Face recognition benefits from associating social information to faces during learning. This has been demonstrated by better recognition for faces that underwent social than perceptual evaluations. Two hypotheses were proposed to account for this effect. According to the feature-elaboration hypothesis, social evaluations encourage elaborated processing of perceptual information from faces. According to a social representation hypothesis, social evaluations convert faces from a perceptual representation to a socially meaningful representation of a person. To decide between these two hypotheses, we ran a functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) study in which we functionally localized the posterior face-selective brain areas and social processing brain areas. Participants watched video-clips of young adults and were asked to study them for a recognition test, while making either perceptual evaluations or social evaluations about them. During the fMRI scan, participants performed an old/new recognition test. Behavioural findings replicated better recognition for faces that underwent social then perceptual evaluations. fMRI results showed higher response during the recognition phase for the faces that were learned socially than perceptually, in the social-brain network but not in posterior face-selective network. These results support the social-representation hypothesis and highlight the important role that social processing mechanisms, rather than purely perceptual processes, play in face recognition.

中文翻译：

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将面孔作为概念进行学习，通过参与社交大脑网络来提高面孔识别能力


人脸识别受益于在学习过程中将社交信息与人脸相关联。与感知评估相比，对经过社会评估的面孔的更好识别就证明了这一点。提出了两个假设来解释这种效应。根据特征精细化假设，社会评价鼓励对面部感知信息进行精细化处理。根据社会表征假说，社会评价将人脸从感知表征转变为具有社会意义的表征。为了在这两种假设之间做出决定，我们进行了功能磁共振成像（fMRI）研究，其中我们对后部面部选择性大脑区域和社会处理大脑区域进行功能定位。参与者观看了年轻人的视频剪辑，并被要求对他们进行识别测试，同时对他们进行感知评估或社会评估。在功能磁共振成像扫描期间，参与者进行了旧/新识别测试。行为研究结果表明，经过社会评估的面孔比经过感知评估的面孔具有更好的识别能力。功能磁共振成像结果显示，在社交大脑网络中，在社交大脑网络中，但在后脸选择网络中，社交学习的面孔比感知的面孔在识别阶段的反应更高。这些结果支持了社会表征假说，并强调了社会处理机制（而不是纯粹的感知过程）在人脸识别中发挥的重要作用。