Shared or Separate Mechanisms for Self-Face and Other-Face Processing? Evidence from Adaptation

Abstract

Evidence that self-face recognition is dissociable from general face recognition has important implications both for models of social cognition and for our understanding of face recognition. In two studies, we examine how adaptation affects the perception of personally familiar faces, and we use a visual adaptation paradigm to investigate whether the neural mechanisms underlying the recognition of one’s own and other faces are shared or separate. In Study 1 we show that the representation of personally familiar faces is rapidly updated by visual experience with unfamiliar faces, so that the perception of one’s own face and a friend’s face is altered by a brief period of adaptation to distorted unfamiliar faces. In Study 2, participants adapted to images of their own and a friend’s face distorted in opposite directions; the contingent aftereffects we observe are indicative of separate neural populations, but we suggest that these reflect coding of facial identity rather than of the categories “self” and “other.”

The Role of Familiarity on Viewpoint Adaptation for Self-Face and Other-Face Images

“…The adaptation task comprised both within-identity and cross-identity trials. Differently from Rooney et al (2012), they found a transfer of the aftereffect from all adaptor types to all test stimuli, but also a larger magnitude of the aftereffect in the presence of a familiarity match between adaptor and test (e.g. unfamiliar adaptor, unfamiliar test; famous face adaptor, famous face test), except for personally familiar faces (personally familiar faces as adaptors induced smaller aftereffects than other kinds of faces).…”

“…Further studies have shown no effect of familiarity on the magnitude of the aftereffect. Rooney et al (2012) found cross-identity aftereffects characterized by shifts in the perception of attractiveness, normality, and distortedness after exposure to distorted unfamiliar faces, the distorted self-face, and distorted friends' faces. They have interpreted these results as suggesting the existence of a common representation for all classes of faces, regardless of the level of familiarity.…”

“…In order to manipulate familiarity, several studies have used images of famous people (Carbon & Ditye, 2011;Hills & Lewis, 2012;Walther et al, 2013), whereas in other studies participants had been trained with face stimuli (Jiang, Blanz, & O'Toole, 2007Ryu & Chaudhuri, 2006). Only a few studies have examined the effects of adaptation by using personally familiar faces (Rooney et al, 2012;Walton & Hills, 2012), or the participant's own face (Laurence & Hole, 2011;Rooney et al, 2012).…”

“…The first dimension is associated with the facial information which is susceptible to adaptation. In fact, face aftereffects have been studied by considering different kinds of face properties, such as facial identity ('face-identity aftereffect'; Hurlbert, 2001;Leopold, Rhodes, Mu¨ller, & Jeffery, 2005;Walther, Schweinberger, & Kovacs, 2013), normality (or absence of distortion; 'facedistortion aftereffect ';MacLin & Webster, 2001;Rooney et al, 2012;Walton & Hills, 2012;Watson & Clifford, 2003;Webster & MacLin, 1999), pose ('viewpoint aftereffect';Bi, Su, Chen, & Fang, 2009;Chen, Yang, Wang, & Fang, 2010;Daar & Wilson, 2012;Fang et al, 2007;Fang & He, 2005;Ryu & Chaudhuri, 2006), ethnic group (Webster, Kaping, Mizokami, & Duhamel, 2004), gender (Webster et al, 2004), facial expressions (Butler, Oruc, Fox, & Barton, 2008), adaptation of gaze direction (Jenkins, Beaver, & Calder, 2006), and systematic distortions of the spatial or figural information of the face ('face figural aftereffect'; Carbon & Ditye, 2012;Carbon & Leder, 2005;Webster & MacLin, 1999). The second dimension is associated with the time interval between adaptation and test.…”

Self-face perception: Individual differences and discrepancies associated with mental self-face representation, attractiveness and self-esteem.

“…Self-faces and unfamiliar faces involve separate cognitive processing as shown by studies involving visual adaptation (Rooney, Keyes, & Brady, 2012) and gain mechanisms (Keyes & Brady, 2010). Moreover, a unique cortical network for the processing of selfrelated body information, which partially overlaps with a cortical network for the extraction of body-related information (Devue et al, 2007;Hodzic, Muckli, Singer, & Stirn, 2009), has been postulated.…”