Studies of face perception in primates elucidate the psychological and neural mechanisms that support this critical and complex ability. Recent progress in characterizing face perception across species, for example in insects and reptiles, has highlighted the ubiquity over phylogeny of this key ability for social interactions and survival. Here, we review the competence in face perception across species and the types of computation that support this behavior. We conclude that the computational complexity of face perception evinced by a species is not related to phylogenetic status and is, instead, largely a product of environmental context and social and adaptive pressures. Integrating findings across evolutionary data permits the derivation of computational principles that shed further light on primate face perception.

对灵长类动物面部感知的研究阐明了支持这种关键和复杂能力的心理和神经机制。最近在表征跨物种（例如昆虫和爬行动物）的面部感知方面取得的进展突出了这种社会互动和生存的关键能力在系统发育上的普遍性。在这里，我们回顾了跨物种的面部感知能力以及支持这种行为的计算类型。我们得出结论，一个物种所表现出的面部感知的计算复杂性与系统发育状态无关，而是很大程度上是环境背景以及社会和适应压力的产物。跨进化数据整合发现允许推导计算原理，进一步阐明灵长类动物的面部感知。