Multiracial Reading the Mind in the Eyes Test (MRMET): An inclusive version of an influential measure.

Can an inclusive test of face cognition meet or exceed the psychometric properties of a prominent less inclusive test? Here, we norm and validate an updated version of the influential Reading the Mind in the Eyes Test (RMET), a clinically significant neuropsychiatric paradigm that has long been used to assess theory of mind and social cognition. Unlike the RMET, our Multiracial Reading the Mind in the Eyes Test (MRMET) incorporates racially inclusive stimuli, nongendered answer choices, ground-truth referenced answers, and more accessible vocabulary. We show, via a series of large datasets, that the MRMET meets or exceeds RMET across major psychometric indices. Moreover, the reliable signal captured by the two tests is statistically indistinguishable, evidence for full interchangeability. We thus present the MRMET as a high-quality, inclusive, normed and validated alternative to the RMET, and as a case in point that inclusivity in psychometric tests of face cognition is an achievable aim. The MRMET test and our normative and validation data sets are openly available under a CC-BY-SA 4.0 license at osf.io/ahq6n.

Individual differences in trust evaluations are shaped mostly by environments, not genes.

People evaluate a stranger's trustworthiness from their facial features in a fraction of a second, despite common advice "not to judge a book by its cover." Evaluations of trustworthiness have critical and widespread social impact, predicting financial lending, mate selection, and even criminal justice outcomes. Consequently, understanding how people perceive trustworthiness from faces has been a major focus of scientific inquiry, and detailed models explain how consensus impressions of trustworthiness are driven by facial attributes. However, facial impression models do not consider variation between observers. Here, we develop a sensitive test of trustworthiness evaluation and use it to document substantial, stable individual differences in trustworthiness impressions. Via a twin study, we show that these individual differences are largely shaped by variation in personal experience, rather than genes or shared environments. Finally, using multivariate twin modeling, we show that variation in trustworthiness evaluation is specific, dissociating from other key facial evaluations of dominance and attractiveness. Our finding that variation in facial trustworthiness evaluation is driven mostly by personal experience represents a rare example of a core social perceptual capacity being predominantly shaped by a person's unique environment. Notably, it stands in sharp contrast to variation in facial recognition ability, which is driven mostly by genes. Our study provides insights into the development of the social brain, offers a different perspective on disagreement in trust in wider society, and motivates new research into the origins and potential malleability of face evaluation, a critical aspect of human social cognition.

Two graphs walk into a bar: Readout-based measurement reveals the Bar-Tip Limit error, a common, categorical misinterpretation of mean bar graphs.

How do viewers interpret graphs that abstract away from individual-level data to present only summaries of data such as means, intervals, distribution shapes, or effect sizes? Here, focusing on the mean bar graph as a prototypical example of such an abstracted presentation, we contribute three advances to the study of graph interpretation. First, we distill principles for Measurement of Abstract Graph Interpretation (MAGI principles) to guide the collection of valid interpretation data from viewers who may vary in expertise. Second, using these principles, we create the Draw Datapoints on Graphs (DDoG) measure, which collects drawn readouts (concrete, detailed, visuospatial records of thought) as a revealing window into each person's interpretation of a given graph. Third, using this new measure, we discover a common, categorical error in the interpretation of mean bar graphs: the Bar-Tip Limit (BTL) error. The BTL error is an apparent conflation of mean bar graphs with count bar graphs. It occurs when the raw data are assumed to be limited by the bar-tip, as in a count bar graph, rather than distributed across the bar-tip, as in a mean bar graph. In a large, demographically diverse sample, we observe the BTL error in about one in five persons; across educational levels, ages, and genders; and despite thoughtful responding and relevant foundational knowledge. The BTL error provides a case-in-point that simplification via abstraction in graph design can risk severe, high-prevalence misinterpretation. The ease with which our readout-based DDoG measure reveals the nature and likely cognitive mechanisms of the BTL error speaks to the value of both its readout-based approach and the MAGI principles that guided its creation. We conclude that mean bar graphs may be misinterpreted by a large portion of the population, and that enhanced measurement tools and strategies, like those introduced here, can fuel progress in the scientific study of graph interpretation.

Self-reported face recognition is highly valid, but alone is not highly discriminative of prosopagnosia-level performance on objective assessments.

