Sample records for abordagens familiares face

  1. Happy faces are preferred regardless of familiarity--sad faces are preferred only when familiar.

    PubMed

    Liao, Hsin-I; Shimojo, Shinsuke; Yeh, Su-Ling

    2013-06-01

    Familiarity leads to preference (e.g., the mere exposure effect), yet it remains unknown whether it is objective familiarity, that is, repetitive exposure, or subjective familiarity that contributes to preference. In addition, it is unexplored whether and how different emotions influence familiarity-related preference. The authors investigated whether happy or sad faces are preferred or perceived as more familiar and whether this subjective familiarity judgment correlates with preference for different emotional faces. An emotional face--happy or sad--was paired with a neutral face, and participants rated the relative preference and familiarity of each of the paired faces. For preference judgment, happy faces were preferred and sad faces were less preferred, compared with neutral faces. For familiarity judgment, happy faces did not show any bias, but sad faces were perceived as less familiar than neutral faces. Item-by-item correlational analyses show preference for sad faces--but not happy faces--positively correlate with familiarity. These results suggest a direct link between positive emotion and preference, and argue at least partly against a common cause for familiarity and preference. Instead, facial expression of different emotional valence modulates the link between familiarity and preference.

  2. Familiarity facilitates feature-based face processing.

    PubMed

    Visconti di Oleggio Castello, Matteo; Wheeler, Kelsey G; Cipolli, Carlo; Gobbini, M Ida

    2017-01-01

    Recognition of personally familiar faces is remarkably efficient, effortless and robust. We asked if feature-based face processing facilitates detection of familiar faces by testing the effect of face inversion on a visual search task for familiar and unfamiliar faces. Because face inversion disrupts configural and holistic face processing, we hypothesized that inversion would diminish the familiarity advantage to the extent that it is mediated by such processing. Subjects detected personally familiar and stranger target faces in arrays of two, four, or six face images. Subjects showed significant facilitation of personally familiar face detection for both upright and inverted faces. The effect of familiarity on target absent trials, which involved only rejection of unfamiliar face distractors, suggests that familiarity facilitates rejection of unfamiliar distractors as well as detection of familiar targets. The preserved familiarity effect for inverted faces suggests that facilitation of face detection afforded by familiarity reflects mostly feature-based processes.

  3. Neural microgenesis of personally familiar face recognition

    PubMed Central

    Ramon, Meike; Vizioli, Luca; Liu-Shuang, Joan; Rossion, Bruno

    2015-01-01

    Despite a wealth of information provided by neuroimaging research, the neural basis of familiar face recognition in humans remains largely unknown. Here, we isolated the discriminative neural responses to unfamiliar and familiar faces by slowly increasing visual information (i.e., high-spatial frequencies) to progressively reveal faces of unfamiliar or personally familiar individuals. Activation in ventral occipitotemporal face-preferential regions increased with visual information, independently of long-term face familiarity. In contrast, medial temporal lobe structures (perirhinal cortex, amygdala, hippocampus) and anterior inferior temporal cortex responded abruptly when sufficient information for familiar face recognition was accumulated. These observations suggest that following detailed analysis of individual faces in core posterior areas of the face-processing network, familiar face recognition emerges categorically in medial temporal and anterior regions of the extended cortical face network. PMID:26283361

  4. Neural microgenesis of personally familiar face recognition.

    PubMed

    Ramon, Meike; Vizioli, Luca; Liu-Shuang, Joan; Rossion, Bruno

    2015-09-01

    Despite a wealth of information provided by neuroimaging research, the neural basis of familiar face recognition in humans remains largely unknown. Here, we isolated the discriminative neural responses to unfamiliar and familiar faces by slowly increasing visual information (i.e., high-spatial frequencies) to progressively reveal faces of unfamiliar or personally familiar individuals. Activation in ventral occipitotemporal face-preferential regions increased with visual information, independently of long-term face familiarity. In contrast, medial temporal lobe structures (perirhinal cortex, amygdala, hippocampus) and anterior inferior temporal cortex responded abruptly when sufficient information for familiar face recognition was accumulated. These observations suggest that following detailed analysis of individual faces in core posterior areas of the face-processing network, familiar face recognition emerges categorically in medial temporal and anterior regions of the extended cortical face network.

