Aging faces as viscal-elastic events: implications for a theory of nonrigid shape perception.
A theory for the perception of events is proposed using the concepts of transformational and structural invariants. This approach involves the application of a method of spatial coordinate transformation to characterize the remodeling of faces by growth. By construing growing faces to the viscal-elastic events, the perception of the relative age level faces in made amenable to the proposed event perception analysis. Shear and strain transformation are compared as alternative formulations of growth-produced changes in the shape of  human profiles. Thes studies indicate that profiles transformed by strain elicit more reliable rank-order age judgments than those transformed by shear, although shear had a small significant effect. It is also shown that subjects are highly sensitive to small changes in strain, and that perceived identity of a shape is preserved under the strain transformation. The explanatory adequacy of the event perception theory of age information is compared to that of more traditional feature analytic theories.
D000375:Aging; D005145:Face; D005556:Form Perception; D006257:Head; D006801:Humans; D011582:Psychological Theory; D012886:Skull; D013997:Time Factors; D013998:Time Perception