Extraction of nonidentity information from unfamiliar faces : an investigation of normal and pathological face processing

192 Pages·1991·6.7 MB·English

by  Greve, Kevin W.

EXTRACTION OF NONIDENTITY INFORMATION FROM
UNFAMILIAR FACES: AN INVESTIGATION OF NORMAL AND
PATHOLOGICAL FACE PROCESSING
By
KEVIN W. GREVE
A DISSERTATION PRESENTED TO THE GRADUATE SCHOOL
OF THE UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT
OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF
DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY
UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA
1991
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
It probably strikes most people at some point during
the course of a major research project that despite the
fact that it's "your project" you could not have hoped to
have completed it alone. I became aware of that fact
during the course of my master's thesis so I knew going
into this project that other people would play an
important role in it. On looking back, however, I am
still amazed at the number of people who have made
contributions to this project and I want to take this
opportunity to thank them.
I have been particularly fortunate to have had Rus
Bauer chair both my thesis and dissertation. My research
accomplishments as a graduate student are a testament to
the quality of his mentorship. His example as both a
clinician and scientist has given me a goal which I may
never attain. I want to thank Rus for both his guidance
and friendship. Dawn Bowers, in many ways, has felt and
functioned like a cochair on my dissertation and has given
me tremendous guidance and encouragement throughout this
project. She also happily lent me her only copy of the
Florida Facial Affect Test and gave me access to all her
unilateral stroke patients. It has been a pleasure
working with her. Eileen Fennell and Ira Fischler, as
ii
members of my dissertation committee, have also made
significant contributions to this project. Eileen has
also made significant contributions to my development as a
psychologist. Michael Conlon was always available when I
had statistical questions and was adept at understanding
my sometimes poorly word or conceptualized questions and
generating straight-forward and often relatively simple
statistical solutions. More importantly, as a
statistician who is not immersed in the psychological
belief system, he kept the rest of us psychologists honest
by offering insightful alternative interpretations. I
don't think I could have asked for a better dissertation
committee. Thank you.
Execution of this project was challenging. Many
stages of development were required before I ran my first
"real" subjects. Randi Lincoln was my partner for the
first six months during which we collected photographs of
men and conducted all the preliminary classification
research on those photographs. John Paul Abner also
played a significant role in the photography portion of
this project. It is also important to thank all the male
students and faculty in the Department of Clinical &
Health Psychology, the Health Center employees, and
members of the Baptist Student Center who took time out to
be photographed and became the 101 stimulus faces. Many
of the subjects who were used in the preliminary
classification studies were either undergraduates from the
111
Introductory Psychology subject pool or persons who
responded to newspaper ads. However, a large portion of
these subjects were members of the United Church of
Gainesville who were kind enough to allow us into their
church on Sunday mornings. Almost no one in the
Department of Clinical and Health Psychology escaped being
dragged into the lab and forced to stare into my
tachistoscope during the initial pilot studies. Tracy
Henderson contributed some of her free time helping me
collect control data. Her help allowed me to run subjects
twice as fast as I could have alone. We had a great
system. To all these people, without whom this project
would be no more than a proposal, thank you. I would also
like to offer special thanks to L.F., our prosopagnosic,
who, for the four years I have known him, has never
declined to come up to Gainesville for testing. Not only
is he an interesting patient and willing subject, he is a
thoughtful, insightful, and kind person.
Running this project was not an inexpensive
undertaking considering the cost of photography and
subject compensation. Rus Bauer paid the cost of
photography out of money that could have contributed to
his own professional enhancement. Ken Heilman and Dawn
Bowers allowed stroke subjects to be paid from their grant
which meant that I was able to get many patients who would
not have made the long trip to Gainesville without
compensation. My mother, Becky Warren, also made me a
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"research grant" that helped cover the cost of pilot study-
subjects. Finally, the American Psychological Association
made a significant contribution to this research by
