The perceptual bases for the acquisition of person knowledge

Abstract

Observing others as they act and react to their environment is an important foundation to infer knowledge about them. In order to infer person knowledge from observation, we need to 1) recognize a person’s actions and reactions 2) recognize the surrounding context, and 3) recognize the identity of the person, so that we can associate the knowledge we inferred to the correct individual. In this talk, I discuss recent work on how identity and expressions are represented in the brain (with a focus on the posterior superior temporal sulcus), and outline ongoing projects and future directions looking into how perceptual information about an agent is integrated with the information about the surrounding context to infer knowledge about other individuals.