David Perrett - Profile on Academia.edu (original) (raw)

Papers by David Perrett

Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 2016

Impression formation is profoundly influenced by facial attractiveness, but the existence of faci... more Impression formation is profoundly influenced by facial attractiveness, but the existence of facial cues which affect judgments beyond such an 'attractiveness halo' may be underestimated. Since depression and tiredness adversely affect cognitive capacity, we reasoned that facial cues to mood (mouth curvature) and alertness (eyelid-openness) affect impressions of intellectual capacity. Over four studies we investigated the influence of these malleable facial cues on first impressions of intelligence. In Studies 1 and 2 we scrutinize the perceived intelligence and attractiveness ratings of images of 100 adults (aged 18-33) and 90 school-aged children (aged 5-17) respectively. Intelligence impression was partially mediated by attractiveness, but independent effects of eyelid-openness and subtle smiling were found that enhanced intelligence ratings independent of attractiveness. In Study 3 we digitally manipulated stimuli to have altered eyelid-openness or mouth curvature and found that each independent manipulation had an influence on perceptions of intelligence. In a final set of stimuli (Study 4) we explored changes in these cues before and after sleep restriction, to examine whether natural variations in these cues according to sleep condition can influence perceptions. In Studies 3 and 4 variations with increased eyelid-openness and mouth curvature were found to relate positively to intelligence ratings. These findings suggest potential overgeneralizations based on subtle facial cues that indicate mood and tiredness, both of which alter cognitive ability. These findings also have important implications for students who are directly influenced by expectations of ability and teachers who may form expectations based on initial perceptions of intelligence.

Proceedings of Computer Animation 2002 (CA 2002), 2002

Animated talking faces can be generated from a set of predefined face and mouth shapes (visemes) ... more Animated talking faces can be generated from a set of predefined face and mouth shapes (visemes) by either concatenation or morphing. Each facial image corresponds to one or more phonemes, which are generated in synchrony with the visual changes. Existing implementations require a full set of facial visemes to be captured or created by an artist before the images can be animated. In this work we generate new, photo-realistic visemes from a single neutral face image by transformation using a set of prototype visemes. This allows us to generate visual speech from photographs and portraits where a full set of visemes is not available.

Perception, 2014

Recent studies suggest that judgments of facial masculinity reflect more than sexually dimorphic ... more Recent studies suggest that judgments of facial masculinity reflect more than sexually dimorphic shape. Here, we investigated whether the perception of masculinity is influenced by facial cues to body height and weight. We used the average differences in three-dimensional face shape of forty men and forty women to compute a morphological masculinity score, and derived analogous measures for facial correlates of height and weight based on the average face shape of short and tall, and light and heavy men. We found that facial cues to body height and weight had substantial and independent effects on the perception of masculinity. Our findings suggest that men are perceived as more masculine if they appear taller and heavier, independent of how much their face shape differs from women's. We describe a simple method to quantify how body traits are reflected in the face and to define the physical basis of psychological attributions.

Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 2002

Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 2011

Research describing the cellular coding of faces in non-human primates often provides the underly... more Research describing the cellular coding of faces in non-human primates often provides the underlying physiological framework for our understanding of face processing in humans. Models of face perception, explanations of perceptual after-effects from viewing particular types of faces, and interpretation of human neuroimaging data rely on monkey neurophysiological data and the assumption that neurophysiological responses of humans are comparable to those recorded in the non-human primate. Here, we review studies that describe cells that preferentially respond to faces, and assess the link between the physiological characteristics of single cells and social perception. Principally, we describe cells recorded from the non-human primate, although a limited number of cells have been recorded in humans, and are included in order to appraise the validity of non-human physiological data for our understanding of human face and social perception.

Cognitive Development, 2001

We tested the ability of 1-and 3-month-old infants to form prototypic representations of faces. F... more We tested the ability of 1-and 3-month-old infants to form prototypic representations of faces. Following familiarization to four individual faces, both 1-and 3-month-olds showed evidence of recognizing the individual faces but only 3-month-olds showed evidence of recognizing, and thus having mentally computed, the average of the four face stimuli. Additional experiments showed that (a) 1-month-olds failed to show evidence of recognizing the average face even when the test was made easier, and (b) the results could not be attributed to preexisting visual preferences among the faces. These results are discussed in relation to a two-process theory of the development of face recognition and the hypothesis that babies' abilities to form prototypes of faces underlies their visual responsiveness to attractive faces.

