Introduction
Pareidolia is the phenomenon of recognizing a meaningful pattern, shape, or object from ambiguous forms in visual scenes. We experience pareidolia when an object is perceived even though it is not actually there (Kato and Mugitani 2015; Liu et al. 2014; Mamiya et al. 2016; Proverbio and Galli 2016). When we recognize an animal’s form in the clouds, a pattern of a leaf in a cup of coffee, or the figure of a reaching arm in the shadow of the tree, we are experiencing pareidolia. More notable examples include seeing a man’s face on the moon or Jesus’ portrayal on a piece of toast (Liu et al. 2014). Most studies focus on a specific type of pareidolia – face pareidolia – in which faces or face-like patterns are recognized in the absence of an actual face (Liu et al. 2014; Proverbio and Galli 2016; Ryan et al. 2016; Takahashi and Watanabe 2013; Wardle et al. 2017). Although examples of face pareidolia emerge spontaneously in the environment, there are also examples of face...
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution.
References
Avidan, G., Tanzer, M., & Behrmann, M. (2011). Impaired holistic processing in congenital prosopagnosia. Neuropsychologia, 49(9), 2541–2552. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2011.05.002.
Beran, M. J., Perdue, B. M., Kelly, A. J., & Parrish, A. E. (2017). What’s in a face (made of foods)? Comparing children’s and monkey’s perception of faces in face-like images of food. Animal Behavior and Cognition, 4(3), 324–339. https://doi.org/10.26451/abc.04.03.10.2017.
Busigny, T., Joubert, S., Felician, O., Ceccaldi, M., & Rossion, B. (2010). Holistic perception of the individual face is specific and necessary: Evidence from an extensive case study of acquired prosopagnosia. Neuropsychologia, 48(14), 4057–4092. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2010.09.017.
Crouzet, S. M. (2010). Fast saccades toward faces: Face detection in just 100 ms. Journal of Vision, 10(4), 1–17. https://doi.org/10.1167/10.4.16.
Dal Monte, O., Costa, V. D., Noble, P. L., Murray, E. A., & Averbeck, B. B. (2015). Amygdala lesions in rhesus macaques decrease attention to threat. Nature Communications, 6, 1–10. https://doi.org/10.1038/ncomms10161.
Dalrymple, K. A., Kingstone, A., & Barton, J. J. S. (2007). Seeing trees OR seeing forests in simultanagnosia: Attentional capture can be local or global. Neuropsychologia, 45(4), 871–875. https://doi.org/10.1016/J.NEUROPSYCHOLOGIA.2006.07.013.
Farroni, T., Johnson, M. H., Menon, E., Zulian, L., Faraguna, D., & Csibra, G. (2005). Newborns’ preference for face-relevant stimuli: Effects of contrast polarity. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 102(47), 17245–17250. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.0502205102.
Fujita, K., Nakamura, N., Sakai, A., Watanabe, S., & Ushitani, T. (2012). Amodal completion and illusory perception in birds and Primates. In How animals see the world: Comparative behavior, biology, and evolution of vision (pp. 100–116). Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195334654.003.0008.
Hadjikhani, N., Kveraga, K., Naik, P., & Ahlfors, S. P. (2009). Early (M170) activation of face-specific cortex by face-like objects. Neuroreport, 20(4), 403–407. https://doi.org/10.1097/WNR.0b013e328325a8e1.
Happé, F., & Frith, U. (2006). The weak coherence account: Detail-focused cognitive style in autism Spectrum disorders. Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, 36(1), 5–25. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10803-005-0039-0.
Kato, M., & Mugitani, R. (2015). Pareidolia in infants. PLoS One, 10(2), 1–10. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0118539.
Kelley, L. A., & Kelley, J. L. (2014). Animal visual illusion and confusion: The importance of a perceptual perspective. Behavioral Ecology, 25(3), 450–463. https://doi.org/10.1093/beheco/art118.
Kobayashi, M., Otsuka, Y., Nakato, E., Kanazawa, S., Yamaguchi, M. K., & Kakigi, R. (2012). Do infants recognize the Arcimboldo images as faces? Behavioral and near-infrared spectroscopic study. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 111(1), 22–36. https://doi.org/10.1016/J.JECP.2011.07.008.