Severe developmental deficits in face recognition ability (developmental prosopagnosia, or DP) have been vigorously studied over the past decade, yet many questions remain unanswered about their origins, nature, and social consequences. A rate-limiting factor in answering such questions is the challenge of recruiting rare DP participants. Although self-reported experiences have long played a role in efforts to identify DPs, much remains unknown about how such self-reports can or should contribute to screening or diagnosis. Here, in a large, population-based web sample, we investigated the effectiveness of self-report, used on its own, as a screen to identify individuals who will ultimately fail, at a conventional cutoff, the two types of objective tests that are most commonly used to confirm DP diagnoses: the Cambridge Face Memory Test (CFMT) and the famous faces memory test (FFMT). We used a highly reliable questionnaire (alpha = .91), the Cambridge Face Memory Questionnaire (CFMQ), and revealed strong validity via high correlations of .44 with the CFMT and .52 with the FFMT. However, cutoff analyses revealed that no CFMQ score yielded a clinical-grade combination of sensitivity and positive predictive value in enough individuals to support using it alone as a DP diagnostic or screening tool. This result was replicated in an analysis of data from the widely used PI20 questionnaire, a 20-question self-assessment of facial recognition similar in form to the CFMQ. We therefore recommend that screens for DP should, wherever possible, include objective as well as subjective assessment tools.

Sustained Attention Across the Life Span in a Sample of 10,000: Dissociating Ability and Strategy.

Normal and abnormal differences in sustained visual attention have long been of interest to scientists, educators, and clinicians. Still lacking, however, is a clear understanding of how sustained visual attention varies across the broad sweep of the human life span. In the present study, we filled this gap in two ways. First, using an unprecedentedly large 10,430-person sample, we modeled age-related differences with substantially greater precision than have prior efforts. Second, using the recently developed gradual-onset continuous performance test (gradCPT), we parsed sustained-attention performance over the life span into its ability and strategy components. We found that after the age of 15 years, the strategy and ability trajectories saliently diverge. Strategy becomes monotonically more conservative with age, whereas ability peaks in the early 40s and is followed by a gradual decline in older adults. These observed life-span trajectories for sustained attention are distinct from results of other life-span studies focusing on fluid and crystallized intelligence.

Astigmatism and early academic readiness in preschool children.

PURPOSE: This study investigated the relationship between uncorrected astigmatism and early academic readiness in at-risk preschool-aged children. METHODS: A vision screening and academic records review were performed on 122 three- to five-year-old children enrolled in the Philadelphia Head Start program. Vision screening results were related to two measures of early academic readiness, the teacher-reported Work Sampling System (WSS) and the parent-reported Ages and Stages Questionnaire (ASQ). Both measures assess multiple developmental and skill domains thought to be related to academic readiness. Children with astigmatism (defined as >|-0.25| in either eye) were compared with children who had no astigmatism. Associations between astigmatism and specific subscales of the WSS and ASQ were examined using parametric and nonparametric bivariate statistics and regression analyses controlling for age and spherical refractive error. RESULTS: Presence of astigmatism was negatively associated with multiple domains of academic readiness. Children with astigmatism had significantly lower mean scores on Personal and Social Development, Language and Literacy, and Physical Development domains of the WSS, and on Personal/Social, Communication, and Fine Motor domains of the ASQ. These differences between children with astigmatism and children with no astigmatism persisted after statistically adjusting for age and magnitude of spherical refractive error. Nonparametric tests corroborated these findings for the Language and Literacy and Physical Health and Development domains of the WSS and the Communication domain of the ASQ. CONCLUSIONS: The presence of astigmatism detected in a screening setting was associated with a pattern of reduced academic readiness in multiple developmental and educational domains among at-risk preschool-aged children. This study may help to establish the role of early vision screenings, comprehensive vision examinations, and the need for refractive correction to improve academic success in preschool children.

Number sense across the lifespan as revealed by a massive Internet-based sample.

It has been difficult to determine how cognitive systems change over the grand time scale of an entire life, as few cognitive systems are well enough understood; observable in infants, adolescents, and adults; and simple enough to measure to empower comparisons across vastly different ages. Here we address this challenge with data from more than 10,000 participants ranging from 11 to 85 years of age and investigate the precision of basic numerical intuitions and their relation to students' performance in school mathematics across the lifespan. We all share a foundational number sense that has been observed in adults, infants, and nonhuman animals, and that, in humans, is generated by neurons in the intraparietal sulcus. Individual differences in the precision of this evolutionarily ancient number sense may impact school mathematics performance in children; however, we know little of its role beyond childhood. Here we find that population trends suggest that the precision of one's number sense improves throughout the school-age years, peaking quite late at ∼30 y. Despite this gradual developmental improvement, we find very large individual differences in number sense precision among people of the same age, and these differences relate to school mathematical performance throughout adolescence and the adult years. The large individual differences and prolonged development of number sense, paired with its consistent and specific link to mathematics ability across the age span, hold promise for the impact of educational interventions that target the number sense.