Secondary sexual characteristics may indicate quality of the immune system and therefore a prefer... more Secondary sexual characteristics may indicate quality of the immune system and therefore a preference for masculinity may confer genetic benefits to offspring; however, high masculinity may be associated with costs of decreased paternal investment. The current study examined women's preferences for masculinity in male faces by using computer graphics to allow transformation between feminine and masculine versions of individual male faces. We found that preferences for masculinity are increased when women either have a partner or are considering a short-term relationship. Such preferences are potentially adaptive, serving to: (i) maximize parental investment and cooperation in long-term relationships by biasing choices towards feminine faced males, and (ii) maximize possible good-gene benefits of short-term or extra-pair partners by biasing choices towards masculine faced males. We also found that individuals using oral contraception do not show the above effects, indicating that such hormonal intervention potentially disrupts women's choices for evolutionarily relevant benefits from males.

Cognition

Although recent work suggests that opposite-sex facial attractiveness is less salient in memory w... more Although recent work suggests that opposite-sex facial attractiveness is less salient in memory when individuals are in a committed romantic relationship, romantic relationship quality can vary over time. In light of this, we tested whether activating concerns about romantic relationship quality strengthens memory for attractive faces. Partnered women were exposed briefly to faces manipulated in shape cues to attractiveness before either being asked to think about a moment of emotional closeness or distance in their current relationship. We measured sensitivity in memory for faces as the extent to which they recognized correct versions of studied faces over versions of the same person altered to look either more or less-attractive than their original (i.e. studied) version. Contrary to predictions, high relationship quality strengthened hit rate for faces regardless of the sex or attractiveness of the face. In general, women's memories were more sensitive to attractiveness in women, but were biased toward attractiveness in male faces, both when responding to unfamiliar faces and versions of familiar faces that were more attractive than the original male identity from the learning phase. However, findings varied according to self-rated attractiveness and a psychometric measure of the quality of their current relationship. Attractive women were more sensitive to attractiveness in men, while their less-attractive peers had a stronger bias to remember women as moreattractive and men as less-attractive than their original image respectively. Women in better-quality romantic relationships had stronger positive biases toward, and false memories for, attractive men. Our findings suggest a sophisticated pattern of sensitivity and bias in women's memory for facial cues to quality that varies systematically according to factors that may alter the costs of female mating competition ('market demand') and relationship maintenance.

Brain, behavior, and immunity, 2017

Skin colour may be an important cue to detect sickness in humans but how skin colour changes with... more Skin colour may be an important cue to detect sickness in humans but how skin colour changes with acute sickness is currently unknown. To determine possible colour changes, 22 healthy Caucasian participants were injected twice, once with lipopolysaccharide (LPS, at a dose of 2ng/kg body weight) and once with placebo (saline), in a randomised cross-over design study. Skin colour across 3 arm and 3 face locations was recorded spectrophotometrically over a period of 8h in terms of lightness (L(∗)), redness (a(∗)) and yellowness (b(∗)) in a manner that is consistent with human colour perception. In addition, carotenoid status was assessed as we predicted that a decrease it skin yellowness would reflect a drop in skin carotenoids. We found an early change in skin colouration 1-3h post LPS injection with facial skin becoming lighter and less red whilst arm skin become darker but also less red and less yellow. The LPS injection also caused a drop in plasma carotenoids from 3h onwards. Howe...

PLOS ONE, 2016

Using mixed design analysis of variance (ANOVA), this paper investigates the effects of a subtle ... more Using mixed design analysis of variance (ANOVA), this paper investigates the effects of a subtle simulated increase in adiposity on women's employment chances in the service sector. Employing a unique simulation of altering individuals' BMIs and the literature on "aesthetic labour", the study suggests that, especially for women, being heavier, but still within a healthy BMI, deleteriously impacts on hireability ratings. The paper explores the gendered dimension of this prejudice by asking whether female employees at the upper end of a healthy BMI range are likely to be viewed more negatively than their overtly overweight male counterparts. The paper concludes by considering the implications of these findings.

