Dr. Carl Gaspar講演会

タイトル：
USING PSYCHOPHYSICS AND FACIAL STATISTICS TO UNDERSTAND THE INFORMATION UNDERLYING FACE IDENTIFICATION

講演者：
Dr. Carl Gaspar, Department of Psychology, University of Glasgow
（現在，産業技術総合研究所に日本学術振興会外国人特別研究員（欧米・短期）として滞在中）

日時： 12月3日(水) 16:30-18:00
場所： 京都大学 吉田南キャンパス・人間・環境学研究科 東南101室

主催：京都大学こころの未来研究センター
共催：産業技術総合研究所

本件に関するお問い合わせは，
京都大学こころの未来研究センター，番浩志（ban.hiroshi@gmail.com），
または産業技術総合研究所，永井聖剛（masayoshi-nagai@aist.go.jp）まで．

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以下，講演要旨

It is more difficult to identify a face when it is viewed upside-down compared to when it is viewed upright. This result, known as the face inversion effect, has led many researchers to believe that qualitatively different kinds of information underlie upright and inverted face identification. This belief is so widespread that the face inversion effect is often used as a tool for revealing those facial cues that are most critical for normal face recognition. However, my classification image results demonstrate that upright and inverted faces are identified using very similar kinds of local information around the eyes and eyebrows. In another experiment, I also show that upright and inverted face recognition rely on the same narrow band of spatial frequencies around 7 cycles per face. Rather than using the face inversion effect to make inferences about the information supporting face identification, I decided to take a new approach by considering the statistical variation of feature-spacing in a real population of faces, and examining individual differences in a realistic face identification task. The findings show that face identification accuracy is correlated with thresholds for the discrimination of inter-pupillary distance. However, performance in a simple contrast discrimination task suggests that this correlation is almost completely driven by individual differences in high-level factors like attentiveness and concentration. Moreover, observers' sensitivity to differences in inter-pupillary distance is not sufficient to resolve the variation in this distance that exists in a large population of faces. Overall, my results suggest that, contrary to popular notions, local structure, especially around the eyes and eyebrows, may be very important for face processing. Surprisingly, it was found that this conclusion is actually consistent with the Thatcher Illusion. The final part of my talk discusses how this illusion, the psychophysics of face identification, and the statistics of facial variations, all converge on the importance of a single facial area ― the eyes and eyebrows.