Face recognition's practical relevance: Social bonds, not social butterflies.

Research on individual differences in face recognition has provided important foundational insights: their broad range, cognitive specificity, strong heritability, and resilience to change. Elusive, however, has been the key issue of practical relevance: do these individual differences correlate with aspects of life that go beyond the recognition of faces, per se? Though often assumed, especially in social realms, such correlates remain largely theoretical, without empirical support. Here, we investigate an array of potential social correlates of face recognition. We establish social relationship quality as a reproducible correlate. This link generalises across face recognition tasks and across independent samples. In contrast, we detect no robust association with the sheer quantity of social connections, whether measured directly via number of social contacts or indirectly via extraversion-related personality indices. These findings document the existence of a key social correlate of face recognition and provide some of the first evidence to support its practical relevance. At the same time, they challenge the naive assumption that face recognition relates equally to all social outcomes. In contrast, they suggest a focused link of face recognition to the quality, not quantity, of one's social connections.

Large-scale citizen science reveals predictors of sensorimotor adaptation.

Sensorimotor adaptation is essential for keeping our movements well calibrated in response to changes in the body and environment. For over a century, researchers have studied sensorimotor adaptation in laboratory settings that typically involve small sample sizes. While this approach has proved useful for characterizing different learning processes, laboratory studies are not well suited for exploring the myriad of factors that may modulate human performance. Here, using a citizen science website, we collected over 2,000 sessions of data on a visuomotor rotation task. This unique dataset has allowed us to replicate, reconcile and challenge classic findings in the learning and memory literature, as well as discover unappreciated demographic constraints associated with implicit and explicit processes that support sensorimotor adaptation. More generally, this study exemplifies how a large-scale exploratory approach can complement traditional hypothesis-driven laboratory research in advancing sensorimotor neuroscience.

Human face recognition ability is specific and highly heritable.

Compared with notable successes in the genetics of basic sensory transduction, progress on the genetics of higher level perception and cognition has been limited. We propose that investigating specific cognitive abilities with well-defined neural substrates, such as face recognition, may yield additional insights. In a twin study of face recognition, we found that the correlation of scores between monozygotic twins (0.70) was more than double the dizygotic twin correlation (0.29), evidence for a high genetic contribution to face recognition ability. Low correlations between face recognition scores and visual and verbal recognition scores indicate that both face recognition ability itself and its genetic basis are largely attributable to face-specific mechanisms. The present results therefore identify an unusual phenomenon: a highly specific cognitive ability that is highly heritable. Our results establish a clear genetic basis for face recognition, opening this intensively studied and socially advantageous cognitive trait to genetic investigation.

Effects of age on face perception: Reduced eye region discrimination ability but intact holistic processing.

While age-related decline in face recognition memory is well-established, the degree of decline in face perceptual abilities across the lifespan and the underlying mechanisms are incompletely characterized. In the present study, we used the part-whole task to examine lifespan changes in holistic and featural processing. After studying an intact face, participants are tested for memory of a face part (eyes, nose, mouth) with the target and foil part presented either in isolation or in the context of the whole face. To the extent that parts are encoded into a holistic face representation, an advantage is expected for part recognition when tested in the whole face condition. The task therefore provides measures of holistic processing (whole-over-isolated-part trial advantage) and featural processing for each part when tested in isolation. Using a large sample of 3,341 online participants aged 18-69 years, we found that while discrimination of the eye region decreased beginning in the 50s, both mouth discrimination accuracy and the holistic advantage of whole versus part trial discrimination were stable with age. In separate analyses by gender, we found that age-related declines in eye region accuracy were more pronounced in males than females. We discuss potential mechanistic explanations for this eye region-specific decline with age, including age-related hearing loss directing attention toward the mouth. Further, we discuss how this could be related to the age-related positivity effect, which is associated with reduced sensitivity to eye-related emotions (e.g., anger) but preserved mouth-related emotion sensitivity (e.g., happiness). (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).

Face perception and facial emotional expression recognition ability: Both unique predictors of the broader autism phenotype.

Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and the broader autistic phenotype (BAP) have been suggested to be associated with perceptual-cognitive difficulties processing human faces. However, the empirical results are mixed, arguably, in part due to inadequate samples and analyses. Consequently, we administered the Cambridge Face Perception Test (CFPT), the Reading the Mind in the Eyes Test (RMET), a vocabulary test, and the Autism Quotient (AQ) to a sample of 318 adults in the general community. Based on a disattenuated path analytic modelling strategy, we found that both face perception ability (ß = -.21) and facial emotional expression recognition ability (ß = -.27) predicted uniquely and significantly the Communication dimension of AQ. Vocabulary failed to yield a significant, direct effect onto the Communication dimension of the AQ. We conclude that difficulties perceiving information from the faces of others may contribute to difficulties in nonverbal communication, as conceptualised and measured within the context of BAP.

