Study Guide for Lectures of Aug 28, Lab/Demos of Aug 28/29

Psy 121 Fall, 2007 Study Guide for lectures of Aug 28, lab/demos of Aug 28/29

Because you will not have done any advance reading for these first two class sessions and also because the materials presented in these first class sessions are not covered systematically in the textbook, this study guide is an outline of the topics I plan to cover. If you miss either the first lecture or the first lab/conference meeting, please consult the suggested readings for details. Of course, you’re welcome to consult these readings to augment your understanding even if you were in class.

The titles of these first two class sessions were purposefully ambiguous, so that Experiment 1 could be run before you became fully aware that in this first section of the course we will focus on the study of faces. This topic was selected because the study of faces is important in all branches of psychology – indeed, it is difficult to open any psychology journal and not find at least one study either of face processing per se, or in which faces are being used as stimuli in the study of other psychological phenomena (e.g., perception, attention, memory, emotion, social relations, clinical phenomena, or brain/behavior relationships). So this area of study exemplifies the “diversity of psychology’s perspectives” described in Chapter 1 (as does the study of eating, which will also be covered in this section of the course).

Indeed, this is a good time to emphasize that, over the next 3.5 weeks (i.e., before the first exam), you will read all of Chapters 1 and 2, some sections of other chapters (especially 3 and 12), and the Appendix of Gleitman et al. So, if you prefer to read these materials in the order presented in the text, go ahead and do so, using the study guides where possible. (N.B. Study guides for Chapt 2, part of Chapt 1 and the assigned reading for the conferences of Aug 30/31 are appended to this outline.)

Outline of topics for lecture and lab/conferences, Aug 28/29

Debriefing of Experiment 1

What kinds of information do we get from faces? Class brainstorming.

Faces matter. Example: cherubism

A model of face processing (model appended from Ellis & Lewis, 2001)

Is all of this information “in” the faces themselves? An introduction to perception as an “active” process. Examples:

Seeing faces where there are none Getting information from faces not consciously seen Priming paradigm Research on ambiguous faces Morphing Resolving ambiguity: categorical perception Rotshstein et al., Young et al. Categories influence perception and memory Eberhardt et al. Effects of experience Faces in context

Are faces special? (see Maurer et al., McKone et al.)

The importance of configuration The face inversion effect The Thatcher illusion The composite effect “Verbal overshadowing” Evidence for specialized processing in the brain: neural modularity Prosopagnosia (neuropsychological studies) Electrophysiological evidence: face selective neurons Neuroimaging evidence: the fusiform face area (FFA) Domain-specific or process-specific modularity? The expertise hypothesis Evidence for biological underpinnings Comparative studies Infants orient to faces and face-like stimuli Cross-cultural commonalities

Faces as instruments of communication (linking to upcoming class sessions)

To others

To self? Suggested readings:

Maurer, D., Le Grand, R. & Mondloch, C.J. (2002). The many faces of configural processing, Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 6(6), 255-260.

Eberhardt, J.L., Dasgupta, N. & Banaszynski, T.L. (2003). Believing is seeing: the effects of racial labels and implicit beliefs on face perception, Personality & Social Psychology Bulletin, 29(3), 360-370.

Ellis, H.D. & Lewis, M.B. (2001). Capgras delusion: a window on face recognition, Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 5(4), 149-156.

McKone, E., Kanwisher, N. & Duchaine. B.C. (2006). Can generic expertise explain special processing for faces? Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 11(1), 8-15.

Rotshtein, P. et al. (2005). Morphing Marilyn into Maggie dissociates physical and identity face representations in the brain, Nature Neuroscience, 8(1), 107-113.

Tsao, D. (2006). A dedicated system for processing faces, Science, 314, 72-73.

Young, A.W. et al. (1997). Facial expression megamix: Tests of dimensional and category accounts of emotion recognition, Cognition, 63, 271-313.

General references on face processing:

Bruce, V. & Young, A. (1998). In the Eye of the Beholder: The Science of Face Perception, Oxford University Press. Cole, J. (1998). About Face, MIT Press. Young, A.W. (1998) Face and Mind, Oxford University Press