Cognitive Processing and Face Perception: Inverted Face Effect Study

This report presents a study on the inverted face effect, focusing on a first-year student suspected of having a cognitive disorder, possibly schizophrenia. The research investigates how the student's perception of faces is affected when they are inverted, a phenomenon where the normal proficiency in face recognition is lost. The study involved three days of observation, employing various tests, including eye movement analysis, the use of schematic faces and trees as stimuli, and a hollow mask test, to assess the student's cognitive processing. The results, analyzed using ANOVA, revealed significant differences in the student's ability to detect inverted faces compared to upright faces, indicating impaired face discrimination and reduced inversion effects. The findings suggest that the student's cognitive processing differs from that of individuals without the disorder, particularly in the interplay between bottom-up and top-down processing, impacting their perception of faces and their ability to recognize them normally. The report references several studies to support its findings.

The Inverted Face Effect: How does it work?
A study with a first year student
Schizophrenia, a disease or mental disorder that is debatable but the fact that it affects
a person of what he thinks, feels or behaves. It is like they have lost touch in real world
and living in some sort of imaginary world. It can be said as the perception and reality
huge gap for such person. This may not be very different from mental disorder but more
disabling symptoms can be found.
This disorder symptoms can be positive, negative and cognitive in nature. Positive
symptoms are like psychotic behaviours like hallucination whereas negative behaviour
is associated with normal emotion and behaviour like reduced feeling and speaking.
The cognitive symptoms subtle which can be mild or severe thus our study focused on
the cognitive especially the facial changes that we can notice with a person facing such
mental disorder. For the purpose of study, we took a first year student who has been
previously doubted to be facing some short of cognitive disorder, gone through 3 days
observation to test in various way to arrive at result.
Inverted face effect is basically the loss of normal proficiency at face perception when
faces are inverted. Inverted face is not perceived or recognized using the same
processes as upright face. Inverted face are harder for normal objects to learn as
measured to recognize the performance. In a study it is found that inversion effect is nil
in case of children. According to survey, it is gain found that right hemisphere which is
reported superior to left at recognizing face showed significant difference in inversion
face effect.
Day-1- On first day, we found that the person is having problems or alterations in
several domains of visual processing. This we came to know from the eye movement.
Here we found that the person is not able to concentrate on most of the informative
regions like eyes. It is found that there is lack of efficiency in finding information from
inverse face. To find whether inverse face has any effect on him, we tried even with
noise manipulation. Here we found that the person is having an increased internal noise

with coordinates with decreased information efficiency resulting impair face
discrimination and reduce face inversion effect.
Day-2- Experimental strategies
For the purpose of study a line drawn schematic has taken as stimuli. It is not the usual
photo image rather a face like object containing a minimal clues for identifying facial and
emotional expression. For measuring performance, we took a tree (a non-face object as
stimuli. Like line drawn face, Line drawn tress are made with same number of line
alignment.
The first test –
Second Test

Day 3- Result of study
For the purpose of study, we have taken ANOVA as our statistical tool for studying
result. In this study it is found that there is a significant difference in effect (Upright and
inverted) across stimulus duration. The accuracy is found to be lower in that person
than normal control. The result that we got for face effect is that, stimulus inversion
effect in face detection is lower which is independent of stimulus duration.
Effect in face and tree detection
In this case the result again came same but the fact we got here is that the face effect
dependence is on type of task i.e. primarily in tree not in face detection.
Hollow mask test-
In this case we try to find the connection of sensory and conceptual areas of brain of
that person which may not be working normal.
In this case a hollow mask is used one with no schizophrenia and other with the student
having symptoms of schizophrenia. The normal person perceived a concave face as a
normal convex face.

Our top-down processing holds memories, like stock models," explains Danai Dima of
Hannover Medical University, in Germany, co-author of a study in Neuro Image. "All the
models in our head have a face coming out, so whenever we see a face, of course it
has to come out."
This powerful expectation and analysis that brain does, taking cues lead to contrary
results.
But in case of patient with schizophrenia has implausibility regarding hollow face. In our
case the student found the face what it is. According to psychologist, it is due to
misbalancing of bottom up and top down processing. In case of normal people, bottom
up approach comes what he actually see and then top down comes when he uses the
past experience.
In case of student that processing doesn’t work and brain don’t even do such complex
analysis, so they don’t find any inverse change in face.
Reference.
1- Chen, Y., Norton, D., Ongur, D., & Heckers, S. (2007). Inefficient face detection in
schizophrenia. Schizophrenia bulletin, 34(2), 367-374.
2- Norton, D., McBain, R., Holt, D. J., Ongur, D., & Chen, Y. (2009). Association of
impaired facial affect recognition with basic facial and visual processing deficits in
schizophrenia. Biological psychiatry, 65(12), 1094-1098.
3- Li, H., Chan, R. C., McAlonan, G. M., & Gong, Q. Y. (2009). Facial emotion
processing in schizophrenia: a meta-analysis of functional neuroimaging
data. Schizophrenia bulletin, 36(5), 1029-1039.
4- Butler, P. D., Tambini, A., Yovel, G., Jalbrzikowski, M., Ziwich, R., Silipo, G., ... &
Javitt, D. C. (2008). What's in a face? Effects of stimulus duration and inversion on
face processing in schizophrenia. Schizophrenia research, 103(1), 283-292.