Culture variation in the average identity extraction: The role of global vs. local processing orientation

Chinese Regional Differences and Commonality in Field-Independence and Field-Dependence: An Implicit Biculturalism Model

Comparative studies of cultural-cognitive systems in China have stressed differences between northern and southern regions, with less attention paid to inter-regional commonality. This study proposes an implicit biculturalism model to rectify the diversity bias. The model posits that Chinese in both regions have internalized the same two cultural-cognitive systems but have organized them differently. For northerners, the individualist/analytical system (indicated by field-independence) is more dominant and chronically accessible than the collectivist/holistic system (indicated by field-dependence); for southerners the hierarchical order is reversed. The more dominant system would normally manifest in everyday life as the default situation, but the less dominant system could be activated through cultural priming. Both field-independent northerners (N = 46) and field-dependent southerners (N = 46) were assigned randomly into individualistic and collectivistic priming conditions and then tested with the Embedded Figure Test (EFT). The results indicated field-independent northern Chinese changed their EFT performance to be field-dependent under collectivism priming, and field-dependent southern Chinese changed their EFT performance in the field-independent direction, albeit to a less extent, under individualism priming. Generally, these results supported the implicit biculturalism model, which provides a more nuanced understanding of the question of "Who are the Chinese in Chinese psychology?"

Individual Faces Were Not Discarded During Extracting Mean Emotion Representations

Individuals can perceive the mean emotion or mean identity of a group of faces. It has been considered that individual representations are discarded when extracting a mean representation; for example, the "element-independent assumption" asserts that the extraction of a mean representation does not depend on recognizing or remembering individual items. The "element-dependent assumption" proposes that the extraction of a mean representation is closely connected to the processing of individual items. The processing mechanism of mean representations and individual representations remains unclear. The present study used a classic member-identification paradigm and manipulated the exposure time and set size to investigate the effect of attentional resources allocated to individual faces on the processing of both the mean emotion representation and individual representations in a set and the relationship between the two types of representations. The results showed that while the precision of individual representations was affected by attentional resources, the precision of the mean emotion representation did not change with it. Our results indicate that two different pathways may exist for extracting a mean emotion representation and individual representations and that the extraction of a mean emotion representation may have higher priority. Moreover, we found that individual faces in a group could be processed to a certain extent even under extremely short exposure time and that the precision of individual representations was relatively poor but individual representations were not discarded.

Oxytocin Modulates Neural Individuation/Categorization Processing of Faces in Early Face-Selective Areas

Oxytocin (OT) is known as a neuropeptide that promotes social adaptation. Individuating racial in-group members and viewing racial out-groups in categories is an adaptive strategy that evolved to aid effective social interaction. Nevertheless, whether OT modulates the neural individuation/categorization processing of racial in-group and out-group faces remain unknown. After intranasal OT or placebo administration, 46 male participants (OT: 24, placebo: 22) were presented with face pairs with the same or different identities or races in rapid succession. The neural repetition suppression (RS) effects to identity and race were measured using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) as indices of individuation/categorization face-processing. The results showed that while OT increased the RS effect to race, it decreased the RS effect to identity in the right fusiform face area. As for the left occipital face area, OT enlarged the differential RS effects to identities of in-group and out-group faces. Additionally, OT modulated the association of interdependence self-construal and the RS effects on identity and race. These findings bring to light preliminary evidence that OT can regulate neuronal specificity of identity and race in early face-selective regions and benefit adaptive individuation/categorization face-processing.

Emotion matters: Face ensemble perception is affected by emotional states

Ensemble coding is the ability of the visual system to extract a summary statistic from a set of stimuli. For example, observers often spontaneously extract an average face identity from a set of faces. Ensemble coding is known to operate in the frame of a distributed/global attention model. Because both attention and holistic processing are modulated by emotion - where positive emotions broaden the scope of attention and facilitate global processing, whereas negative emotions narrow the scope of attention and promote local processing - the current research explored whether emotional states could affect visual averaging of multiple face identities. Participants completed an ensemble-coding task before and after their emotion was induced via film clips. In the ensemble-coding task, a set of four face identities was shown briefly, followed by a probe face. Participants judged whether the probe face was presented in the preceding set. Evidence for ensemble coding was indexed by responses that treated an average face of the preceding set as a member of that set. The results showed that the tendency to choose this average was modulated by emotional states. Visual averaging increased after seeing positive film clips, but decreased after seeing negative film clips. These results support Frederickson's broaden-and-built theory, and extended its application to ensemble perception.