The dynamics of visual adaptation to faces

Abstract

Several recent demonstrations using visual adaptation have revealed high-level aftereffects for complex patterns including faces. While traditional aftereffects involve perceptual distortion of simple attributes such as orientation or colour that are processed early in the visual cortical hierarchy, face adaptation affects perceived identity and expression, which are thought to be products of higher-order processing. And, unlike most simple aftereffects, those involving faces are robust to changes in scale, position and orientation between the adapting and test stimuli. These differences raise the question of how closely related face aftereffects are to traditional ones. Little is known about the build-up and decay of the face aftereffect, and the similarity of these dynamic processes to traditional aftereffects might provide insight into this relationship. We examined the effect of varying the duration of both the adapting and test stimuli on the magnitude of perceived distortions in face identity. We found that, just as with traditional aftereffects, the identity aftereffect grew logarithmically stronger as a function of adaptation time and exponentially weaker as a function of test duration. Even the subtle aspects of these dynamics, such as the power-law relationship between the adapting and test durations, closely resembled that of other aftereffects. These results were obtained with two different sets of face stimuli that differed greatly in their low-level properties. We postulate that the mechanisms governing these shared dynamics may be dissociable from the responses of feature-selective neurons in the early visual cortex.

Sex-contingent face after-effects suggest distinct neural populations code male and female faces

“…First, the realistic face transformations of the adapting stimuli were themselves subtle (Leopold et al 2001). Second, the duration of the adaptation phases in both studies was relatively brief and after-effects following exposure to faces are known to increase logarithmically as a function of increased duration of the adaptation phase (Leopold et al 2005). Importantly, and as many other researchers have noted, even subtle changes in face preferences may have consequences for a diverse range of social outcomes (Perrett et al 1998;Penton-Voak et al 1999;Langlois et al 2000;Rhodes et al 2003).…”

“…Exposure to faces biases subsequent perceptions of novel faces by causing faces similar to those initially viewed to appear more normal than they would otherwise be perceived (Leopold et al 2001;Rhodes et al 2001Rhodes et al , 2003Rhodes et al , 2004Webster et al 2004;Leopold et al 2005). For example, adaptation to faces with contracted features causes novel faces with contracted features to be perceived as more normal than prior to this exposure (Rhodes et al 2003;Rhodes et al 2004).…”

“…Visual after-effects are thought to reflect changes in the responses of neural mechanisms underlying face processing (Leopold et al 2001;Rhodes et al 2003Rhodes et al , 2004Webster et al 2004;Leopold et al 2005;Moradi et al 2005) and cannot be attributed to retinal (i.e. low level) adaptations, as the aftereffects are robust to differences in the retinal location and size of faces at exposure and post-exposure testing (Leopold et al 2001;Rhodes et al 2003Rhodes et al , 2004Leopold et al 2005) and are disrupted by binocular suppression during exposure (Moradi et al 2005).…”

Face-Space: A Unifying Concept in Face Recognition Research

“…This is the typical face distortion after-effect (FDAE). Contrastive facial after-effects have also been observed for judgments of attractiveness (Rhodes, Jeffery, Watson, Clifford, & Nakayama, 2003), personality (Buckingham et al, 2006;Wincenciak, Dzhelyova, Perrett, & Barraclough, 2013), emotion and gender (Webster, Kaping, Mizokami, & Duhamel, 2004) and identity (Leopold, O'Toole, Vetter, & Blanz, 2001;Leopold, Rhodes, Müller, & Jeffery, 2005). Face after-effects transfer across face identities (even to the perceivers' own face; Webster & MacLin, 1999), from an adaptor of one size to test stimuli of a different size (Zhao & Chubb, 2001), across different parts of the retina (Hurlbert, 2001;Anderson & Wilson, 2005) and partially across viewpoints (Jeffery, Rhodes, & Bussey, 2006;Pourtois, Schwartz, Seghier, Lazeyras, & Vuilleumier, 2005;Ryu & Chaudhuri, 2006), yet visual similarity between the adaptor and test is a critical variable in the magnitude of the FDAEs (Yamashita, Hardy, De Valois, & Webster, 2005) at least for unfamiliar faces (Hills & Lewis, 2012).…”

From single cells to social perception

“…In contrast to Rolls et al [72], no cells showed a larger response on subsequent presentations of the same stimulus, although this may be owing to an influence of the delayed match to sample task in which the monkeys were engaged during Li et al's [73] experiment. Li et al's study indicates that cellular adaptation resulting from the presentation of a face can last a significant period of time, considerably longer than seen during psychophysical adaptation experiments [74].…”