Facial affect perception in alcoholics

Psychiatry Research, Dec 15, 2002

Satisfactory interpersonal interaction involves understanding others&... more Satisfactory interpersonal interaction involves understanding others' facial expressions. Alcoholic individuals often have severe interpersonal difficulties that may relate to poor and distorted perception of facial expressions. The importance of attention direction has been highlighted by the finding, in recent primate studies, of neurons responsible for the detection of attention direction. Studies on humans suggest that expression perception is modulated by attention direction (whether the expression is directed towards or away from the observer). Here, for the first time, the relationship between attention direction and perception of expression (anger, sadness, happiness and disgust) in alcoholic and control subjects is investigated. We used animated facial stimuli depicting different emotions to give measures of recognition accuracy and of perceptual sensitivity. Our study demonstrated that alcoholics made more errors than control subjects in recognising expressions generally and had a tendency to mis-label sad expressions directed towards them as being hostile (angry/disgusted). When asked to select the point when they started to see the expression, alcoholics, especially female alcoholics, chose higher expression intensities. This study highlights the importance of investigating the modulating effects of attention direction when studying the perception of expressions and provides an indication of how alcoholics' inappropriate social reactions may be triggered.

Cortical and subcortical mechanisms at the core of imitation

Http Dx Doi Org 10 1080 17470910701268059, Feb 22, 2007

Imitation is thought to require a perception-action matching process that utilizes the &a... more Imitation is thought to require a perception-action matching process that utilizes the "mirror neuron" system, but other cognitive functions such as error detection may also be required for even simple imitation. We sought to explore the core neural substrate of imitation by examining the imitation of simple finger actions using fMRI. Participants observed one of two actions and were instructed to imitate the action they observed, or to perform the alternative non-matching action. The contrast between imitation and non-matching actions was associated with activation in areas previously associated with imitation and "mirror neuron" functioning, including insula, intraparietal sulcus, dorsal premotor cortex, and superior temporal gyrus. Imitation was also specifically associated with activity in areas of prefrontal cortex, lateral orbitofrontal cortex (OFC), amygdala, red nucleus, thalamus, hippocampus, and substantia nigra. We suggest that lateral OFC responds to action-perception mismatch and other clusters reflect working memory, motor planning, associative learning, and visuo-motor integration of goal-directed action. Although computational models have predicted integration of these functions to enable imitation, their specific brain bases have not previously been identified. Together they offer a potentially powerful means through which matching one's actions to those of others can lead to behavioral modification and development.

Http Dx Doi Org 10 1080 17470218 2014 944194, Dec 15, 2014

The accuracy of the Content should not be relied upon and should be independently verified with p... more The accuracy of the Content should not be relied upon and should be independently verified with primary sources of information. Taylor and Francis shall not be liable for any losses, actions, claims, proceedings, demands, costs, expenses, damages, and other liabilities whatsoever or howsoever caused arising directly or indirectly in connection with, in relation to or arising out of the use of the Content. This article may be used for research, teaching, and private study purposes. Any substantial or systematic reproduction, redistribution, reselling, loan, sub-licensing, systematic supply, or distribution in any form to anyone is expressly forbidden.

Bipolar patients show mood-congruent biases in sensitivity to facial expressions of emotion when exhibiting depressed symptoms, but not when exhibiting manic symptoms

Cognitive Neuropsychiatry, Dec 1, 2006

A number of studies have reported mood-congruent biases in processing facial expressions of emoti... more A number of studies have reported mood-congruent biases in processing facial expressions of emotion in depression and mania. Most of them have failed to establish that mood reliably affects relevant more than irrelevant expressions, or that the effect is specifically mood-related rather than due to resource or task difficulty artefacts. The aim was to examine, using appropriate statistical methods, whether depressed mood in bipolar patients decreases and manic mood increases sensitivity to facial expressions of happiness and vice versa for facial expressions of negative emotion. Sensitivity to facial expression of six basic emotions in bipolar patients when depressed and when manic was compared to closely matched controls. Mood-related biases in sensitivity to facial expressions of happiness and of negative affect in general operate in persons with bipolar disorder when depressed. There is little evidence of similar biases in persons with bipolar disorder when manic. These data show a mood-congruent bias in sensitivity to facial expressions in bipolar depressed patients.

