People who are exceptionally good at recognizing faces, or super-recognizers, divide areas of the face into parts before storing them as a composite image in the brain.
Autism-associated social difficulties may reflect differences that only become apparent in high-pressure scenarios and certain social interactions. The findings challenge the belief that those with ASD can't adequately read facial emotional expressions.
Many people report having a difficult time recognizing faces from visually distinct different backgrounds than their own. A new brain stimulation study found the "other race effect" is a result of lacking of cognitive visual expertise, and not social bias.
When the whole body is visible, people can identify the emotions and traits of other people wearing face masks.
Study evaluates whether problems in facial processing and recognition in Alzheimer's disease are a result of memory impairment or visual processing deficits.
Findings suggest children's facial perception abilities are not only profoundly impaired when people wear facemasks, but the level of impairment is greater than in adults.
Rather than trying to remember a face in its entirety, researchers say focus on the ears and specific facial markings like freckles, moles, or scars, to help build facial recognition skills.
Researchers describe how specific facial features distinguish a child's face from an adult's face. The findings may help new technologies to quickly determine if children are depicted in indecent images.
The fusiform face area, an area of the visual cortex responsible for facial processing, develops much earlier than previously believed.
Researchers report that within the visual processing areas, information about a personally familiar or visually familiar face is shared across the brains of those with the same friends or acquaintances. Additionally, shared information about personally familiar faces extends to areas of the brain implicated in social processing, suggesting there is shared social information across the brain.
Knowledge of an individual's personality can influence the perception of a face's identity and bias it toward unrelated people or identities, researchers report.
Men who are intoxicated with alcohol have impairments when it comes to correctly assessing emotional facial cues in others. Researchers speculate the findings may explain why alcohol use is often associated with harmful interpersonal and social interactions, such as aggression and domestic violence.
