Face Recognition and Cognition

A special issue of Vision (ISSN 2411-5150).

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (31 May 2023) | Viewed by 9930

Special Issue Editor


E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Human Vision and Eye Movement Laboratory, Departments of Medicine (Neurology), Ophthalmology and Visual Sciences, Psychology, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada
Interests: face recognition; word processing; cognitive neuropsychology

Special Issue Information

Dear colleagues,

The face is a complex structure, characterized by a complicated three-dimensional shape, a substantial degree of mobility, and structural constraints that make all faces similar. These issues present challenges to perceptual systems. Nevertheless, due to the social importance of faces, humans have developed the ability to recognize them rapidly and accurately, with seemingly little effort. This allows us not only to identify others, but also to recover their biographical information and understand their feelings and intentions. Different cognitive and neural models have been proposed to capture the complexity of the face recognition process, but the exact nature of the mechanisms underlying face processing are still debated—even more debated is whether the mechanisms used for recognizing faces are face-specific or are shared by most (if not all) object types.  The aim of this Special Issue, therefore, is to consider experimental, clinical and theoretical contributions that could help us to clarify this fascinating but complex topic.

Dr. Andrea Albonico
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Vision is an international peer-reviewed open access quarterly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 1600 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Benefits of Publishing in a Special Issue

  • Ease of navigation: Grouping papers by topic helps scholars navigate broad scope journals more efficiently.
  • Greater discoverability: Special Issues support the reach and impact of scientific research. Articles in Special Issues are more discoverable and cited more frequently.
  • Expansion of research network: Special Issues facilitate connections among authors, fostering scientific collaborations.
  • External promotion: Articles in Special Issues are often promoted through the journal's social media, increasing their visibility.
  • e-Book format: Special Issues with more than 10 articles can be published as dedicated e-books, ensuring wide and rapid dissemination.

Further information on MDPI's Special Issue polices can be found here.

Published Papers (3 papers)

Order results
Result details
Select all
Export citation of selected articles as:

Research

14 pages, 2306 KiB  
Article
Measuring the Contributions of Perceptual and Attentional Processes in the Complete Composite Face Paradigm
by William Blake Erickson and Dawn R. Weatherford
Vision 2023, 7(4), 76; https://doi.org/10.3390/vision7040076 - 17 Nov 2023
Viewed by 1769
Abstract
Theories of holistic face processing vary widely with respect to conceptualizations, paradigms, and stimuli. These divergences have left several theoretical questions unresolved. Namely, the role of attention in face perception is understudied. To rectify this gap in the literature, we combined the complete [...] Read more.
Theories of holistic face processing vary widely with respect to conceptualizations, paradigms, and stimuli. These divergences have left several theoretical questions unresolved. Namely, the role of attention in face perception is understudied. To rectify this gap in the literature, we combined the complete composite face task (allowing for predictions of multiple theoretical conceptualizations and connecting with a large body of research) with a secondary auditory discrimination task at encoding (to avoid a visual perceptual bottleneck). Participants studied upright, intact faces within a continuous recognition paradigm, which intermixes study and test trials at multiple retention intervals. Within subjects, participants studied faces under full or divided attention. Test faces varied with respect to alignment, congruence, and retention intervals. Overall, we observed the predicted beneficial outcomes of holistic processing (e.g., higher discriminability for Congruent, Aligned faces relative to Congruent, Misaligned faces) that persisted across retention intervals and attention. However, we did not observe the predicted detrimental outcomes of holistic processing (e.g., higher discriminability for Incongruent, Misaligned faces relative to Incongruent, Aligned faces). Because the continuous recognition paradigm exerts particularly strong demands on attention, we interpret these findings through the lens of resource dependency and domain specificity. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Face Recognition and Cognition)
Show Figures

