Sex Difference In Face Recognition: The Effect Of Female Processing Superiority Based On Behavioral And Electrophysiological Evidence

In this world,there are no two faces that are totally the same.Face recognition is very important in real life.It is the basic skill that we associate with people and integrate into society.The study to face recognition has yielded fruitful results in the last 40 years.Early in the 1980 s,psychologists have successively established many models for face recognition.The models reveal that face recognition processing is multistage,facial process system is muticomponent.In addition,previous studies have found sex differences in face recognition.However,there are some basic problems that need to be further explored and solved in the field of face recognition.For example,what does it mean for females who are stable in sex differences to achieve better results? Is it the superiority of women? If it is female processing superiority,what stage will be accompanied by face recognition?In order to explore the spatial-temporal characteristics of sex difference in face recognition,we adopted appropriate experimental paradigm to separate the different stages from face recognition and used event-related potential technique which has high temporal resolution to track the process for face recognition.Three studies that included seven experiments(2 behavioral experiments and 5 EEG experiments)were conducted to explore sex differences on face recognition.The aim of study 1 was to compare female's and male's behavioral and electrophysiological characteristics during online face recognition processing and standardized object recognition processing,thus exploring whether female had superiority over male in overall face recognition during working memory stage.Two behavioral experiments and two ERP experiments were conducted and delayed match sample task paradigm was used in all of these experiments.The aim of study 2 was to examine sex difference in long-term memory face retrieve and recognition.Go/No go experimental paradigm was used and the stimuli were familiar names and faces.The aim of study 3 was to examine whether there existed attentional bias for faces.A supraliminal stimulation ERP experiment and a subliminal stimulation ERP experiment were conducted.Spatial cueing task paradigm was used and the task cues were faces and cups.Results showed that in study 1,females responded significantly faster than males on face recognition processing.However,there was no significant difference between males and females in standardized object recognition processing.On the latency of N170 component,which is ERP's biomarker of face recognition,females responded significantly shorter than males,whereas there was no difference between males and females in standardization object recognition processing.There was a significant sex difference in the LPC during face recognition,whereas there was no sex difference in the LPC during object recognition.The above results indicated that females had superiority effect in general face recognition during working memory.In the familiar face recognition processing of study 2,subjects were asked to match familiar faces to names and mismatch familiar faces to names.Results showed that the N170 latency of females was significantly shorter than that of males and the average amplitude of late positive component for females was significantly higher than for males.In addition,the amplitude of DN320,which is a negative wave derived from subtracting Go ERPs from NO-Go ERPs,was higher for females than for males.Study 3 showed that there was no difference in supraliminal stimulation behavioral experiment.However,there existed attentional bias for faces in the subliminal stimulation behavioral experiment and ERP experiments.Namely,the underlying information processing was regulated by social information.In addition,the EEG P300 differential waves for attention alertness in females were significantly higher than that in males under the supraliminal and subliminal stimulation conditions.It was confirmed that there was female processing suprriority in the attention stage.In summary,the results indicated that females had superiority effect over males in face recognition and the superiority were with in online processing stage in working memory,stages of retrieve,recognition in long-term memory and early attentional alert.The processing superiority effect of female in face recognition implied that the sex difference of human cognitive function may be due to the social division of labor.