Understanding the Face Inversion Effect is important for the study of face processing. Some researchers believe that the processing of inverted faces is qualitatively different from the processing of upright faces because inversion leads to a disproportionate performance decrement on the processing of different kinds of face information. Other researchers believe that the difference is quantitative because the processing of all kinds of facial information is less efficient due to the change in orientation and thus, the performance decrement is not disproportionate. To address the Qualitative and Quantitative debate, the current study employed a response-contingent, change detection paradigm to study eye movement during the processing of upright and inverted faces. In this study, configural and featural information were parametrically and independently manipulated in the eye and mouth region of the face. The manipulations for configural information involved changing the interocular distance between the eyes or the distance between the mouth and the nose. The manipulations for featural information involved changing the size of the eyes or the size of the mouth. The main results showed that change detection was more difficult in inverted than upright faces. Specifically, performance declined when the manipulated change occurred in the mouth region, despite the greater efforts allocated to the mouth region. Moreover, compared to upright faces where fixations were concentrated on the eyes and nose regions, inversion produced a higher concentration of fixations on the nose and mouth regions. Finally, change detection performance was better when the last fixation prior to response was located on the region of change, and the relationship between last fixation location and accuracy was stronger for inverted than upright faces. These findings reinforce the connection between eye movements and face processing strategies, and suggest that face inversion produces a qualitative disruption of looking behavior in the mouth region.

A growing body of literature suggests that human individuals differ in their ability to process face identity. These findings mainly stem from explicit behavioral tasks, such as the Cambridge Face Memory Test (CFMT). However, it remains an open question whether such individual differences can be found in the absence of an explicit face identity task and when faces have to be individualized at a single glance. In the current study, we tested 49 participants with a recently developed fast periodic visual stimulation (FPVS) paradigm [Liu-Shuang, J., Norcia, A. M., & Rossion, B. An objective index of individual face discrimination in the right occipitotemporal cortex by means of fast periodic oddball stimulation. Neuropsychologia, 52, 57-72, 2014] in EEG to rapidly, objectively, and implicitly quantify face identity processing. In the FPVS paradigm, one face identity (A) was presented at the frequency of 6 Hz, allowing only one gaze fixation, with different face identities (B, C, D) presented every fifth face (1.2 Hz; i.e., AAAABAAAACAAAAD…). Results showed a face individuation response at 1.2 Hz and its harmonics, peaking over occipitotemporal locations. The magnitude of this response showed high reliability across different recording sequences and was significant in all but two participants, with the magnitude and lateralization differing widely across participants. There was a modest but significant correlation between the individuation response amplitude and the performance of the behavioral CFMT task, despite the fact that CFMT and FPVS measured different aspects of face identity processing. Taken together, the current study highlights the FPVS approach as a promising means for studying individual differences in face identity processing.

In a standard center cueing paradigm, participants are asked to identify a target object presented either to the left or the right of a center cue (e.g., eye gaze, head-turn, arrow, etc.). When the center cue is non-predictive (e.g., the arrow points to the correct location of the target only 50 % of the time), the target can still be identified faster at the validly cued location than at the invalidly cued location. However, the abrupt onset of an object can elicit reflexive attention orientation. It is important to investigate whether this abrupt onset effect interferes with the cueing effect elicited by center cues because this interference effect, if it exists, should be controlled for in order to improve the test validity of the center cueing task. In an attentional cueing paradigm, we examined how the abrupt appearance of an exogenous target object mitigates the influence of center cues involving either a head turn (Experiment 1) or an arrow (Experiment 2). In Experiment 1, a non-predictive head-turn cue was followed by a target object (circle or square) presented in the left or right visual field. In the non-distractor condition, the target object was presented by itself. In this case, it is assumed that the sudden appearance of the target provides an orienting cue to the observer. To equalize the cueing effect of the target object, we presented a competing distractor object (triangle) in the opposite visual field to the target object. The participant's task was to categorize the target object as either a circle or square while ignoring the non-target triangle object in the opposite visual field. In Experiment 2, the arrow version of the cued recognition task was used, in which a single-headed arrow pointed to the object. The results from both experiments showed that both the non-predictive head-turn and arrow cues produced a reliable cueing effect in the distractor and non-distractor conditions. However, the magnitude of the cueing effect was greater in the distractor condition than in the non-distractor condition, suggesting that the abrupt onset of the target object acts like an exogenous signal, thereby reducing the impact of the internal head turn and arrow cues.

