Why do some people recognize faces easily and others frequently make mistakes in recognizing faces? Classic behavioral work has shown that faces are processed in a distinctive holistic manner that is unlike the processing of objects. In the study reported here, we investigated whether individual differences in holistic face processing have a significant influence on face recognition. We found that the magnitude of face-specific recognition accuracy correlated with the extent to which participants processed faces holistically, as indexed by the composite-face effect and the whole-part effect. This association is due to face-specific processing in particular, not to a more general aspect of cognitive processing, such as general intelligence or global attention. This finding provides constraints on computational models of face recognition and may elucidate mechanisms underlying cognitive disorders, such as prosopagnosia and autism, that are associated with deficits in face recognition.

What makes one person socially insightful but mathematically challenged, and another musically gifted yet devoid of a sense of direction? Individual differences in general cognitive ability are thought to be mediated by "generalist genes" that affect many cognitive abilities similarly without specific genetic influences on particular cognitive abilities [1]. In contrast, we present here evidence for cognitive "specialist genes": monozygotic twins are more similar than dizygotic twins in the specific cognitive ability of face perception. Each of three measures of face-specific processing was heritable, i.e., more correlated in monozygotic than dizygotic twins: face-specific recognition ability, the face-inversion effect [2], and the composite-face effect [3]. Crucially, this effect is due to the heritability of face processing in particular, not to a more general aspect of cognition such as IQ or global attention. Thus, individual differences in at least one specific mental talent are independently heritable. This finding raises the question of what other specific cognitive abilities are independently heritable and may elucidate the mechanisms by which heritable disorders like dyslexia and autism can have highly uneven cognitive profiles in which some mental processes can be selectively impaired while others remain unaffected or even selectively enhanced.

In daily life, one of the most common social tasks we perform is to recognize faces. However, the relation between face recognition ability and social activities is largely unknown. Here we ask whether individuals with better social skills are also better at recognizing faces. We found that extraverts who have better social skills correctly recognized more faces than introverts. However, this advantage was absent when extraverts were asked to recognize non-social stimuli (e.g., flowers). In particular, the underlying facet that makes extraverts better face recognizers is the gregariousness facet that measures the degree of inter-personal interaction. In addition, the link between extraversion and face recognition ability was independent of general cognitive abilities. These findings provide the first evidence that links face recognition ability to our daily activity in social communication, supporting the hypothesis that extraverts are better at decoding social information than introverts.

No abstract

As adolescents are in a crucial developmental period, they are more susceptible than adults to Internet gaming disorder (IGD). The dual-system model proposed by Casey, Jones, and Hare (2008) emphasized the equal importance of reward-seeking and cognitive control systems in accounting for adolescents’ risky behaviors. Considering that no study has simultaneously examined reward seeking (loss aversion, i.e., loss sensitivity relative to gain sensitivity) and cognitive control (inhibitory control) in IGD, this study aimed to investigate loss aversion and inhibitory control in the same IGD adolescent population. Forty five adolescent patients with IGD and 43 matched healthy control participants completed a mixed gambles task and a stop-signal task to measure loss aversion and inhibitory control, respectively. Two main findings were identified in this study. First, the IGD participants showed concurrent reduced loss aversion and inhibitory control, suggesting that differences in both systems serve as behavioral markers of IGD in adolescents. Second, the IGD participants were categorized into 2 distinct subtypes based on differences in loss aversion and inhibitory control, which implies specific therapies for specific subtypes of IGD adolescents. Therefore, this study extends the application of the dual-system model to explain adolescents’ excessive Internet gaming behavior.

The relationship between impulse control disorder (ICD) behaviors and problematic Internet use (PIU) has been established in the literature. Our aim was to further investigate whether the ICDs of individuals suffering from PIU primarily involve an inability to delay gratification or a tendency to take risks. Using delay and probability discounting tasks, we compared the subjective value of discounting between PIU individuals and controls in conditions of gaining or losing different monetary amounts. The results of the present study revealed a significant positive relationship between PIU and impulsivity scores. PIU individuals discounted delayed amounts more steeply than controls, regardless of the reward sign and monetary amount. Conversely, there were no significant group differences in the probability discounting task. These findings suggest that PIU individuals may be more impulsive than controls when impulsivity is framed as insensitivity to delayed outcomes rather than as a tendency to take risks, which is inconsistent with the view of impulsivity as a general trait.

Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) studies on humans have identified a region in the left middle fusiform gyrus consistently activated by written words. This region is called the visual word form area (VWFA). Recently, a hypothesis, called the interactive account, is proposed that to effectively analyze the bottom-up visual properties of words, the VWFA receives predictive feedback from higherorder regions engaged in processing sounds, meanings, or actions associated with words. Further, this top-down influence on the VWFA is independent of stimulus formats. To test this hypothesis, we used fMRI to examine whether a symbolic nonword object (e.g., the Eiffel Tower) intended to represent something other than itself (i.e., Paris) could activate the VWFA. We found that scenes associated with symbolic meanings elicited a higher VWFA response than those not associated with symbolic meanings, and such top-down modulation on the VWFA can be established through short-term associative learning, even across modalities. In addition, the magnitude of the symbolic effect observed in the VWFA was positively correlated with the subjective experience on the strength of symbol-referent association across individuals. Therefore, the VWFA is likely a neural substrate for the interaction of the top-down processing of symbolic meanings with the analysis of bottom-up visual properties of sensory inputs, making the VWFA the location where the symbolic meaning of both words and nonword objects is represented.

No abstract