Assessing the perception of face pareidolia in children (Homo sapiens), rhesus monkeys (Macaca mulatta), and capuchin monkeys (Sapajus apella).

Abstract

Face pareidolia is the misperception of a face in an inanimate object and is a common feature of the face detection system in humans. Whereas there are many similarities in how humans and nonhuman animals such as monkeys perceive and respond to faces, it is still unclear whether other species also perceive certain nonface stimuli as faces. We presented a novel computerized task to capuchin monkeys (Sapajus apella), rhesus monkeys (Macaca mulatta), and preschool-aged children (Homo sapiens). This task trained subjects to choose faces over nonface images, and then presented pareidolia images with nonface images. All species selected faces most often on trials that included face images. However, only children selected pareidolia images at levels above chance. These results indicate that while children report perceiving face pareidolia, monkeys do not. These species differences could be due to human-unique experiences that result in an increased aptitude for anthropomorphizing objects with face-like patterns. It could also be due to monkeys showing a greater reliance on stimulus features rather than global, holistically organized cues that faces provide.

Do chimpanzees see a face on Mars? A search for face pareidolia in chimpanzees

“…Conversely, when the face-like object was the sample followed by the face as one of the choice stimuli, the choice rate remained near the chance level (mean 45.4 ± 3.3%). These results are consistent with those of Flessert et al (2022). They found that the discrimination between face and non-face objects did not generalize to that between the face-like and non-face objects in rhesus macaques and capuchins.…”

“…These conclusions suggest that even without face awareness, chimpanzees could detect top-heavy structures in a bottom-up manner: even though they did not see faces in face-like objects, top-heavy structures affected their visual search performances. These results are consistent with rhesus macaques and capuchins (Flessert et al, 2022;Taubert et al, 2017 ). Although the monkeys failed to recognize face-like objects as faces, they looked longer at the face-like objects than the non-face objects in the preferential-looking task, especially they paid attention to the top-heavy structure.…”

“…In some studies, rhesus macaques looked at facelike objects longer than non-face objects, and fixation patterns to these objects were similar to faces (Taubert et al, 2017). In other studies, discrimination between faces and non-face objects did not generalize to face-like objects in rhesus macaques and capuchins (Flessert et al, 2022).…”

Face pareidolia in male schizophrenia

“…Although face pareidolia does not represent a uniquely human phenomenon, it is more pronounced in humans. Pre-school children, first trained to select faces among non-faces, later choose not only real full-seen faces but also face-like nonfaces, whereas rhesus monkeys (Macaca mulatta) and capuchin monkeys (Sapajus apella) do not 64 .…”

“…However, in such images, the mere occurrence of typical features (such as a nose) already implicates face presence. Yet faces can be seen in non-face images such as grilled toasts or clouds [60][61][62][63][64][65] . This phenomenon reflects tuning to faces termed face pareidolia (from the ancient Greek παρά (para)-'next to it' and είδωλον (eidolon)-'shape, image').…”