  5. Face familiarity promotes stable identity recognition: exploring face perception using serial dependence

    PubMed Central

    Kok, Rebecca; Van der Burg, Erik; Rhodes, Gillian; Alais, David

    2017-01-01

    Studies suggest that familiar faces are processed in a manner distinct from unfamiliar faces and that familiarity with a face confers an advantage in identity recognition. Our visual system seems to capitalize on experience to build stable face representations that are impervious to variation in retinal input that may occur due to changes in lighting, viewpoint, viewing distance, eye movements, etc. Emerging evidence also suggests that our visual system maintains a continuous perception of a face's identity from one moment to the next despite the retinal input variations through serial dependence. This study investigates whether interactions occur between face familiarity and serial dependence. In two experiments, participants used a continuous scale to rate attractiveness of unfamiliar and familiar faces (either experimentally learned or famous) presented in rapid sequences. Both experiments revealed robust inter-trial effects in which attractiveness ratings for a given face depended on the preceding face's attractiveness. This inter-trial attractiveness effect was most pronounced for unfamiliar faces. Indeed, when participants were familiar with a given face, attractiveness ratings showed significantly less serial dependence. These results represent the first evidence that familiar faces can resist the temporal integration seen in sequential dependencies and highlight the importance of familiarity to visual cognition. PMID:28405355

  6. Familiarity and face emotion recognition in patients with schizophrenia.

    PubMed

    Lahera, Guillermo; Herrera, Sara; Fernández, Cristina; Bardón, Marta; de los Ángeles, Victoria; Fernández-Liria, Alberto

    2014-01-01

    To assess the emotion recognition in familiar and unknown faces in a sample of schizophrenic patients and healthy controls. Face emotion recognition of 18 outpatients diagnosed with schizophrenia (DSM-IVTR) and 18 healthy volunteers was assessed with two Emotion Recognition Tasks using familiar faces and unknown faces. Each subject was accompanied by 4 familiar people (parents, siblings or friends), which were photographed by expressing the 6 Ekman's basic emotions. Face emotion recognition in familiar faces was assessed with this ad hoc instrument. In each case, the patient scored (from 1 to 10) the subjective familiarity and affective valence corresponding to each person. Patients with schizophrenia not only showed a deficit in the recognition of emotions on unknown faces (p=.01), but they also showed an even more pronounced deficit on familiar faces (p=.001). Controls had a similar success rate in the unknown faces task (mean: 18 +/- 2.2) and the familiar face task (mean: 17.4 +/- 3). However, patients had a significantly lower score in the familiar faces task (mean: 13.2 +/- 3.8) than in the unknown faces task (mean: 16 +/- 2.4; p<.05). In both tests, the highest number of errors was with emotions of anger and fear. Subjectively, the patient group showed a lower level of familiarity and emotional valence to their respective relatives (p<.01). The sense of familiarity may be a factor involved in the face emotion recognition and it may be disturbed in schizophrenia. © 2013.

  7. A familiarity disadvantage for remembering specific images of faces.

    PubMed

    Armann, Regine G M; Jenkins, Rob; Burton, A Mike

    2016-04-01

    Familiar faces are remembered better than unfamiliar faces. Furthermore, it is much easier to match images of familiar than unfamiliar faces. These findings could be accounted for by quantitative differences in the ease with which faces are encoded. However, it has been argued that there are also some qualitative differences in familiar and unfamiliar face processing. Unfamiliar faces are held to rely on superficial, pictorial representations, whereas familiar faces invoke more abstract representations. Here we present 2 studies that show, for 1 task, an advantage for unfamiliar faces. In recognition memory, viewers are better able to reject a new picture, if it depicts an unfamiliar face. This rare advantage for unfamiliar faces supports the notion that familiarity brings about some representational changes, and further emphasizes the idea that theoretical accounts of face processing should incorporate familiarity. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2016 APA, all rights reserved).