granting me a Dissertation Research Award in 1990.
There are many people who have directly impacted me
and my dissertation. But there are some whose major
contribution was that of making the ongoing course of
doing this dissertation less stressful and giving me
energy and encouragement. My wife, Janet Burroff, is
first and foremost among those people. It's hard to put
into words how important it has been for me to know that
she was there to talk to if things got tough. In my
thesis I thanked her for tolerating "my seemingly endless
blabber about this study" and thanks for that is also
appropriate although I think I didn't blabber guite as
much. Karen Clark and Beth Onufrak have been my
classmates for five years and my partners in crime for two
and a half. We have shared a lot in that time and their
company has always made me feel good. My parents, Doug
Greve and Becky Warren, and my grandmother, Rebecca
Musgrove, have always been tremendously supportive, always
thrilled at my accomplishments. Finally, it is important
to mention Danny Martin, who I have probably not said more
than two or three sentences to about the content of my
dissertation. Despite this, Danny has made a contribution
that is hard to measure: He has taken me fishing with
regularly for the past two years. When my stress level is
up and I'm feeling discouraged and low on energy, there is
no better therapy than fishing. In fact, there is no
better therapy even when I'm feeling good.
Completing my dissertation represents the culmination
of my graduate career. This has been a wonderful
experience and if I had it to do again, I don't think I
would do anything differently (except start fishing
sooner). I couldn't have asked for better training, nor
for better people to learn from and with. Thank you all.
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
page
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
ii
LIST OF TABLES x
LIST OF FIGURES
iix
ABSTRACT
xiv
CHAPTERS
1 INTRODUCTION
!
Neuroanatomy of Vision
Lateralization of Face Processing
Special Face Processing Systems
Facial Identity Processing
Facial Expression Processing
Cognitive Model of Face Processing
Extraction of Nonobservable Attributes
34
Personality Trait Attributions
35
Occupational Category Attributions
37
Summary
38
Purpose of this Study !!!!!!!!!!!! 39
Hypothesis
43
Direct Tests
[[[ 43
Indirect Tests
46
[
2 METHODS AND RESULTS 49
Methods
49
Subjects
I! 49
Tests of Face Memory and Perception
53
Tests of Direct Access to Face Information 54
Tests of Indirect Access to Face Information... 57
General Procedure
59
Results
60
Tests of Face Memory and Perception 60
Tests of Direct Access to Face Information 62
Tests of Indirect Access to Face Information. 74
Individual Performance on Expression Tasks . 83
vii
page
3 SUMMARY AND DISCUSSION 89
Summary
89
Discussion
94
Identity Processing
96
Expression Processing
98
Summary
106
Stereotype Processing
108
Conclusions
114
Future Directions
117
APPENDICES
A STEREOTYPE STIMULUS SET DEVELOPMENT 119
Category Selection
I 12
Category Selection II 122
Stimuli
122
Participants
122
Procedure
123
Results
124
Face Categorization
124
Participants
125
Stimuli
126
Procedure
126
Results
127
B PILOT STUDIES 130
Experiment B-l 130
Participants
130
Stimuli
130
Procedure
131
Results and Discussion 133
Experiment B-2 134
Participants
135
Results and Discussion 135
Experiment B-3 135
Stimuli and Procedure
136
Results and Discussion 137
Experiment B-4 137
Participants
137
Stimuli and Procedure 138
Results and Discussion 138
Experiment B-5 138
Stimuli and Procedures 139
Results and Discussion 140
Experiment B-6 142
Results
143
Summary and Discussion 145
Vlll
page
C STIMULUS FACES
147
REFERENCES
164
BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH
173
ix
LIST OF TABLES
page
TABLE 1-1 Outcome Assumptions Based on a Review
of the Previous Research for Each
Domain of Face Information 44
TABLE 2-1 Comparisons of Patient and Control
Groups on Demographic, WAIS-R Vocabulary
Score, and Time Post Injury 50
TABLE 2-2 Demographic and Lesion Location Data for
Individual Stroke Patients 51
TABLE 2-3 Means for the Tests of Face Memory and
Perception
61
TABLE 2-4 Mean Percent Correct for the Florida
Facial Affect Test Affect Discrimination,
Naming, Selection, and Matching Subtests... 63
TABLE 2-5 Simple Effect and Grand Mean Ratings for
the Occupational Stereotype Rating Test 66
TABLE 2-6 Results of t-Tests Comparing L.F.'s
Ratings in the Correct Versus Incorrect
Conditions for Each of the Rating Tests 68
TABLE 2-7 Simple Effect and Grand Mean Ratings for
the Personality Stereotype Rating Test 69
TABLE 2-8 Simple Effect and Grand Mean Ratings for
the Identity Rating Test 71
TABLE 2-9 Mean Difference Scores for Ratings Tests 73
TABLE 2-10 Reaction Time Means and Standard Deviations
for Face-Occupation Category Interference
Test
75
TABLE 2-11 Reaction Time Means and Standard Deviations
for Face-Personality Descriptor
Interference Test
76