Aging Faces and Aging Perceivers: Young and Older Adults are Less Sensitive to Deviations from Normality in Older Than in Young Adult Faces

Abstract

Past studies examining the other-age effect, the phenomenon in which own-age faces are recognized more accurately than other-age faces, are limited in number and report inconsistent results. Here we examine whether the perceptual system is preferentially tuned to differences among young adult faces. In experiment 1 young (18-25 years) and older adult (63-87 years) participants were shown young and older face pairs in which one member of each pair was undistorted and the other had compressed or expanded features. Participants indicated which member of each pair was more normal and which was more expanded. Both age groups were more accurate when tested with young compared with older faces-but only when judging normality. In experiment 2 we tested a separate group of young adults on the same two tasks but with upright and inverted face pairs to examine the differential pattern of results between the normality and discrimination tasks. Inversion impaired performance on the normality task but not the discrimination task and eliminated the young adult advantage in the normality task. Collectively, these results suggest that the face processing system is optimized for young adult faces and that abundant experience with older faces later in life does not reverse this perceptual tuning.

The own‐age face recognition bias is task dependent

“…The results for young adults are surprising given abundant evidence of an OAB in old/new recognition tasks (see above) and normality judgment tasks (Short & Mondloch, ). We note, however, that the OAB observed by Short and Mondloch was limited to normality judgments; there was no evidence of an OAB in a discrimination task in which participants were asked to judge which member of each face pair was more expanded.…”

“…We presented stimuli to young adults for 1,000 ms to match the presentation time used in previous studies in which a similar paradigm was used (Kuefner et al ., ; Macchi Cassia et al ., ; Proietti et al ., ), with the specific goal of replicating a recognition bias for young over older adult faces in young adults (Proietti et al ., ). We chose a longer presentation time for older adults based on pilot testing and on previous studies reporting a longer presentation time for this age group (Chaby, Narme, & George, ; Short & Mondloch, ). Participants were asked to indicate which face was the target by pressing one of two keys on the keyboard as quickly and as accurately as possible.…”

“…Support for this hypothesis comes from a recent study providing direct evidence that both young and older adults are less sensitive to deviations from the norm in older compared to young adult faces (Short & Mondloch, ). Participants were shown two versions of a facial identity; one version was undistorted and the other had facial features that were compressed or expanded.…”

The Impact of Top-Down Prediction on Emotional Face Processing in Social Anxiety

“…Such tendency for subjects with social anxiety to experience social inhibition may lead to a lack of experience in the perception of social stimuli, such as emotional faces. It is widely accepted that less experience with human faces leads to a relatively more feature-based processing of them (Hugenberg et al, 2007; Short and Mondloch, 2013). …”

Differential attentional allocation and subsequent recognition for young and older adult faces

“…Although older adults receive extensive recent experience with individuals belonging to their in-group (i.e., other older adults), they were young adults earlier in development and therefore have gathered substantial experience with young adult faces as well. It may be the case that early and continuous exposure to young adult faces throughout development tunes the perceptual system to the dimensions of young adult faces (Short & Mondloch, 2013) and is sufficient to support the recognition of young faces even in older adulthood when young faces are less frequently encountered and are those of a social out-group. Moreover, even though older adults receive less frequent exposure to young adult faces in their daily social interactions, they may still receive ample exposure to young adult faces in the media, which may further preserve their abilities.…”