  8. Two areas for familiar face recognition in the primate brain.

    PubMed

    Landi, Sofia M; Freiwald, Winrich A

    2017-08-11

    Familiarity alters face recognition: Familiar faces are recognized more accurately than unfamiliar ones and under difficult viewing conditions when unfamiliar face recognition fails. The neural basis for this fundamental difference remains unknown. Using whole-brain functional magnetic resonance imaging, we found that personally familiar faces engage the macaque face-processing network more than unfamiliar faces. Familiar faces also recruited two hitherto unknown face areas at anatomically conserved locations within the perirhinal cortex and the temporal pole. These two areas, but not the core face-processing network, responded to familiar faces emerging from a blur with a characteristic nonlinear surge, akin to the abruptness of familiar face recognition. In contrast, responses to unfamiliar faces and objects remained linear. Thus, two temporal lobe areas extend the core face-processing network into a familiar face-recognition system. Copyright © 2017 The Authors, some rights reserved; exclusive licensee American Association for the Advancement of Science. No claim to original U.S. Government Works.

  9. The neural speed of familiar face recognition.

    PubMed

    Barragan-Jason, G; Cauchoix, M; Barbeau, E J

    2015-08-01

    Rapidly recognizing familiar people from their faces appears critical for social interactions (e.g., to differentiate friend from foe). However, the actual speed at which the human brain can distinguish familiar from unknown faces still remains debated. In particular, it is not clear whether familiarity can be extracted from rapid face individualization or if it requires additional time consuming processing. We recorded scalp EEG activity in 28 subjects performing a go/no-go, famous/non-famous, unrepeated, face recognition task. Speed constraints were used to encourage subjects to use the earliest familiarity information available. Event related potential (ERP) analyses show that both the N170 and the N250 components were modulated by familiarity. The N170 modulation was related to behaviour: subjects presenting the strongest N170 modulation were also faster but less accurate than those who only showed weak N170 modulation. A complementary Multi-Variate Pattern Analysis (MVPA) confirmed ERP results and provided some more insights into the dynamics of face recognition as the N170 differential effect appeared to be related to a first transitory phase (transitory bump of decoding power) starting at around 140 ms, which returned to baseline afterwards. This bump of activity was henceforth followed by an increase of decoding power starting around 200 ms after stimulus onset. Overall, our results suggest that rather than a simple single-process, familiarity for faces may rely on a cascade of neural processes, including a coarse and fast stage starting at 140 ms and a more refined but slower stage occurring after 200 ms. Copyright © 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

  10. Revisiting the earliest electrophysiological correlate of familiar face recognition.

    PubMed

    Huang, Wanyi; Wu, Xia; Hu, Liping; Wang, Lei; Ding, Yulong; Qu, Zhe

    2017-10-01

    The present study used event-related potentials (ERPs) to reinvestigate the earliest face familiarity effect (FFE: ERP differences between familiar and unfamiliar faces) that genuinely reflects cognitive processes underlying recognition of familiar faces in long-term memory. To trigger relatively early FFEs, participants were required to categorize upright and inverted famous faces and unknown faces in a task that placed high demand on face recognition. More importantly, to determine whether an observed FFE was linked to on-line face recognition, systematical investigation about the relationship between the FFE and behavioral performance of face recognition was conducted. The results showed significant FFEs on P1, N170, N250, and P300 waves. The FFEs on occipital P1 and N170 (<200ms) showed reversed polarities for upright and inverted faces, and were not correlated with any behavioral measure (accuracy, response time) or modulated by learning, indicating that they might merely reflect low-level visual differences between face sets. In contrast, the later FFEs on occipito-temporal N250 (~230ms) and centro-parietal P300 (~350ms) showed consistent polarities for upright and inverted faces. The N250 FFE was individually correlated with recognition speed for upright faces, and could be obtained for inverted faces through learning. The P300 FFE was also related to behavior in many aspects. These findings provide novel evidence supporting that cognitive discrimination of familiar and unfamiliar faces starts no less than 200ms after stimulus onset, and the familiarity effect on N250 may be the first electrophysiological correlate underlying recognition of familiar faces in long-term memory. Copyright © 2017 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