Http Dx Doi Org 10 1162 089892903770007353, Mar 13, 2006

& We show that under natural viewing, the responses of cells in the temporal lobe of the macaque ... more & We show that under natural viewing, the responses of cells in the temporal lobe of the macaque to the sight of static head and body postures is controlled by the sight of immediately preceding actions. Cells in the anterior part of the superior temporal sulcus responded vigorously to the sight of a face or body posture that followed a particular body action, but not when it followed other actions. The effective action or posture presented in isolation or in different sequences failed to produce a response. Our results demonstrate that cells in the temporal cortex could support the formation of expectations about impending behavior of others. &

PLOS ONE, 2016

Despite the old adage not to 'judge a book by its cover', facial cues often guide first impressio... more Despite the old adage not to 'judge a book by its cover', facial cues often guide first impressions and these first impressions guide our decisions. Literature suggests there are valid facial cues that assist us in assessing someone's health or intelligence, but such cues are overshadowed by an 'attractiveness halo' whereby desirable attributions are preferentially ascribed to attractive people. The impact of the attractiveness halo effect on perceptions of academic performance in the classroom is concerning as this has shown to influence students' future performance. We investigated the limiting effects of the attractiveness halo on perceptions of actual academic performance in faces of 100 university students. Given the ambiguity and various perspectives on the definition of intelligence and the growing consensus on the importance of conscientiousness over intelligence in predicting actual academic performance, we also investigated whether perceived conscientiousness was a more accurate predictor of academic performance than perceived intelligence. Perceived conscientiousness was found to be a better predictor of actual academic performance when compared to perceived intelligence and perceived academic performance, and accuracy was improved when controlling for the influence of attractiveness on judgments. These findings emphasize the misleading effect of attractiveness on the accuracy of first impressions of competence, which can have serious consequences in areas such as education and hiring. The findings also have implications for future research investigating impression accuracy based on facial stimuli.

Behavioural processes, Jan 8, 2016

When making decisions between options, humans are expected to choose the option that returns the ... more When making decisions between options, humans are expected to choose the option that returns the highest benefit. In practice, however, adding inferior alternatives to the choice set can alter these decisions. Here we investigated whether decisions over the facial features that people find healthy looking can also be affected by the context in which they see those faces. To do this we examined the effect of choice set on the perception of health of images of faces of light-skinned Caucasian females. We manipulated apparent facial health by changing yellowness of the skin: the healthy faces were moderately yellow and the less healthy faces were either much more yellow or much less yellow. In each experiment, two healthy faces were presented along with a third, less healthy face. When the third face was much more yellow, participants chose the more yellow of the two healthy faces more often as the most healthy. However, when the third face was the least yellow, participants chose the ...

Perception, 2016

In the present research, we investigated whether the red-attraction relation that has been observ... more In the present research, we investigated whether the red-attraction relation that has been observed for men viewing women may also be observed with regard to women’s facial redness. We manipulated facial redness by slightly increasing or decreasing the redness on the faces of baseline pictures of target women, and then had men judge the attractiveness of the women. We also examined healthiness perceptions as a mediator of the redness-attraction relation, along with several other candidate mediator variables. A series of experiments showed that increased redness led to increased ratings of attractiveness, and decreased redness led to decreased ratings of attractiveness. Perceived healthiness was documented as a mediator of the influence of female facial redness on male perceptions of attractiveness, and this mediation was independent of other candidate mediator variables. The findings highlight the importance of attending to facial coloration as an attraction-relevant cue and point t...

