hide
Free keywords:
-
Abstract:
Despite considerable evidence that neural activity in monkeys reflects various aspects of
face perception, relatively little is known about monkeys face processing behaviour. The
present study used an adaptation paradigm to test whether untrained Rhesus macaques
display two hallmarks of face processing observed in humans, namely, a subordinate entry
point, here, the default recognition of faces at the individual level of categorization, and
holistic effects, i.e., perception of facial parts as an integrated whole. In Experiment 1,
monkeys showed greater rebound from adaptation to conspecific faces than to animals
and non-conspecific faces at the subordinate level. In Experiment 2, exchanging only the
bottom half of a monkey face produced greater rebound in aligned than in misaligned
composites, indicating that for normal, aligned faces, the new bottom half has influenced
perception of the whole face. These experiments show that macaques naturally display the
distinguishing characteristics of face processing seen in humans.
