Aa. Wright et Wa. Roberts, MONKEY AND HUMAN FACE PERCEPTION - INVERSION EFFECTS FOR HUMAN FACES BUT NOT FOR MONKEY FACES OR SCENES, Journal of cognitive neuroscience, 8(3), 1996, pp. 278-290
Three rhesus monkeys and two groups of 10 human subjects judged uprigh
t or inverted pictures as same or different. The pictures were black a
nd white pairs of human faces, monkey faces, or scenes. The monkeys we
re trained with sets of 50 pictures and were tested with other sets of
36 pictures from each category. The groups of 10 human subjects were
tested with the same pictures used to test monkeys. Both monkeys and h
umans showed large performance decrements to inverted human faces rela
tive to upright human faces but neither species showed inversion effec
ts for monkey faces or scenes. A second test with both monkeys and hum
ans showed the Same pattern of results with a different set of human-f
ace pictures that varied more in sex (female as well as male), facial
hair, eyeglasses, haircut, view angle, and background than those of th
e first test. The results indicate similar face-processing mechanisms
in monkeys and humans despite experiential and evolutionary difference
s.