On the facilitative effects of face motion on face recognition and its development

Abstract

For the past century, researchers have extensively studied human face processing and its development. These studies have advanced our understanding of not only face processing, but also visual processing in general. However, most of what we know about face processing was investigated using static face images as stimuli. Therefore, an important question arises: to what extent does our understanding of static face processing generalize to face processing in real-life contexts in which faces are mostly moving? The present article addresses this question by examining recent studies on moving face processing to uncover the influence of facial movements on face processing and its development. First, we describe evidence on the facilitative effects of facial movements on face recognition and two related theoretical hypotheses: the supplementary information hypothesis and the representation enhancement hypothesis. We then highlight several recent studies suggesting that facial movements optimize face processing by activating specific face processing strategies that accommodate to task requirements. Lastly, we review the influence of facial movements on the development of face processing in the first year of life. We focus on infants' sensitivity to facial movements and explore the facilitative effects of facial movements on infants' face recognition performance. We conclude by outlining several future directions to investigate moving face processing and emphasize the importance of including dynamic aspects of facial information to further understand face processing in real-life contexts.

Emotion in motion: Facial dynamics affect infants' neural processing of emotions

“…Although much progress has been made in understanding the neural processing of dynamic emotional expressions in adults, little is known about how dynamic information affects the processing of emotional faces in infants. Previous research supports the importance of motion in infants' perception across various domains, including face recognition (Bulf & Turati, ; Missana et al, ; Nelson & Russell, ; Otsuka et al, ; Rotem‐Kohavi et al, ; Xiao et al, ). With regard to emotional faces, Missana and colleagues () compared neural processing of dynamic expressions of pain and anger in 8‐month‐old infants and adults, and found opposite pattern of results for the two groups, with infants allocating more attention to angry faces and adults showing increased emotional arousal in response to pain.…”

Dynamic composite faces are processed holistically

“…As such, there is an obvious ecological validity to studying faces in motion. Although much research has investigated the utility of motion for face recognition (e.g., O'Toole, Roark, & Abdi, 2002;Roark et al, 2003;Xiao et al, 2014), little has investigated how motion influences the way in which faces are processed. Further, the little research there is has led to inconsistent results.…”

Overcoming the other‐race effect in infancy with multisensory redundancy: 10–12‐month‐olds discriminate dynamic other‐race faces producing speech

“…Typically, adults are more proficient at recognizing, discriminating, and remembering the faces of their own race than those of other races (Bothwell, Brigham, & Malpass, ; Lindsay, Jack, & Christian, ). This is known as the other‐race effect (ORE) and studies have found that it emerges during the first year of life and that it reflects the tuning of the perceptual system by exposure to specific face categories (Kelly et al., ; Kelly, Quinn et al., ; Kelly et al., ; Liu et al., ; Sangrigoli & de Schonen, 2004b; Xiao et al., ; Xiao, Xiao, Quinn, Anzures, & Lee, ). In general, the ORE is characterized by the developmental narrowing of an initial ability to discriminate the faces of all races to a subsequently improved ability to discriminate own‐race faces and a diminished ability to discriminate other‐race faces.…”