ISSN 0439-755X
CN 11-1911/B

Acta Psychologica Sinica ›› 2016, Vol. 48 ›› Issue (11): 1379-1389.doi: 10.3724/SP.J.1041.2016.01379

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Rotated self-face recognition: Evidence from ERPs

ZHONG Yiping; LI Jin; ZHAN Youlong; FAN Wei; YANG Zilu   

  1. (Department of Psychology, Hunan Normal University; Cognition and Human Behavior Key Laboratory of Hunan Province, Changsha 410081, China)
  • Received:2015-12-08 Published:2016-11-25 Online:2016-11-25
  • Contact: ZHONG Yiping, E-mail: ypzhong@hunnu.edu.cn

Abstract:

Previous studies showed that the angles of rotation could influence the face recognition. And the “self-face advantage”, refers to individuals respond to self-face faster than other’s face and self-face induce larger amplitudes than other’s face, is an important content in face recognition. And how picture plane rotation angles influence “self-face advantage”, and how the rotated self-face recognition performs in brain is unclear. In the present study, we adopted the Event related potential technology to investigate the temporal processing of the influence of picture plane rotation angles on “self-face advantage”. The study was a 2 (Face type: self-face VS face of other ) × 2 (Angles of rotation: 0°, 90°, 180°) within groups design. We used the same- different face-matching judgment task, 20 participants were asked to judge whether or not two successive faces represented the same person: The first face (the probe stimulus) was the participant’s self-face or an acquaintance’s face presented upright, and the second face (the target stimulus) was a self-face or an acquaintance’s face which was rotated to a certain angle (0°, 90°, 180°), and the response times and the components of ERPs were recorded. The results of ERP showed that there was a main effect of angles of rotation, and the target stimulus elicited larger N170 (180~240 ms) amplitudes under rotated to 90°, 180° than rotated to 0° condition in occipito-temporal area. And there was a main effect of angles of rotation, and the target stimulus elicited larger N2 (240~300 ms) amplitudes under rotated to 90°, 180° than rotated to 0° condition. And for the component of LPP (400~500 ms),there was a significant interaction between Face type and Angles of rotation. Furthermore, for self-face, there was a significant difference among 0°, 90° and 180°. However, for other’s face, there was no significant difference among three conditions. Our results indicate human brains decoded the facial configurational information automatically in earlier stage. In the later stage, individual will process facial identify information elaborately, and self-face can occupy the limited cognitive resource to operate the mental rotation. Thus, the self-face advantage can be regulated by the angles of rotation in the picture plane.

Key words: angles of rotation, self-face advantage, Bruce-Young’s functional model, N170, LPP