Brain mechanisms of perception and memory : from neuron to behavior

Women’s tuning of preferences for masculinity in 3D faces (SFA) (LMA)

Xxii Biennial International Conference on Human Ethology Belem Brasil, May 29, 2014

Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 2016

Impression formation is profoundly influenced by facial attractiveness, but the existence of faci... more Impression formation is profoundly influenced by facial attractiveness, but the existence of facial cues which affect judgments beyond such an 'attractiveness halo' may be underestimated. Since depression and tiredness adversely affect cognitive capacity, we reasoned that facial cues to mood (mouth curvature) and alertness (eyelid-openness) affect impressions of intellectual capacity. Over four studies we investigated the influence of these malleable facial cues on first impressions of intelligence. In Studies 1 and 2 we scrutinize the perceived intelligence and attractiveness ratings of images of 100 adults (aged 18-33) and 90 school-aged children (aged 5-17) respectively. Intelligence impression was partially mediated by attractiveness, but independent effects of eyelid-openness and subtle smiling were found that enhanced intelligence ratings independent of attractiveness. In Study 3 we digitally manipulated stimuli to have altered eyelid-openness or mouth curvature and found that each independent manipulation had an influence on perceptions of intelligence. In a final set of stimuli (Study 4) we explored changes in these cues before and after sleep restriction, to examine whether natural variations in these cues according to sleep condition can influence perceptions. In Studies 3 and 4 variations with increased eyelid-openness and mouth curvature were found to relate positively to intelligence ratings. These findings suggest potential overgeneralizations based on subtle facial cues that indicate mood and tiredness, both of which alter cognitive ability. These findings also have important implications for students who are directly influenced by expectations of ability and teachers who may form expectations based on initial perceptions of intelligence.

Proceedings of Computer Animation 2002 (CA 2002), 2002

Animated talking faces can be generated from a set of predefined face and mouth shapes (visemes) ... more Animated talking faces can be generated from a set of predefined face and mouth shapes (visemes) by either concatenation or morphing. Each facial image corresponds to one or more phonemes, which are generated in synchrony with the visual changes. Existing implementations require a full set of facial visemes to be captured or created by an artist before the images can be animated. In this work we generate new, photo-realistic visemes from a single neutral face image by transformation using a set of prototype visemes. This allows us to generate visual speech from photographs and portraits where a full set of visemes is not available.

Perception, 2014

Recent studies suggest that judgments of facial masculinity reflect more than sexually dimorphic ... more Recent studies suggest that judgments of facial masculinity reflect more than sexually dimorphic shape. Here, we investigated whether the perception of masculinity is influenced by facial cues to body height and weight. We used the average differences in three-dimensional face shape of forty men and forty women to compute a morphological masculinity score, and derived analogous measures for facial correlates of height and weight based on the average face shape of short and tall, and light and heavy men. We found that facial cues to body height and weight had substantial and independent effects on the perception of masculinity. Our findings suggest that men are perceived as more masculine if they appear taller and heavier, independent of how much their face shape differs from women's. We describe a simple method to quantify how body traits are reflected in the face and to define the physical basis of psychological attributions.

Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 2002

Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 2011

Research describing the cellular coding of faces in non-human primates often provides the underly... more Research describing the cellular coding of faces in non-human primates often provides the underlying physiological framework for our understanding of face processing in humans. Models of face perception, explanations of perceptual after-effects from viewing particular types of faces, and interpretation of human neuroimaging data rely on monkey neurophysiological data and the assumption that neurophysiological responses of humans are comparable to those recorded in the non-human primate. Here, we review studies that describe cells that preferentially respond to faces, and assess the link between the physiological characteristics of single cells and social perception. Principally, we describe cells recorded from the non-human primate, although a limited number of cells have been recorded in humans, and are included in order to appraise the validity of non-human physiological data for our understanding of human face and social perception.

Cognitive Development, 2001

We tested the ability of 1-and 3-month-old infants to form prototypic representations of faces. F... more We tested the ability of 1-and 3-month-old infants to form prototypic representations of faces. Following familiarization to four individual faces, both 1-and 3-month-olds showed evidence of recognizing the individual faces but only 3-month-olds showed evidence of recognizing, and thus having mentally computed, the average of the four face stimuli. Additional experiments showed that (a) 1-month-olds failed to show evidence of recognizing the average face even when the test was made easier, and (b) the results could not be attributed to preexisting visual preferences among the faces. These results are discussed in relation to a two-process theory of the development of face recognition and the hypothesis that babies' abilities to form prototypes of faces underlies their visual responsiveness to attractive faces.