The rise and fall of face recognition awareness across the life span.

A core component of metacognition is cognitive awareness, insight into how one's cognitive abilities compare with others. Previous studies of cognitive awareness have focused on basic aspects of perception, memory, and learning. Further, studies of the awareness of one's social-cognitive abilities have been limited to examining awareness of others' thinking (i.e., theory of mind). The current study characterizes awareness of one's own social-cognitive abilities, specifically face recognition awareness, and examines its change across the life span. We used a large, web-based sample (N = 4,143) with a broad age range (ages 10-70), administering well-validated measures of objective (Cambridge Face Memory Test 3) and self-reported (Cambridge Face Memory Questionnaire) face recognition. We found a robust overall association between objective and self-reported face recognition (r = .42 in females, r = .36 in males). While we found that face recognition ability peaked in the early- to mid-30s, face recognition awareness peaked in the early- to mid-20s, was relatively stable throughout the 20s-40s, and declined in the 50s-60s. Relative subjective versus objective face recognition bias measures demonstrated that 10- to 18- and 51- to 70-year-olds overestimated their self-reported face recognition abilities in comparison with 19- to 50-year-olds. Finally, compared with males, females had greater face recognition awareness and a bias to relatively underestimate their face recognition abilities. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).

What is the prevalence of developmental prosopagnosia? An empirical assessment of different diagnostic cutoffs.

The prevalence of developmental prosopagnosia (DP), lifelong face recognition deficits, is widely reported to be 2-2.5%. However, DP has been diagnosed in different ways across studies, resulting in differing prevalence rates. In the current investigation, we estimated the range of DP prevalence by administering well-validated objective and subjective face recognition measures to an unselected web-based sample of 3116 18-55 year-olds and applying DP diagnostic cutoffs from the last 14 years. We found estimated prevalence rates ranged from .64-5.42% when using a z-score approach and .13-2.95% when using a percentile approach, with the most commonly used cutoffs by researchers having a prevalence rate of .93% (z-score, .45% when using percentiles). We next used multiple cluster analyses to examine whether there was a natural grouping of poorer face recognizers but failed to find consistent grouping beyond those with generally above versus below average face recognition. Lastly, we investigated whether DP studies with more relaxed diagnostic cutoffs were associated with better performance on the Cambridge Face Perception Test. In a sample of 43 studies, there was a weak nonsignificant association between greater diagnostic strictness and better DP face perception accuracy (Kendall's tau-b correlation, τb =.18 z-score; τb = .11 percentiles). Together, these results suggest that researchers have used more conservative DP diagnostic cutoffs than the widely reported 2-2.5% prevalence. We discuss the strengths and weaknesses of using more inclusive cutoffs, such as identifying mild and major forms of DP based on DSM-5.

Estradiol-mediated protection against high-fat diet induced anxiety and obesity is associated with changes in the gut microbiota in female mice.

Decreased estrogens during menopause are associated with increased risk of anxiety, depression, type 2 diabetes and obesity. Similarly, depleting estrogens in rodents by ovariectomy, combined with a high-fat diet (HFD), increases anxiety and adiposity. How estrogens and diet interact to affect anxiety and metabolism is poorly understood. Mounting evidence indicates that gut microbiota influence anxiety and metabolism. Here, we investigated the effects of estradiol (E) and HFD on anxiety, metabolism, and their correlation with changes in gut microbiota in female mice. Adult C57BL/6J mice were ovariectomized, implanted with E or vehicle-containing capsules and fed a standard diet or HFD. Anxiety-like behavior was assessed and neuronal activation was measured by c-fos immunoreactivity throughout the brain using iDISCO. HFD increased anxiety-like behavior, while E reduced this HFD-dependent anxiogenic effect. Interestingly, E decreased neuronal activation in brain regions involved in anxiety and metabolism. E treatment also altered gut microbes, a subset of which were associated with anxiety-like behavior. These findings provide insight into gut microbiota-based therapies for anxiety and metabolic disorders associated with declining estrogens in menopausal women.

Holistic processing of the mouth but not the eyes in developmental prosopagnosia.

