On the particular vulnerability of face recognition to aging: a review of three hypotheses

Abstract

Age-related face recognition deficits are characterized by high false alarms to unfamiliar faces, are not as pronounced for other complex stimuli, and are only partially related to general age-related impairments in cognition. This paper reviews some of the underlying processes likely to be implicated in theses deficits by focusing on areas where contradictions abound as a means to highlight avenues for future research. Research pertaining to the three following hypotheses is presented: (i) perceptual deterioration, (ii) encoding of configural information, and (iii) difficulties in recollecting contextual information. The evidence surveyed provides support for the idea that all three factors are likely to contribute, under certain conditions, to the deficits in face recognition seen in older adults. We discuss how these different factors might interact in the context of a generic framework of the different stages implicated in face recognition. Several suggestions for future investigations are outlined.

Keywords: aging; context recollection; contrast sensitivity; face recognition; familiarity.

FIGURE 1

An example of bizarre experience elicited by faces whose spatial elements are denaturalized. (A) In the so-called Thatcher Illusion, the eyes and mouth of the upright face are turned upside-down. (B) The feeling of bizarreness produced by the manipulation disappears when the image is inverted.

FIGURE 2

Examples of stimuli used to trigger within-class discriminations that are equivalent for faces (A) and other complex objects (B,C).

FIGURE 3

An example of the composite effect. The top row shows two unmodified faces (A,B). The middle row shows a stimulus composed of the top half of b and the bottom half of a in an aligned condition (D) or a misaligned condition (D). Recognition of the individual faces that make up the composite is significantly less accurate in the aligned composite (C) than the misaligned non-composite (D). This difference is less pronounced when the images are inverted (E,F). This is taken as evidence that faces are normally processed holistically, but that inversion disrupts this holistic processing.