Aspects of Face Processing

In the preface to his noveL "SmaU WorLd" David Lodge writes: "When ApriL with its sweet showers has pierced the drought of March to the root, and bathed every vein of earth with that Liquid by whose power the fLowers are engendered; when this zephyr, too, with its duLcet breath, had breathed Life into the tender new shoots . . . . then as the poet Geoffrey Chaucer observed many years ago, foLk Long to go on piLgrimages. OnLy these days professionaL peopLe caU them conferences. " At the end of . June 1985 about 50 scientists drawn from a dozen different countries gathered in Aberdeen for a week to attend the first internationaL meeting devoted entireLy to studies concerning the ways humans recognise faces and read the emotionaL expressions written on them. The meeting took the form of a Workshop, funded by NATO Scientific Affairs Division. So the emphasis was as much on discussing ideas and techniques as it was on present ing origina L experimenta L work. The participants were drawn from the fieLds 0: cognitive psychoLogy, neuropsychoLogy, neuroLogy computer science and aU had an interest in normaL or pathoLogicaL and aspects of face pY>ocessing and a few had the additionaL concern of using computer technoLogy either to mimic human face processing or to assist people to recaLL and recognise faces. Faces have always been considered intrinsicaLLy interesting objects by poets and a.