Short Note Retinotopy of Facial Expression Adaptation

The face aftereffect (FAE; the illusion of faces after adaptation to a face) has been reported to occur without retinal overlap between adaptor and test, but recent studies revealed that the FAE is not constant across all test locations, which suggests that the FAE is also retinotopic. However, it remains unclear whether the characteristic of the retinotopy of the FAE for one facial aspect is the same as that of the FAE for another facial aspect. In the research reported here, an examination of the retinotopy of the FAE for facial expression indicated that the facial expression aftereffect occurs without retinal overlap between adaptor and test, and depends on the retinal distance between them. Furthermore, the results indicate that, although dependence of the FAE on adaptation-test distance is similar between facial expression and facial identity, the FAE for facial identity is larger than that for facial expression when a test face is presented in the opposite hemifield. On the basis of these results, I discuss adaptation mechanisms underlying facial expression processing and facial identity processing for the retinotopy of the FAE.