The following is a summary of “Modeling facial perception in group context from a serial perception perspective,” published in the March 2023 issue of Ophthalmology by Yu, et al.

For a study, researchers discussed how the visual system efficiently integrated spatially and temporally adjacent stimuli to perceive a given target, such as a face. The perception of a target face can be positively or negatively biased by surrounding faces in the same trial/space. These are investigated separately as spatial and temporal processing share the same purpose of reducing redundancy in visual processing. They wanted to investigate whether serial dependence of face perception (of attractiveness and averageness) still exists when the changed face perception in the group context occurs. 

The researchers used Markov Chain modeling and conventional methods to explore the co-occurrence of temporal effect and changed face perception in the group context for attractiveness and averageness. They also used Hidden Markov modeling, a new mathematical method, to model statistical processing from both domains. They revealed that the detailed computation of spatially and temporally adjacent faces in the attractiveness and averageness processing were similar yet different among the individuals. 

The study helped to understand the mathematical principles underlying changed face perception in the group context from the serial perspective.

Reference: jov.arvojournals.org/article.aspx?articleid=2785428