We are extending the definition of facial contrast to include the eyebrows because they are a major source of perceptually relevant contrast in the face. Eyebrow contrast may be specifically important for age perception, since facial hair becomes gray and of lesser quantity with age. Elsewhere we have focused on luminance contrast only, but recent work has demonstrated the importance of color contrast between the features and the surrounding skin for sex classification and related face perception tasks. For this reason we investigated not only age-related changes in luminance contrast, but also in red – green and yellow – blue contrast.
In the first study, we measured facial contrast in a set of 289 facial images of Caucasian women aged between 20 and 70 years old, to determine whether facial contrast varies with age. To determine whether facial contrast is related to age perception we had participants estimate the age of 150 of the faces in a second study. In the third study we manipulated facial contrast to determine whether it is causally related to perceived age. Each of thirty faces was manipulated to create new versions of the face with either increased or decreased facial contrast. In a forced-choice design, participants were shown both modified images and instructed to determine which face looked younger. A second group of participants were shown the modified versions of each face individually and asked to estimate its age.
Labelling of facial regions; the dashed lines demonstrate how the features and surrounding skin were defined.
General Discussion
Several aspects of facial contrast – the luminance and color differences between the facial features and the skin surrounding those features – were found to decrease with age. These included the luminance contrast around the eyes and eyebrows, the red-green (a*) contrast around the mouth and eyes, and the yellow-blue (b*) contrast around the eyes. These same attributes of facial contrast were negatively correlated with perceived age. Yellow-blue (b*) contrast of the mouth increased with age and was positively correlated with perceived age. Finally, manipulations of facial contrast changed the apparent age of the face. In two studies, faces with increased facial contrast were judged to be younger than those with decreased contrast. Collectively these results demonstrate that facial contrast is a visual cue that changes with age, and is used by observers in perceiving the age of a face.
Facial contrast is known to be a cue for sex classification and facial attractiveness judgments . Here we extended the definition of facial contrast to include color contrast and contrast around the eyebrows, and have shown that facial contrast is also a cue for age perception. Facial contrast can be added to the list of cues that are involved in age perception, including wrinkles, sagging, size of the eyes and lips, and uniformity of skin reflectance, to name a few. However, it should be noted that the L* contrast around the mouth did not change with age, and we have no evidence that it is related to the perception of age. Thus, the aspects of facial contrast that change with age are not exactly the same as those that differ between male and female faces.
Bruce and Young proposed that there is a link between the perception of age and the perception of femininity. Our findings here support this notion, by showing that a sexually dimorphic feature – facial contrast – also changes with age. Higher facial contrast is typical of female faces but also of younger faces. This suggests the possibility that there is a decrease in the apparent femininity of female faces as they age. A larger positive effect of cosmetics on physical attractiveness has been observed in older women compared to younger women. It may be that increases in facial contrast caused by cosmetics have a larger effect on apparent femininity in older faces than in younger faces.
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