Secondary sexual characteristics may indicate quality of the immune system and therefore a prefer... more Secondary sexual characteristics may indicate quality of the immune system and therefore a preference for masculinity may confer genetic benefits to offspring; however, high masculinity may be associated with costs of decreased paternal investment. The current study examined women's preferences for masculinity in male faces by using computer graphics to allow transformation between feminine and masculine versions of individual male faces. We found that preferences for masculinity are increased when women either have a partner or are considering a short-term relationship. Such preferences are potentially adaptive, serving to: (i) maximize parental investment and cooperation in long-term relationships by biasing choices towards feminine faced males, and (ii) maximize possible good-gene benefits of short-term or extra-pair partners by biasing choices towards masculine faced males. We also found that individuals using oral contraception do not show the above effects, indicating that such hormonal intervention potentially disrupts women's choices for evolutionarily relevant benefits from males.

Cognition

Although recent work suggests that opposite-sex facial attractiveness is less salient in memory w... more Although recent work suggests that opposite-sex facial attractiveness is less salient in memory when individuals are in a committed romantic relationship, romantic relationship quality can vary over time. In light of this, we tested whether activating concerns about romantic relationship quality strengthens memory for attractive faces. Partnered women were exposed briefly to faces manipulated in shape cues to attractiveness before either being asked to think about a moment of emotional closeness or distance in their current relationship. We measured sensitivity in memory for faces as the extent to which they recognized correct versions of studied faces over versions of the same person altered to look either more or less-attractive than their original (i.e. studied) version. Contrary to predictions, high relationship quality strengthened hit rate for faces regardless of the sex or attractiveness of the face. In general, women's memories were more sensitive to attractiveness in women, but were biased toward attractiveness in male faces, both when responding to unfamiliar faces and versions of familiar faces that were more attractive than the original male identity from the learning phase. However, findings varied according to self-rated attractiveness and a psychometric measure of the quality of their current relationship. Attractive women were more sensitive to attractiveness in men, while their less-attractive peers had a stronger bias to remember women as moreattractive and men as less-attractive than their original image respectively. Women in better-quality romantic relationships had stronger positive biases toward, and false memories for, attractive men. Our findings suggest a sophisticated pattern of sensitivity and bias in women's memory for facial cues to quality that varies systematically according to factors that may alter the costs of female mating competition ('market demand') and relationship maintenance.

Brain, behavior, and immunity, 2017

Skin colour may be an important cue to detect sickness in humans but how skin colour changes with... more Skin colour may be an important cue to detect sickness in humans but how skin colour changes with acute sickness is currently unknown. To determine possible colour changes, 22 healthy Caucasian participants were injected twice, once with lipopolysaccharide (LPS, at a dose of 2ng/kg body weight) and once with placebo (saline), in a randomised cross-over design study. Skin colour across 3 arm and 3 face locations was recorded spectrophotometrically over a period of 8h in terms of lightness (L(∗)), redness (a(∗)) and yellowness (b(∗)) in a manner that is consistent with human colour perception. In addition, carotenoid status was assessed as we predicted that a decrease it skin yellowness would reflect a drop in skin carotenoids. We found an early change in skin colouration 1-3h post LPS injection with facial skin becoming lighter and less red whilst arm skin become darker but also less red and less yellow. The LPS injection also caused a drop in plasma carotenoids from 3h onwards. Howe...

PLOS ONE, 2016

Using mixed design analysis of variance (ANOVA), this paper investigates the effects of a subtle ... more Using mixed design analysis of variance (ANOVA), this paper investigates the effects of a subtle simulated increase in adiposity on women's employment chances in the service sector. Employing a unique simulation of altering individuals' BMIs and the literature on "aesthetic labour", the study suggests that, especially for women, being heavier, but still within a healthy BMI, deleteriously impacts on hireability ratings. The paper explores the gendered dimension of this prejudice by asking whether female employees at the upper end of a healthy BMI range are likely to be viewed more negatively than their overtly overweight male counterparts. The paper concludes by considering the implications of these findings.

