10 % of the participants (total N = 397) reached the maximal score. We hypothesized that the participants were sometimes able to respond correctly using cues other than the actual percept of the face-for example, the extent to which the shapes in the images were potentially organic and therefore likely to be part of a face.…”

“…BMooney test^ (Bruce & Young, 2012;Busigny, Joubert, Felician, Ceccaldi, & Rossion, 2010;Kanwisher, Tong, & Nakayama, 1998;Lansdell, 1968;Milner, Corkin, & Teuber, 1968;Verhallen et al, 2014;Wasserstein, Barr, Zappulla, & Rock, 2004). Within a normal population, there are substantial individual differences in the ability to perceive Mooney faces (Foreman, 1991;Verhallen et al, 2014).…”

“…Within a normal population, there are substantial individual differences in the ability to perceive Mooney faces (Foreman, 1991;Verhallen et al, 2014).…”

“…It is curious, for example, that males outperform females on the Mooney test (Foreman, 1991;Verhallen et al, 2014), whereas, if a sex difference is observed in other tests of face processing, it is in favor of females (Megreya, Bindemann, & Havard, 2011). Moreover, we have found (Verhallen et al, in preparation) that performance on a three-alternative forced-choice (3AFC) version of the original Mooney test does not correlate very strongly (Spearman's ρ = .21) with performance on a test of face discrimination (the Glasgow Face Matching Test; Burton, White, & McNeill, 2010), and correlates only modestly (Spearman's ρ = .31) with performance on a test of face recognition (the Cambridge Face Memory Test; Duchaine & Nakayama, 2006).…”