I am an experimental cognitive psychologist, with a particular interest in researching how humans perceive and evaluate visual information. My research has focussed on understanding the perceptual, cognitive, and neural mechanisms involved in processing the human face. In addition to clarifying how healthy children, adolescents and adults perceive faces, my research aims to uncover the reasons why some people have difficulties recognising the identity and expressions of others. My primarily cognitive research intersects with a number of fields: perception, emotion, attention, memory, learning, development, individual differences, cognitive neuropsychology, neuroscience and genetics. I am willing to supervise projects that involve cognition, particularly face and object recognition, emotion, attention and memory.
Recent Projects
We have been interested in clarifying the role of attention in the recognition of facial identity and facial expression. In particular, our work has examined whether we are biased to attend to faces and whether face processing is rapid, unconscious, mandatory and capacity-free. Current projects are assessing the unconscious, implicit and explicit recognition of facial expression in children, adolescents and adults using cognitive, event-related potential (ERP) and facial electromyographic (EMG) techniques.
Approximately 2-3% of the general population find it very difficult to recognise other people via their face, a condition known as developmental or congenital prosopagnosia. We have shown that severe face recognition difficulties have a familial tendency, are associated with abnormal visual scan paths and we have developed a training program that improved the face recognition skills of a child with developmental prosopagnosia. We are currently comparing face recognition skills in children with autism and developmental prosopagnosia and assessing covert recognition in developmental prosopagnosia with both magnetoencephalography (MEG) and cognitive tasks.
I manage an online prosopagnosia register where people with lifelong difficulties recognising faces can register their details and be invited to participate in research projects.
The ability to accurately and rapidly recognise facial expressions facilitates social interactions. We have shown that removal of the left amygdala impairs the detection of briefly presented fearful faces and that social anxiety affects the processing of angry faces. We have also collected Australian norms for facial expression stimuli. Ongoing projects are assessing facial expression recognition in patients with damage to the orbitofrontal cortex and in individuals with borderline personality disorder and high levels of social anxiety.
We have also investigated why some faces might be more attractive than others.
Postdoctoral research fellow, MACCS, Macquarie University (2002-2009)
Ph.D. Psychology (Awarded with Distinction). (2004). The role of attention in the detection and identification of faces. School of Psychology, University of Western Australia.
B.Sc. (Psych, Hons 1). (1997). Effects of verbalization and expertise on the recognition of homogeneous novel objects. School of Psychology, University of Wollongong.
Robyn Peterson (D.Psych) Social cognitive abilities of people with borderline personality disorder
Davide Rivolta (PhD) Covert processing in congenital prosopagnosia
Megan Willis (PhD) The orbitofrontal cortex and social-emotional processing
Ellie Wilson (PhD) Face processing impairments in congenital prosopagnosia and autism
Completed
Laura Schmalzl (PhD). Fractionating face processing in congenital prosopagnosia. Higher Degree Research Excellence Award, Division of Linguistics & Psychology, 2007.
Peter De Lissa (Masters). Sex differences in facial expression processing in adolescents and adults: An ERP study. Awarded summa cum laude at the University of Maastricht, Netherlands, 2007.
Samantha Baggott (B.Psych Hons). The effects of affect: Are facial expressions processed involuntarily? Australian Psychological Society Prize for Honours in Psychology, 2007.
Sophie Kercher (B.Psych Hons). The effect of facial expression on attractiveness: A behavioural and event-related potentials study, 2007.
Christopher Sewell (B.Psych Hons). Attentional biases for facial affect vary with time but not with level of social anxiety: An event-related potential study, 2006.
Arielle De Sousa (B.Psych Hons). Processing of face information: The relationship between identity and emotional expression, 2005.
If you are unable to download a paper please email Romina.Palermo@anu.edu.au for a reprint.
Bowles, D.C., McKone, E., Dawel, A., Duchaine, B., Palermo, R., Schmalzl, L., Rivolta, D., Wilson, C.E., & Yovel, G. (in press). Diagnosing prosopagnosia: Effects of aging, sex, and participant-stimulus ethnic match on the Cambridge Face Memory Test and Cambridge Face Perception Test. Cognitive Neuropsychology.
