User:Ws1351/Mooney Face Test

'''NOTE: was not able to find any relevant pictures through wikisearch or Creative Commons. Tried my best to describe images in that place and also focus more on experimental correlations rather than experimental material.'''

The Mooney Face Test was developed by Craig M. Mooney and his results published in 1957 as “Age in the development of closure ability in children.” A subject in this test is shown a series of black and white distorted photographs in a way that their perception would require closure. The test assumes that perception is based on the collected information taken from the different regions of the image, which then constitute a holistic representation of a face. '''Today, there are now many iterations of the Mooney Face Test, a number of which have made images that involve image color inversion and facial feature scrambling. '''

Although the Mooney Face test is widely used in the area of gestalt facial recognition since it is recognized as the most reliable in gestalt perception, more recent tests have shown flaws in the original test. '''As the original test consisted of forty specific images and was designed to be administered by a rather short forty minute personal interview, there was no ability to retest specific individuals or test populations. To amend this, more recent studies have found a way to move Mooney Face tests online, instating new requirements and materials that can test for reaction time, personal ability, correlational ability, and has repeatability.'''

The Original Mooney Face Test
In the test, participants are shown low-information, two-tone pictures of faces and are asked to identify features and distinguish between real and false faces. The subject is asked to determine the identity of a set of images - whether one is a boy, girl, man, woman, old man, or old woman. Many of the facial details are also obliterated to test a concept Mooney called "perceptual closure," or the ability to form coherent mental pictures with very little visual information.

'''There were two proposed issues on the original Mooney Face Test. One of which was the inability for retesting. Due to the fact the test only consisted of forty images, retesting would result in a bias. Additionally, there wasn't enough time given per participant to retest. Another proposed issue was the all-or-nothing conflict due to their signal detection method. Participants could only report whether they saw a face or not, which was speculated to have resulted in high false alarm rates.'''

Modern Mooney Face Tests
The Mooney test has been updated by the Mooney-Verhallen test, which addressed the former's limited length, time-consuming interview stage, and proposed high false alarm rates through the adoption of online testing and test-retest models. '''In this study, 397 participants ranging from ages 18 to 42 were tested. All participants were of European descent. In an effort to reduce false alarm rates, participants were also given a new task. Rather than finding a holistic face within one image, participants would have to find specific facial features within an image shown among two distractions. In other words, this new test used a three alternative forced (3AFC) choice module rather than all-or-nothing. Other variations of their modernized Mooney Face test have also developed new images in which the face is inverted, upside down, or distorted further. Overall, participants all preformed quite well, with about 7% of participants getting every question correct.'''

'''Participants in the Mooney-Verhallen were also given the ability to rate their own ability of facial discrimination by self precept on a scale from 1-10 (10 being most confident, 1 being least confident), allowing for comparison post-testing. Data showed that participants were typically able to accurately rate their own ability of facial discrimination. Among the 397 participants, 370 participants had their genome sequenced as well. In correlational discussion, researchers tentatively identified an association between performance on the Mooney Face Test and a polymorphism in the RAPGEF5 gene. Within this study, data also showed that male participants generally out preformed female participants in terms of reaction time and accuracy, however, there seemed to be no correlation in ability with age.'''

'''Another study with 40 participants also found that males tended to out preform female participants. '''

'''In yet another test, individual participants were studied on a more intimate level as to see how external influences affected performance.  These were influences such as individual’s personality, predisposed cognitive abilities, and perceptual exposure. Once previously thought to have little impact on overall performance, it is now being tested in the updated versions of the Mooney Face test. Results suggested that reliability is hard to asses with this test as of result of the impertinence of individual ability.'''