摘要：Investigators are finding increasing evidence for cross-cultural specificity in face cognitionalong with individual characteristics. The functions on which face cognition isbased not only are types of general cognitive functions (perception, memory) but areelements of specific mental processes. Face perception, memorization, correct recognitionof faces, and understanding the information that faces provide are essential skills forhumans as a social species and can be considered as facets of social (cultural) intelligence.Face cognition is a difficult, multifaceted set of processes. The systems and processesinvolved in perceiving and recognizing faces are captured by several models focusingon the pertinent functions or including the presumably underlying neuroanatomicalsubstrates. Thus, the study of face-cognition mechanisms is a cross-disciplinary topic.In Russia, Germany, and China there are plans to organize an interdisciplinary crossculturalstudy of face cognition. The first step of this scientific interaction is conductingpsychological and psychophysiological studies of face cognition in multinational Russiawithin the frame of a grant supported by the Russian Science Foundation and devotedto “cross-cultural tolerance”. For that reason and in the presence of the huge diversity ofdata concerning face cognition, we suggest for discussion, specifically within the psychologicalscientific community, three aspects of face cognition: (1) psychophysiological(quantitative data), (2) developmental (qualitative data from developmental psychology),and (3) cross-cultural (qualitative data from cross-cultural studies). These three aspectsreflect the different levels of investigations and constitute a comprehensive, multilateralapproach to the problem. Unfortunately, as a rule, neuropsychological and psychologicalinvestigations are carried out independently of each other. However, for the purposes ofour overview here, we assume that the main factors that could influence the developmental,individual psychophysiological, and cross-cultural differences in face cognition arenot only biological but also social and cultural. One of the principal tasks of this article is to draw the attention of psychologists to the physiology of face processing and to draw the attention of neuroscientists to the psychology of face cognition. Thus, the main goal of the article is to instigate a discussion among social psychologists, psychophysiologists, and neuroscientists about the mechanisms of face cognition, which, as in a mirror, reflect the basic, fundamental “psychophysical” problem of psychophysiology
关键词：face cognition; social psychophysiology; development; other-ethnicity effects;brain mechanisms