Palermo, R., Schmalzl, L., Mohamed, A., Bleasel, A., & Miller, L. (in press). The effect of unilateral amygdala removals on detecting fear from briefly presented backward-masked faces. Journal of Clinical and Experimental Neuropsychology. dx.doi.org/10.1080/13803390902821724
Schmalzl, L., Palermo, R., Harris, I., & Coltheart, M. (2009) Face inversion superiority in a case of prosopagnosia following congenital brain damage: What can it tell us about the specificity and origin of face processing mechanisms? Cognitive Neuropsychology, 26, 286 - 306. dx.doi.org/10.1080/02643290903086904
Finkbeiner, M. & Palermo, R. (2009). The role of spatial attention in nonconscious processing: A comparison of face and non-face stimuli. Psychological Science, 20, 42-51. dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9280.2008.02256.x
Schmalzl, L., Palermo, R., & Coltheart, M. (2008). Cognitive heterogeneity in genetically-based prosopagnosia: A family study. Journal of Neuropsychology, 2, 99-117. dx.doi.org/10.1348/174866407X256554
Sewell, C., Palermo, R., Atkinson, C., & McArthur, G. (2008). Anxiety and the neural processing of threat in faces. Neuroreport, 19, 1339-1343. dx.doi.org/10.1097/WNR.0b013e32830baadf
Schmalzl, L., Palermo, R., Green, M., Brunsdon, R., & Coltheart, M. (2008). Training of familiar face recognition and visual scan paths for faces in a child with congenital prosopagnosia. Cognitive Neuropsychology, 25, 704-729. dx.doi.org/10.1080/02643290802299350
Palermo, R. & Rhodes, G. Is face processing automatic? (in press). Tutorials in Visual Cognition (Macquarie Monographs in Cognitive Science series). V. Coltheart (Ed). New York: Psychology Press.
Rhodes, G., Yoshikawa, S., Palermo, R., Simmons, L.W., Peters, M., Lee, K., Halberstadt, J. & Crawford, J. (2007). Perceived health contributes to the attractiveness of facial symmetry, averageness and sexual dimorphism. Perception, 36, 1244-1252. dx.doi.org/10.1068/p5712
Rhodes, G., Halberstadt, J., Jeffery, L., & Palermo, R. (2005). The attractiveness of average faces is not a generalized mere exposure effect. Social Cognition, 23, 205-217. dx.doi.org/10.1521/soco.2005.23.3.205
Rhodes, G., Lee, K., Palermo, R., Yoshikawa, S., Clissa, P., Williams, T., Peters, M., Winkler, C., & Jeffery, L. (2005). Attractiveness of own-race, other-race and mixed-race faces. Perception, 34, 319-340. dx.doi.org/10.1068/p5191
Palermo, R., & Coltheart, M. (2004). Photographs of facial expression: accuracy, response times, and ratings of intensity. Behavior Research Methods, Instruments, & Computers, 36, 634-638. www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15641409
Palermo, R., & Rhodes, G. (2003). Change detection in the flicker paradigm: Do faces have an advantage? Visual Cognition, 10, 683-713. dx.doi.org/10.1080/13506280344000059
Palermo, R., & Rhodes, G. (2002). The influence of divided attention on holistic face perception. Cognition, 82, 225-257. dx.doi.org/10.1016/S0010-0277(01)00160-3
Faulkner, T.F., Rhodes, G., Palermo, R., Pellicano, E., & Ferguson, D. (2002). Recognizing the un-real McCoy: Priming and the modularity of face recognition. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 9, 327-334. www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12120796
2009-2011. ARC Discovery Project Grant. The human face as an evolved signaling system. Burke, D., Palermo, R., Williams, M. & Favelle, S. ($185,000)
2005-2007. Macquarie University Research Fellowship. Are faces always on my mind? Understanding how visual attention influences the processing of emotional facial expressions. Palermo, R. ($189,824)