Kret, M. E., & De Gelder, B. (2012). A review on sex differences in processing emotional signals. Neuropsychologia, 50(7), 1211–1221. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2011.12.022.
Krüger, S., Sokolov, A. N., Enck, P., Krägeloh-Mann, I., & Pavlova, M. A. (2013). Emotion through locomotion: Gender impact. PLoS One, 8(11), e81716. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0081716.
Liu, J., Li, J., Feng, L., Li, L., Tian, J., & Lee, K. (2014). Seeing Jesus in toast: Neural and behavioral correlates of face pareidolia. Cortex, 53(1), 60–77. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cortex.2014.01.013.
Mamiya, Y., Nishio, Y., Watanabe, H., Yokoi, K., Uchiyama, M., Baba, T., et al. (2016). The pareidolia test: A simple neuropsychological test measuring visual hallucination-like illusions. PLoS One, 11(5), 1–14. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0154713.
Navon, D. (1977). Forest before trees: The precedence of global features in visual perception. Cognitive Psychology, 9(3), 353–383. https://doi.org/10.1016/0010-0285(77)90012-3
Palermo, R., & Rhodes, G. (2007). Are you always on my mind? A review of how face perception and attention interact. Neuropsychologia, 45(1), 75–92. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2006.04.025.
Parr, L. A. (2011). The evolution of face processing in primates. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 366(1571), 1764–1777. https://doi.org/10.1098/rstb.2010.0358.
Pavlova, M. A., Heiz, J., Sokolov, A. N., & Barisnikov, K. (2016a). Social cognition in Williams syndrome: Face tuning. Frontiers in Psychology, 7, 1–8. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2016.01131.
Pavlova, M. A., Mayer, A., Hösl, F., & Sokolov, A. N. (2016b). Faces on her and his mind: Female and likable. PLoS One, 11(6), e0157636. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0157636.
Pavlova, M. A., Guerreschi, M., Tagliavento, L., Gitti, F., Sokolov, A. N., Fallgatter, A. J., & Fazzi, E. (2017). Social cognition in autism: Face tuning. Scientific Reports, 7(1), 1–9. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-017-02790-1.
Proverbio, A. M., & Galli, J. (2016). Women are better at seeing faces where there are none: An ERP study of face pareidolia. Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience, 11(9), 1501–1512. https://doi.org/10.1093/scan/nsw064.
Ryan, C., Stafford, M., & King, R. J. (2016). Brief report: Seeing the man in the moon: Do children with autism perceive pareidolic faces? A pilot study. Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, 46(12), 3838–3843. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10803-016-2927-x.
Salva, O., Farroni, T., Regolin, L., Vallortigara, G., & Johnson, M. H. (2011). The evolution of social orienting: Evidence from chicks (Gallus gallus) and human newborns. PLoS One, 6(4). https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0018802.
Sugita, Y. (2008). Face perception in monkeys reared with no exposure to faces. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 105(1), 394–398. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.0706079105.
Takahashi, K., & Watanabe, K. (2013). Gaze cueing by pareidolia faces. I-Perception, 4(8), 490–492. https://doi.org/10.1068/i0617sas.
Taubert, J., Wardle, S. G., Flessert, M., Leopold, D. A., & Ungerleider, L. G. (2017). Face pareidolia in the rhesus monkey. Current Biology, 27(16), 2505–2509.e2. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2017.06.075.
Taubert, J., Flessert, M., Wardle, S. G., Basile, B. M., Murphy, A. P., Murray, E. A., & Ungerleider, L. G. (2018). Amygdala lesions eliminate viewing preferences for faces in rhesus monkeys. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 115(31), 8043–8048. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1807245115.
Wardle, S. G., Seymour, K., Taubert, J., & Wardle, S. (2017). Characterizing the response to face pareidolia in human category-selective visual cortex. BioRxiv, 233387, 1–22. https://doi.org/10.1101/233387.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Section Editor information
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2019 Springer Nature Switzerland AG
About this entry
Cite this entry
Flessert, M. (2019). Pareidolia. In: Vonk, J., Shackelford, T. (eds) Encyclopedia of Animal Cognition and Behavior. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-47829-6_1771-1
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-47829-6_1771-1
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-47829-6
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-47829-6
eBook Packages: Springer Reference Behavioral Science and PsychologyReference Module Humanities and Social SciencesReference Module Business, Economics and Social Sciences