Face - Perception and Recognition of Faces

Perception and Recognition of Faces

Gestalt psychologists theorise that a face is not merely a set of facial features but is rather something meaningful in its form. This is consistent with the Gestalt theory that an image is seen in its entirety, not by its individual parts. According to Gary L. Allen, people adapted to respond more to faces during evolution as the natural result of being a social species. Allen suggests that the purpose of recognizing faces has its roots in the "parent-infant attraction, a quick and low-effort means by which parents and infants form an internal representation of each other, reducing the likelihood that the parent will abandon his or her offspring because of recognition failure". Allen's work takes a psychological perspective that combines evolutionary theories with Gestalt psychology.

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