Facial affect perception in alcoholics

Psychiatry Research, Dec 15, 2002

Satisfactory interpersonal interaction involves understanding others&... more Satisfactory interpersonal interaction involves understanding others' facial expressions. Alcoholic individuals often have severe interpersonal difficulties that may relate to poor and distorted perception of facial expressions. The importance of attention direction has been highlighted by the finding, in recent primate studies, of neurons responsible for the detection of attention direction. Studies on humans suggest that expression perception is modulated by attention direction (whether the expression is directed towards or away from the observer). Here, for the first time, the relationship between attention direction and perception of expression (anger, sadness, happiness and disgust) in alcoholic and control subjects is investigated. We used animated facial stimuli depicting different emotions to give measures of recognition accuracy and of perceptual sensitivity. Our study demonstrated that alcoholics made more errors than control subjects in recognising expressions generally and had a tendency to mis-label sad expressions directed towards them as being hostile (angry/disgusted). When asked to select the point when they started to see the expression, alcoholics, especially female alcoholics, chose higher expression intensities. This study highlights the importance of investigating the modulating effects of attention direction when studying the perception of expressions and provides an indication of how alcoholics' inappropriate social reactions may be triggered.

Cortical and subcortical mechanisms at the core of imitation

Http Dx Doi Org 10 1080 17470910701268059, Feb 22, 2007

Imitation is thought to require a perception-action matching process that utilizes the &a... more Imitation is thought to require a perception-action matching process that utilizes the "mirror neuron" system, but other cognitive functions such as error detection may also be required for even simple imitation. We sought to explore the core neural substrate of imitation by examining the imitation of simple finger actions using fMRI. Participants observed one of two actions and were instructed to imitate the action they observed, or to perform the alternative non-matching action. The contrast between imitation and non-matching actions was associated with activation in areas previously associated with imitation and "mirror neuron" functioning, including insula, intraparietal sulcus, dorsal premotor cortex, and superior temporal gyrus. Imitation was also specifically associated with activity in areas of prefrontal cortex, lateral orbitofrontal cortex (OFC), amygdala, red nucleus, thalamus, hippocampus, and substantia nigra. We suggest that lateral OFC responds to action-perception mismatch and other clusters reflect working memory, motor planning, associative learning, and visuo-motor integration of goal-directed action. Although computational models have predicted integration of these functions to enable imitation, their specific brain bases have not previously been identified. Together they offer a potentially powerful means through which matching one's actions to those of others can lead to behavioral modification and development.

Http Dx Doi Org 10 1080 17470218 2014 944194, Dec 15, 2014

The accuracy of the Content should not be relied upon and should be independently verified with p... more The accuracy of the Content should not be relied upon and should be independently verified with primary sources of information. Taylor and Francis shall not be liable for any losses, actions, claims, proceedings, demands, costs, expenses, damages, and other liabilities whatsoever or howsoever caused arising directly or indirectly in connection with, in relation to or arising out of the use of the Content. This article may be used for research, teaching, and private study purposes. Any substantial or systematic reproduction, redistribution, reselling, loan, sub-licensing, systematic supply, or distribution in any form to anyone is expressly forbidden.

Bipolar patients show mood-congruent biases in sensitivity to facial expressions of emotion when exhibiting depressed symptoms, but not when exhibiting manic symptoms

Cognitive Neuropsychiatry, Dec 1, 2006

A number of studies have reported mood-congruent biases in processing facial expressions of emoti... more A number of studies have reported mood-congruent biases in processing facial expressions of emotion in depression and mania. Most of them have failed to establish that mood reliably affects relevant more than irrelevant expressions, or that the effect is specifically mood-related rather than due to resource or task difficulty artefacts. The aim was to examine, using appropriate statistical methods, whether depressed mood in bipolar patients decreases and manic mood increases sensitivity to facial expressions of happiness and vice versa for facial expressions of negative emotion. Sensitivity to facial expression of six basic emotions in bipolar patients when depressed and when manic was compared to closely matched controls. Mood-related biases in sensitivity to facial expressions of happiness and of negative affect in general operate in persons with bipolar disorder when depressed. There is little evidence of similar biases in persons with bipolar disorder when manic. These data show a mood-congruent bias in sensitivity to facial expressions in bipolar depressed patients.

