Prosopagnosia is a disorder in which:
Visual face processing abilities are selectively impaired
Memory for the names of familiar persons is impaired
The ability to identify persons by any means is impaired
Vision is impaired in general, but preserved for faces
Attractive faces tend to be:
Average
Specific to racial groups
Slightly asymmetric
Gender-neutral
That faces are somewhat special visual stimuli is supported by all these findings except that:
Even very impoverished line drawings can be interpreted as faces
Babies prefer to look at faces over other stimuli
We are better at recognising previously seen faces than other types of visual stimuli
Babies only a few days old prefer to look at the faces of their own mother over other age-matched female faces
Babies prefer stimuli with vertical (left/right) symmetry over those with horizontal (up/down) symmetry
Brain regions which process facial identity and emotional expression:
Are highly overlapping
Are interchangeable
Are redundant
Are found in the occipital lobe
Are well separated
A face created with a blend of 50% happy and 50% angry expressions will appear happy:
After the observer has been induced into a happy mood
After adapting to a face with an angry expression
When the face is turned upside down
After adapting to a face with a happy expression
The so-called "fusiform face area" is most active when:
Viewing binocularly fused, form fitted stimuli
Viewing scrambled faces
Seeing Rubin's face/vase stimulus as a vase
Viewing human faces
Viewing emotional stimuli