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SummaryAlthough a deadly form of skin cancer, melanoma is treatable if detected early. However, current rule‐based training practices in melanoma detection are not effective. We assessed an innovative technique to train melanoma detection using the perceptual expertise principles. Participants in the training group were trained to categorize melanoma and benign lesions to 95% accuracy. Participants in the control group received no training. Prior to testing all participants reviewed the ABCDE rules. Training was evaluated by the pre and post tests using the Melanoma Detection Test where participants categorized images of melanoma and benign lesions. As compared to the control group, the training group showed significant improvement in melanoma detection and became less liberal (i.e., bias toward categorizing a lesion as melanoma), and both improvements maintained a week after the training. These findings indicate that perceptual expertise training is a promising approach to train melanoma detection.Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

The goal of the present study was to investigate the development of face processing strategies in a perceptual discrimination task. Children ages 7 to 12 years and young adults were administered the Face Dimensions Task. In the Face Dimensions Task, participants were asked to judge whether two simultaneously presented faces were the “same” or “different”. For the “same” trials, the two faces were identical. For the “different” trials, the faces differed either in the spacing between the eyes, the spacing between the nose and the mouth, the size of the eyes or the size of the mouth. The main finding was that 7- to 10-year-old children showed no difference in their ability to discriminate differences in eye size and eye spacing but showed a poor ability to discriminate differences in nose and mouth spacing and to a lesser extent, mouth size. The developmental lag between nose-mouth discriminations and the other featural and configural discriminations was reduced in older children and eliminated by young adulthood. These results indicate that the type of the face information (i.e., configural versus featural) and its location (i.e., eye versus mouth) jointly contribute to the development of face perception abilities.

Many medical professions require practitioners to perform visual categorizations in domains such as radiology, dermatology, and neurology. However, acquiring visual expertise is tedious and time-consuming and the perceptual strategies mediating visual categorization skills are poorly understood. In this paper, the Ease algorithm was developed to predict an item’s categorization difficulty (Ease value) based on the item’s perceptual similarity to all within-category items versus between-category items in the dataset. In this study, Ease values were used to construct an easy-to-hard and hard-to-easy training schedule for teaching melanoma diagnosis. Whereas previous visual training studies suggest that an easy-to-hard schedule benefits learning outcomes, no studies to date have demonstrated the easy-to-hard advantage with complex, real-world images. In our study, 237 melanoma and benign images were collected for training and testing purposes. The diagnostic accuracy of images was verified by an expert dermatologist. Based on their Ease values, the items were grouped into easy, medium, and hard categories, each containing an equal number of melanoma and benign lesions. During training, participants categorized images of skin lesions as either benign or melanoma and were given corrective feedback after each trial. In the easy-to-hard training condition, participants learned to categorize all the easy items first, followed by the medium items, and finally the hard items. Participants in the hard-to-easy training condition learned items in the reverse order. Post-training results showed that training in both conditions transferred to the classification of new melanoma and benign images. Participants in the easy-to-hard condition showed modest advantages both in the acquisition and retention of the melanoma diagnosis skills, but neither scheduling condition exhibited a gross advantage. The Ease values of the items predicted categorization accuracy after, but not before training, suggesting that the Ease algorithm is a promising tool for optimizing medical training in visual categorization.Electronic supplementary materialThe online version of this article (10.1186/s41235-018-0131-6) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

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