Because holistic processing is a hallmark of normal face recognition, we ask whether such processing is reduced in developmental prosopagnosia (DP), and, if so, what the sources are of this deficit. Existing literature provides a mixed picture, with face inversion effects showing consistent holistic processing deficits but unable to locate their source and with some composite face studies showing reduced holistic processing and some not. We addressed this issue more thoroughly with a very large sample of DPs (N = 38) performing the part-whole task, a well-accepted measure of holistic processing that allows for the separate evaluation of individual face parts. Contrary to an expected overall reduction in holistic processing, we found an intact holistic advantage for the mouth and a complete absence of a holistic advantage for the eye region. Less severely impaired prosopagnosics showed significantly more holistic processing of the mouth, suggesting that holistic processing can aid them in recognizing faces.

Capturing specific abilities as a window into human individuality: the example of face recognition.

Proper characterization of each individual's unique pattern of strengths and weaknesses requires good measures of diverse abilities. Here, we advocate combining our growing understanding of neural and cognitive mechanisms with modern psychometric methods in a renewed effort to capture human individuality through a consideration of specific abilities. We articulate five criteria for the isolation and measurement of specific abilities, then apply these criteria to face recognition. We cleanly dissociate face recognition from more general visual and verbal recognition. This dissociation stretches across ability as well as disability, suggesting that specific developmental face recognition deficits are a special case of a broader specificity that spans the entire spectrum of human face recognition performance. Item-by-item results from 1,471 web-tested participants, included as supplementary information, fuel item analyses, validation, norming, and item response theory (IRT) analyses of our three tests: (a) the widely used Cambridge Face Memory Test (CFMT); (b) an Abstract Art Memory Test (AAMT), and (c) a Verbal Paired-Associates Memory Test (VPMT). The availability of this data set provides a solid foundation for interpreting future scores on these tests. We argue that the allied fields of experimental psychology, cognitive neuroscience, and vision science could fuel the discovery of additional specific abilities to add to face recognition, thereby providing new perspectives on human individuality.

Heritability of strabismus: genetic influence is specific to eso-deviation and independent of refractive error.

Strabismus represents a complex oculomotor disorder characterized by the deviation of one or both eyes and poor vision. A more sophisticated understanding of the genetic liability of strabismus is required to guide searches for associated molecular variants. In this classical twin study of 1,462 twin pairs, we examined the relative influence of genes and environment in comitant strabismus, and the degree to which these influences can be explained by factors in common with refractive error. Participants were examined for the presence of latent ('phoria') and manifest ('tropia') strabismus using cover-uncover and alternate cover tests. Two phenotypes were distinguished: eso-deviation (esophoria and esotropia) and exo-deviation (exophoria and exotropia). Structural equation modeling was subsequently employed to partition the observed phenotypic variation in the twin data into specific variance components. The prevalence of eso-deviation and exo-deviation was 8.6% and 20.7%, respectively. For eso-deviation, the polychoric correlation was significantly greater in monozygotic (MZ) (r = 0.65) compared to dizygotic (DZ) twin pairs (r = 0.33), suggesting a genetic role (p = .003). There was no significant difference in polychoric correlation between MZ (r = 0.55) and DZ twin pairs (r = 0.53) for exo-deviation (p = .86), implying that genetic factors do not play a significant role in the etiology of exo-deviation. The heritability of an eso-deviation was 0.64 (95% CI 0.50-0.75). The additive genetic correlation for eso-deviation and refractive error was 0.13 and the bivariate heritability (i.e., shared variance) was less than 1%, suggesting negligible shared genetic effect. This study documents a substantial heritability of 64% for eso-deviation, yet no corresponding heritability for exo-deviation, suggesting that the genetic contribution to strabismus may be specific to eso-deviation. Future studies are now needed to identify the genes associated with eso-deviation and unravel their mechanisms of action.

Two distinct visual motion mechanisms for smooth pursuit: evidence from individual differences.

Smooth-pursuit eye velocity to a moving target is more accurate after an initial catch-up saccade than before, an enhancement that is poorly understood. We present an individual-differences-based method for identifying mechanisms underlying a physiological response and use it to test whether visual motion signals driving pursuit differ pre- and postsaccade. Correlating moment-to-moment measurements of pursuit over time with two psychophysical measures of speed estimation during fixation, we find two independent associations across individuals. Presaccadic pursuit acceleration is predicted by the precision of low-level (motion-energy-based) speed estimation, and postsaccadic pursuit precision is predicted by the precision of high-level (position-tracking) speed estimation. These results provide evidence that a low-level motion signal influences presaccadic acceleration and an independent high-level motion signal influences postsaccadic precision, thus presenting a plausible mechanism for postsaccadic enhancement of pursuit.