Adding years to your life (or at least looking like it): a simple normalization underlies adaptation to facial age.
Adaptation has been widely used to probe how experience shapes the visual encoding of faces, but the pattern of perceptual changes produced by adaptation and the neural mechanisms these imply remain poorly characterized. We explored how adaptation alters the perceived age of faces, a fundamental fac...
| Main Authors: | , , , |
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
Public Library of Science (PLoS)
2014-01-01
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| Series: | PLoS ONE |
| Online Access: | http://europepmc.org/articles/PMC4277445?pdf=render |
| _version_ | 1828192868784668672 |
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| author | Sean F O'Neil Amy Mac Gillian Rhodes Michael A Webster |
| author_facet | Sean F O'Neil Amy Mac Gillian Rhodes Michael A Webster |
| author_sort | Sean F O'Neil |
| collection | DOAJ |
| description | Adaptation has been widely used to probe how experience shapes the visual encoding of faces, but the pattern of perceptual changes produced by adaptation and the neural mechanisms these imply remain poorly characterized. We explored how adaptation alters the perceived age of faces, a fundamental facial attribute which can uniquely and reliably be scaled by observers. This allowed us to measure how adaptation to one age level affected the full continuum of perceived ages. Participants guessed the ages of faces ranging from 18-89, before or after adapting to a different set of faces composed of younger, older, or middle-aged adults. Adapting to young or old faces induced opposite linear shifts in perceived age that were independent of the model's age. Specifically, after adapting to younger or older faces, faces of all ages appeared 2 to 3 years older or younger, respectively. In contrast, middle-aged adaptors induced no aftereffects. This pattern suggests that adaptation leads to a simple and uniform renormalization of age perception, and is consistent with a norm-based neural code for the mechanisms mediating the perception of facial age. |
| first_indexed | 2024-04-12T08:59:35Z |
| format | Article |
| id | doaj.art-a1c084ac942b4bcaaf0857f10152ef8a |
| institution | Directory Open Access Journal |
| issn | 1932-6203 |
| language | English |
| last_indexed | 2024-04-12T08:59:35Z |
| publishDate | 2014-01-01 |
| publisher | Public Library of Science (PLoS) |
| record_format | Article |
| series | PLoS ONE |
| spelling | doaj.art-a1c084ac942b4bcaaf0857f10152ef8a2022-12-22T03:39:17ZengPublic Library of Science (PLoS)PLoS ONE1932-62032014-01-01912e11610510.1371/journal.pone.0116105Adding years to your life (or at least looking like it): a simple normalization underlies adaptation to facial age.Sean F O'NeilAmy MacGillian RhodesMichael A WebsterAdaptation has been widely used to probe how experience shapes the visual encoding of faces, but the pattern of perceptual changes produced by adaptation and the neural mechanisms these imply remain poorly characterized. We explored how adaptation alters the perceived age of faces, a fundamental facial attribute which can uniquely and reliably be scaled by observers. This allowed us to measure how adaptation to one age level affected the full continuum of perceived ages. Participants guessed the ages of faces ranging from 18-89, before or after adapting to a different set of faces composed of younger, older, or middle-aged adults. Adapting to young or old faces induced opposite linear shifts in perceived age that were independent of the model's age. Specifically, after adapting to younger or older faces, faces of all ages appeared 2 to 3 years older or younger, respectively. In contrast, middle-aged adaptors induced no aftereffects. This pattern suggests that adaptation leads to a simple and uniform renormalization of age perception, and is consistent with a norm-based neural code for the mechanisms mediating the perception of facial age.http://europepmc.org/articles/PMC4277445?pdf=render |
| spellingShingle | Sean F O'Neil Amy Mac Gillian Rhodes Michael A Webster Adding years to your life (or at least looking like it): a simple normalization underlies adaptation to facial age. PLoS ONE |
| title | Adding years to your life (or at least looking like it): a simple normalization underlies adaptation to facial age. |
| title_full | Adding years to your life (or at least looking like it): a simple normalization underlies adaptation to facial age. |
| title_fullStr | Adding years to your life (or at least looking like it): a simple normalization underlies adaptation to facial age. |
| title_full_unstemmed | Adding years to your life (or at least looking like it): a simple normalization underlies adaptation to facial age. |
| title_short | Adding years to your life (or at least looking like it): a simple normalization underlies adaptation to facial age. |
| title_sort | adding years to your life or at least looking like it a simple normalization underlies adaptation to facial age |
| url | http://europepmc.org/articles/PMC4277445?pdf=render |
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