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1. Are Morphs a Valid Substitute for Real Multiracial Faces in Race Categorization Research?

   https://doi.org/10.1177/0146167221989836  

   Ma, Debbie_S; Kantner, Justin; Benitez, Jonathan; Dunn, Stephanie (February 2021, Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin)

   The rise of the multiracial population has been met with a growing body of research examining multiracial face perception. A common method for creating multiracial face stimuli in past research has been mathematically averaging two monoracial “parent” faces of different races to create computer-generated multiracial morphs, but conclusions from research using morphs will only be accurate to the extent that morphs yield perceptual decisions similar to those that would be made with real multiracial faces. The current studies compared race classifications of real and morphed multiracial face stimuli. We found that oval-masked morphed faces were classified as multiracial significantly more often than oval-masked real multiracial faces (Studies 1 and 2), but at comparable levels to unmasked real multiracial faces (Study 2). Study 3 examined factors that could explain differences in how morphs and real multiracial faces are categorized and pointed to the potential role that unusualness/distinctiveness might play. 

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2. Four dimensions characterize attributions from faces using a representative set of English trait words

   https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-021-25500-y  

   Lin, Chujun; Keles, Umit; Adolphs, Ralph (December 2021, Nature Communications)

   null (Ed.)

   Abstract People readily (but often inaccurately) attribute traits to others based on faces. While the details of attributions depend on the language available to describe social traits, psychological theories argue that two or three dimensions (such as valence and dominance) summarize social trait attributions from faces. However, prior work has used only a small number of trait words (12 to 18), limiting conclusions to date. In two large-scale, preregistered studies we ask participants to rate 100 faces (obtained from existing face stimuli sets), using a list of 100 English trait words that we derived using deep neural network analysis of words that have been used by other participants in prior studies to describe faces. In study 1 we find that these attributions are best described by four psychological dimensions, which we interpret as “warmth”, “competence”, “femininity”, and “youth”. In study 2 we partially reproduce these four dimensions using the same stimuli among additional participant raters from multiple regions around the world, in both aggregated and individual-level data. These results provide a comprehensive characterization of trait attributions from faces, although we note our conclusions are limited by the scope of our study (in particular we note only white faces and English trait words were included). 

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3. Categorizing a Face and Facing a Category: The Constructive Impacts of Ambiguity and Uncertainty in Racial Categorization

   https://doi.org/10.1177/01461672221084537  

   Levy, Aharon; Nguyen, Christine; Slepian, Michael L.; Gaither, Sarah; Pauker, Kristin; Dovidio, John F. (April 2022, Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin)

   The past generation has seen a dramatic rise in multiracial populations and a consequent increase in exposure to individuals who challenge monolithic racial categories. We examine and compare two potential outcomes of the multiracial population growth that may impact people’s racial categorization experience: (a) exposure to racially ambiguous faces that visually challenge the existing categories, and (b) a category that conceptually challenges existing categories (including “biracial” as an option in addition to the monolithic “Black” and “White” categories). Across four studies ( N = 1,810), we found that multiple exposures to faces that are racially ambiguous directly lower essentialist views of race. Moreover, we found that when people consider a category that blurs the line between racial categories (i.e., “biracial”), they become less certain in their racial categorization, which is associated with less race essentialism, as well. Importantly, we found that these two effects happen independently from one another and represent two distinct cognitive processes. 

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4. Multimodal investigations of emotional face processing and social trait judgment of faces

   https://doi.org/10.1111/nyas.15084  

   Yu, Hongbo; Lin, Chujun; Sun, Sai; Cao, Runnan; Kar, Kohitij; Wang, Shuo (November 2023, Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences)

   Abstract Faces are among the most important visual stimuli that humans perceive in everyday life. While extensive literature has examined emotional processing and social evaluations of faces, most studies have examined either topic using unimodal approaches. In this review, we promote the use of multimodal cognitive neuroscience approaches to study these processes, using two lines of research as examples: ambiguity in facial expressions of emotion and social trait judgment of faces. In the first set of studies, we identified an event‐related potential that signals emotion ambiguity using electroencephalography and we found convergent neural responses to emotion ambiguity using functional neuroimaging and single‐neuron recordings. In the second set of studies, we discuss how different neuroimaging and personality‐dimensional approaches together provide new insights into social trait judgments of faces. In both sets of studies, we provide an in‐depth comparison between neurotypicals and people with autism spectrum disorder. We offer a computational account for the behavioral and neural markers of the different facial processing between the two groups. Finally, we suggest new practices for studying the emotional processing and social evaluations of faces. All data discussed in the case studies of this review are publicly available. 

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5. Using population receptive field models to elucidate spatial integration in high-level visual cortex

   https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.32470/CCN.2019.1178-0  

   Poltoratski, Sonia Kay (September 2019, 2019 Conference on Cognitive Computational Neuroscience, 13-16 September 2019, Berlin, Germany)

   While spatial information and biases have been consistently reported in high-level face regions, the functional contribution of this information toward face recognition behavior is unclear. Here, we propose that spatial integration of information plays a critical role in a hallmark phenomenon of face perception: holistic processing, or the tendency to process all features of a face concurrently rather than independently. We sought to gain insight into the neural basis of face recognition behavior by using a voxelwise encoding model of spatial selectivity to characterize the human face network using both typical face stimuli, and stimuli thought to disrupt normal face perception. We mapped population receptive fields (pRFs) using 3T fMRI in 6 participants using upright as well as inverted faces, which are thought to disrupt holistic processing. Compared to upright faces, inverted faces yielded substantial differences in measured pRF size, position, and amplitude. Further, these differences increased in magnitude along the face network hierarchy, from IOG- to pFus- and mFus-faces. These data suggest that pRFs in high-level regions reflect complex stimulus- dependent neural computations that underlie variations in recognition performance. 

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