Figure 1

10 pages, 586 KiB  
Article
Prosopagnosia, Other Specific Cognitive Deficits, and Behavioral Symptoms: Comparison between Right Temporal and Behavioral Variant of Frontotemporal Dementia
by Christos Koros, Ion Beratis, Stavroula Matsi, Anastasia Bougea, Anastasios Bonakis, Ioannis Papatriantafyllou, Efthalia Angelopoulou, Elisabeth Kapaki, Leonidas Stefanis and Sokratis G. Papageorgiou
Vision 2022, 6(4), 75; https://doi.org/10.3390/vision6040075 - 13 Dec 2022
Cited by 3 | Viewed by 2781
Abstract
Right temporal variant of frontotemporal dementia (rtv-FTD) represents an uncommon and recently described frontotemporal dementia (FTD) entity presenting with symptoms in many ways comparable to those of the frontal or behavioral variant of FTD (bv-FTD). The aims of this study were to explore [...] Read more.
Right temporal variant of frontotemporal dementia (rtv-FTD) represents an uncommon and recently described frontotemporal dementia (FTD) entity presenting with symptoms in many ways comparable to those of the frontal or behavioral variant of FTD (bv-FTD). The aims of this study were to explore the timing of cognitive and behavioral symptoms of rtv-FTD, and to compare the distinct cognitive deficits including prosopagnosia and behavioral symptoms of rtv-FTD patients with those observed in bv-FTD patients. We reviewed the records of 105 patients clinically diagnosed with FTD. A total of 7 patients (5 men/2 women) with FTD and marked right temporal atrophy in magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) were detected. Clinical features were compared with those observed in a group of 22 age-matched patients (16 men/6 women) with FTD and predominant frontal lobe atrophy. The main presenting symptoms of rtv-FTD were prosopagnosia, apathy, and episodic memory impairment. In contrast, social awkwardness and compulsive behaviors were dominant in later stages of the disease together with disinhibition and loss of insight with a marked personality change. Although the cognitive and behavioral profiles of patients with right temporal or frontal lobes atrophy present substantial similarities, each subtype has a number of distinct characteristics. It appears that prosopagnosia, obsessive behaviors, and psychotic symptoms are more prominent in rtv-FTD patients. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Face Recognition and Cognition)
Show Figures

Figure 1

12 pages, 1680 KiB  
Article
Does Father Christmas Have a Distinctive Facial Phenotype?
by Thomas Wright, Chris Law, Ben Wright and Barry Wright
Vision 2022, 6(4), 71; https://doi.org/10.3390/vision6040071 - 2 Dec 2022
Cited by 1 | Viewed by 4474
Abstract
We investigated whether Father Christmas has a distinguishable facial phenotype by performing a cross-sectional cohort study examining the facial feature vectors of all publicly available photographs obtained from a google image search of individuals meeting our eligibility criteria presenting as Father Christmas compared [...] Read more.
We investigated whether Father Christmas has a distinguishable facial phenotype by performing a cross-sectional cohort study examining the facial feature vectors of all publicly available photographs obtained from a google image search of individuals meeting our eligibility criteria presenting as Father Christmas compared with other adult and elderly bearded men. Facial feature vectors were determined using the open-source OpenFace facial recognition system and assessed by support vector machines (SVM). SVM classifiers were trained to distinguish between the facial feature vectors from our groups. Accuracy, precision, and recall results were calculated and the area under the curve (AUC) of the receiver operating characteristic (ROC) were reported for each classifier. SVM classifiers were able to distinguish the face of Father Christmas from other adult men with a high degree of accuracy and could discriminate Father Christmas from elderly bearded men but with lower accuracy. Father Christmas appears to have a distinct facial phenotype when compared to adult men and elderly bearded men. This will be reassuring to children who may be keen to recognise him but raises some interesting questions about the careful use of two-dimensional facial analysis, particularly when employed to explore the relationships between genotype and facial phenotype in a clinical dysmorphology setting. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Face Recognition and Cognition)
Show Figures

Figure 1

Back to TopTop