Contextual and own-age effects in age perception

Abstract

Our judgement of certain facial characteristics such as emotion, attractiveness or age, is affected by context. Faces that are flanked by younger faces, for example, are perceived as being younger, whereas faces flanked by older faces are perceived as being older. Here, we investigated whether contextual effects in age perception are moderated by own age effects. On each trial, a target face was presented on the screen, which was flanked by two faces. Flanker faces were either identical to the target face, were 10 years younger or 10 years older than the target face. We asked 40 older (64–69 years) and 43 younger adults (24–29) to estimate the age of the target face. Our results replicated previous studies and showed that context affects age estimation of faces flanked by target faces of different ages. These context effects were more pronounced for younger compared to older flankers but present across both tested age groups. An own-age advantage was observed for older adults for unflanked faces who had larger estimation errors for younger faces compared to older faces and younger adults. Flanker effects, however, were not moderated by own-age effects. It is likely that the increased effect of younger flankers is due to mechanisms related to perceptual averaging.

Super recognizers: Increased sensitivity or reduced biases? Insights from serial dependence

“…However, one could argue that superior processing in SRs may not be (solely) attributable to serial dependence but may rather reflect (a combination of) other perceptual biases. Indeed, various biases continuously shape our perception, including negative adaptation ( Webster, 2011 ; Webster, 2012 ; Webster, 2015 ), stimulus-related biases ( Kosovicheva & Whitney, 2017 ; Wang, Murai, & Whitney, 2020 ; Wang et al., 2022 ), and contextual biases ( Albright & Stoner, 2002 ; Awad et al., 2020 ; Pilz & Lou, 2022 ), as well as biases on an individual basis ( Cappe, Clarke, Mohr, & Herzog, 2014 ; Grzeczkowski, Clarke, Francis, Mast, & Herzog, 2017 ; Shaqiri et al., 2019 ). Extending the present findings, it is possible that SRs may exhibit differences in these effects, which could advance our understanding of mechanisms underlying their perceptual superiority.…”

Super-Recognizers: increased sensitivity or reduced biases? Insights from serial dependence

“…Indeed, various biases continuously shape our perception, e.g. negative adaptation (Webster 2015, Webster 2012, Webster 2011), stimulus-related biases (Wang, Manassi et al 2022, Wang, Murai et al 2020, Kosovicheva and Whitney 2017, contextual biases (Awad, Clifford et al 2020, Pilz and Lou 2022, Albright and Stoner 2002, or based on an individual basis (Grzeczkowski, Clarke et al 2017, Shaqiri, Pilz et al 2019, Cappe, Clarke et al 2014. Extending the present findings, it is possible that SRs may exhibit differences in these effects, which could advance our understanding of mechanisms underlying their perceptual superiority.…”

Effect of spatial context on perceived walking direction

“…In contrast, when two concentric circles are compared with a single circle that has the same size as the inner circle of the concentric pair, an effect known as size assimilation occurs, such that the inner circle appears larger than the single circle ( Howe & Purves, 2004 ; Pressey, 1977 ), as shown in Figure 1 B. Numerous studies have demonstrated that assimilation effects can influence our perception of high-level visual attributes, such as facial attractiveness ( Walker & Vul, 2014 ; Ying, Burns, Lin, & Xu, 2019 ), facial age ( Awad, Clifford, White, & Mareschal, 2020 ; Pilz & Lou, 2022 ), and facial race ( Sun & Balas, 2012 ). Although there is limited evidence of spatial contrast effects in high-level vision, a contrast effect has been found in body perception, in which the silhouette of a person's body was judged to be thinner when surrounded by wider silhouettes compared with when surrounded by thinner silhouettes ( Wedell et al, 2005 ).…”