Bishop, did you ever get any interesting results from your eye quiz?
I've been reading some studies recently that reminded me of this experiment. For example,
this study indicates that faces are processed differently that objects or non-faces.
The present experiments add to a growing body of evidence in cognitive psychology suggesting that faces are represented holistically (i.e., with little or no part decomposition) relative to objects and patterns other than faces. Previous research has compared face representation with the representation of scram- bled faces, inverted faces, and houses and assessed the role of parts versus holistic representation in both long-term and short- term memory for faces. It has also tested the generality of holistic face representation across developmental stages and showed that an individual with a neurological impairment in terms of face recognition did not benefit from the opportunity to represent faces holistically.
This seems to be largely processed in the right brain hemisphere, as damage to the right temporal lobe often leads to prosopagnosia, which is an inability to recognize faces. This also ties into McGilchrist's characterization of the brain - where the right hemisphere processes information as a whole, and the left breaks it down into smaller pieces, then rebuilds the pieces into an abstraction. If the facial recognition can only be processed holistically, then we would expect the left hemisphere to lack the ability to correctly perform that function - which appears to be the case.
So then I was reading another study, (
Does prosopagnosia take the eyes out of face representations?) about a subject with partial Prosopagnosia. The study found that the subject could be taught to recognize some faces (after a lot of training), but
did not use information from the eyes/brow area, instead focusing on the area around the mouth and lower half of the face. On the other hand, the control subjects (no brain damage) all focused primarily on the eyes/brow area.
So this indicates that recognition around the eyes may require use of a specific brain function in the right temporal lobe, and perhaps a test of this sort may reveal strength/weakness in that area. This happens to be the same area of the brain related to episodic or 'emotionally charged' memory.
I am also curious to see if there is a link between empathy and ability to perform well on the eye recognition experiment. Obviously, a conclusion can't be drawn from an informal experiment on a web forum, but it might be a useful study for someone to perform in a more controlled, focused setting. If a link was found, then we could have a follow-up study where subjects took the eye-recognition test, then meditated regularly for a year, then took the test again to see if their recognition ability improved. (Studies have already been done that indicate that meditation can improve empathy,
here is an example)