Http Dx Doi Org 10 1162 089892903770007353, Mar 13, 2006

& We show that under natural viewing, the responses of cells in the temporal lobe of the macaque ... more & We show that under natural viewing, the responses of cells in the temporal lobe of the macaque to the sight of static head and body postures is controlled by the sight of immediately preceding actions. Cells in the anterior part of the superior temporal sulcus responded vigorously to the sight of a face or body posture that followed a particular body action, but not when it followed other actions. The effective action or posture presented in isolation or in different sequences failed to produce a response. Our results demonstrate that cells in the temporal cortex could support the formation of expectations about impending behavior of others. &

PLOS ONE, 2016

Despite the old adage not to 'judge a book by its cover', facial cues often guide first impressio... more Despite the old adage not to 'judge a book by its cover', facial cues often guide first impressions and these first impressions guide our decisions. Literature suggests there are valid facial cues that assist us in assessing someone's health or intelligence, but such cues are overshadowed by an 'attractiveness halo' whereby desirable attributions are preferentially ascribed to attractive people. The impact of the attractiveness halo effect on perceptions of academic performance in the classroom is concerning as this has shown to influence students' future performance. We investigated the limiting effects of the attractiveness halo on perceptions of actual academic performance in faces of 100 university students. Given the ambiguity and various perspectives on the definition of intelligence and the growing consensus on the importance of conscientiousness over intelligence in predicting actual academic performance, we also investigated whether perceived conscientiousness was a more accurate predictor of academic performance than perceived intelligence. Perceived conscientiousness was found to be a better predictor of actual academic performance when compared to perceived intelligence and perceived academic performance, and accuracy was improved when controlling for the influence of attractiveness on judgments. These findings emphasize the misleading effect of attractiveness on the accuracy of first impressions of competence, which can have serious consequences in areas such as education and hiring. The findings also have implications for future research investigating impression accuracy based on facial stimuli.

Behavioural processes, Jan 8, 2016

When making decisions between options, humans are expected to choose the option that returns the ... more When making decisions between options, humans are expected to choose the option that returns the highest benefit. In practice, however, adding inferior alternatives to the choice set can alter these decisions. Here we investigated whether decisions over the facial features that people find healthy looking can also be affected by the context in which they see those faces. To do this we examined the effect of choice set on the perception of health of images of faces of light-skinned Caucasian females. We manipulated apparent facial health by changing yellowness of the skin: the healthy faces were moderately yellow and the less healthy faces were either much more yellow or much less yellow. In each experiment, two healthy faces were presented along with a third, less healthy face. When the third face was much more yellow, participants chose the more yellow of the two healthy faces more often as the most healthy. However, when the third face was the least yellow, participants chose the ...

Perception, 2016

In the present research, we investigated whether the red-attraction relation that has been observ... more In the present research, we investigated whether the red-attraction relation that has been observed for men viewing women may also be observed with regard to women’s facial redness. We manipulated facial redness by slightly increasing or decreasing the redness on the faces of baseline pictures of target women, and then had men judge the attractiveness of the women. We also examined healthiness perceptions as a mediator of the redness-attraction relation, along with several other candidate mediator variables. A series of experiments showed that increased redness led to increased ratings of attractiveness, and decreased redness led to decreased ratings of attractiveness. Perceived healthiness was documented as a mediator of the influence of female facial redness on male perceptions of attractiveness, and this mediation was independent of other candidate mediator variables. The findings highlight the importance of attending to facial coloration as an attraction-relevant cue and point t...

Brain mechanisms of perception and memory : from neuron to behavior

Women’s tuning of preferences for masculinity in 3D faces (SFA) (LMA)

Xxii Biennial International Conference on Human Ethology Belem Brasil, May 29, 2014