Memory for pictures of upright and inverted primate faces in humans (Homo sapiens), squirrel monkeys (Saimiri sciureus), and pigeons (Columba livia).

Abstract

Humans (Homo sapiens) and squirrel monkeys (Saimiri sciureus) were tested for memory of upright and inverted primate faces. Working memory was tested in Experiment 1 with a delayed matching-to-sample procedure, and reference memory was examined in Experiment 2 by requiring subjects to learn to discriminate between successive pairs of upright or inverted pictures. Both human and monkey subjects showed better working memory for upright than for inverted human faces and better reference memory for upright than for inverted human and great ape faces. In Experiment 3, reference memory tests with pigeons (Columba livia) showed no effects of inversion on rate of learning with face pictures. We argue that these findings cannot be explained easily by an individual primate's lifetime experiences with primate faces. We suggest that similar evolved mechanisms for primate face recognition in people and monkeys are responsible for the pattern of data reported.

Perception of pictorial human faces by baboons: Effects of stimulus orientation on discrimination performance

“…Indeed, the baboons belonging to the control group (trained with upside-down faces) did not depart from the animals of the canonical group in terms of learning speed. This effect seems at odds with previous results showing that humans discriminate upright human and ape faces more easily than upsidedown ones (e.g., Phelps & Roberts, 1994). This latter result is also inconsistent with the observation that a squirrel monkey (Samiri sciureus) showed faster acquisition with upright human and ape faces than with inverted ones (Phelps & Roberts, 1994).…”

“…This effect seems at odds with previous results showing that humans discriminate upright human and ape faces more easily than upsidedown ones (e.g., Phelps & Roberts, 1994). This latter result is also inconsistent with the observation that a squirrel monkey (Samiri sciureus) showed faster acquisition with upright human and ape faces than with inverted ones (Phelps & Roberts, 1994). It should be noted, however, that they only tested 1 monkey in each of their experiments.…”

“…Overman and Doty (1982) found a decline of performance when pigtailed macaques viewed inverted human and rhesus faces, but no effect of stimulus inversion for scenes. The effect of face inversion was also re-ported in a squirrel monkey (Saimiri sciureus), but this effect appeared for human faces only, and not for monkey faces or scenes (Phelps & Roberts, 1994). Wright and Roberts (1996) reported similar results on rhesus monkeys.…”

Behavioural and neurophysiological evidence for face identity and face emotion processing in animals

“…Given that most non-human primates have excellent binocular vision and are social animals living in large cohorts, it may be expected that there will exist a system for the visual recognition of conspecifics. Indeed, many studies (Rosenfeld & Van Hoesen 1979;Bruce 1982;Phelps & Roberts 1994;Pascalis et al 1998;Weiss et al 2001) have found evidence for face-recognition abilities in different non-human primate species.…”

Configurational coding, familiarity and the right hemisphere advantage for face recognition in sheep

“…They tested the hypothesis with the use of the inversion e ect (whereby humans [e.g. 38,39] monkeys [28,37] and chimpanzees [26] are particularly bad at identifying faces presented upsidedown) and found that dog-show judges demonstrate an equivalent e ect for dogs. Thus they suggest that any visual objects with a common feature con®gur-ation can show face-like e ects if they are discriminated frequently.…”