  11. The Role of Face Familiarity in Eye Tracking of Faces by Individuals with Autism Spectrum Disorders

    PubMed Central

    Dawson, Geraldine; Webb, Sara; Murias, Michael; Munson, Jeffrey; Panagiotides, Heracles; Aylward, Elizabeth

    2010-01-01

    It has been shown that individuals with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) demonstrate normal activation in the fusiform gyrus when viewing familiar, but not unfamiliar faces. The current study utilized eye tracking to investigate patterns of attention underlying familiar versus unfamiliar face processing in ASD. Eye movements of 18 typically developing participants and 17 individuals with ASD were recorded while passively viewing three face categories: unfamiliar non-repeating faces, a repeating highly familiar face, and a repeating previously unfamiliar face. Results suggest that individuals with ASD do not exhibit more normative gaze patterns when viewing familiar faces. A second task assessed facial recognition accuracy and response time for familiar and novel faces. The groups did not differ on accuracy or reaction times. PMID:18306030

  12. The Role of Familiarity for Representations in Norm-Based Face Space

    PubMed Central

    Faerber, Stella J.; Kaufmann, Jürgen M.; Leder, Helmut; Martin, Eva Maria; Schweinberger, Stefan R.

    2016-01-01

    According to the norm-based version of the multidimensional face space model (nMDFS, Valentine, 1991), any given face and its corresponding anti-face (which deviates from the norm in exactly opposite direction as the original face) should be equidistant to a hypothetical prototype face (norm), such that by definition face and anti-face should bear the same level of perceived typicality. However, it has been argued that familiarity affects perceived typicality and that representations of familiar faces are qualitatively different (e.g., more robust and image-independent) from those for unfamiliar faces. Here we investigated the role of face familiarity for rated typicality, using two frequently used operationalisations of typicality (deviation-based: DEV), and distinctiveness (face in the crowd: FITC) for faces of celebrities and their corresponding anti-faces. We further assessed attractiveness, likeability and trustworthiness ratings of the stimuli, which are potentially related to typicality. For unfamiliar faces and their corresponding anti-faces, in line with the predictions of the nMDFS, our results demonstrate comparable levels of perceived typicality (DEV). In contrast, familiar faces were perceived much less typical than their anti-faces. Furthermore, familiar faces were rated higher than their anti-faces in distinctiveness, attractiveness, likability and trustworthiness. These findings suggest that familiarity strongly affects the distribution of facial representations in norm-based face space. Overall, our study suggests (1) that familiarity needs to be considered in studies of mental representations of faces, and (2) that familiarity, general distance-to-norm and more specific vector directions in face space make different and interactive contributions to different types of facial evaluations. PMID:27168323

  13. The Role of Familiarity for Representations in Norm-Based Face Space.

    PubMed

    Faerber, Stella J; Kaufmann, Jürgen M; Leder, Helmut; Martin, Eva Maria; Schweinberger, Stefan R

    2016-01-01

    According to the norm-based version of the multidimensional face space model (nMDFS, Valentine, 1991), any given face and its corresponding anti-face (which deviates from the norm in exactly opposite direction as the original face) should be equidistant to a hypothetical prototype face (norm), such that by definition face and anti-face should bear the same level of perceived typicality. However, it has been argued that familiarity affects perceived typicality and that representations of familiar faces are qualitatively different (e.g., more robust and image-independent) from those for unfamiliar faces. Here we investigated the role of face familiarity for rated typicality, using two frequently used operationalisations of typicality (deviation-based: DEV), and distinctiveness (face in the crowd: FITC) for faces of celebrities and their corresponding anti-faces. We further assessed attractiveness, likeability and trustworthiness ratings of the stimuli, which are potentially related to typicality. For unfamiliar faces and their corresponding anti-faces, in line with the predictions of the nMDFS, our results demonstrate comparable levels of perceived typicality (DEV). In contrast, familiar faces were perceived much less typical than their anti-faces. Furthermore, familiar faces were rated higher than their anti-faces in distinctiveness, attractiveness, likability and trustworthiness. These findings suggest that familiarity strongly affects the distribution of facial representations in norm-based face space. Overall, our study suggests (1) that familiarity needs to be considered in studies of mental representations of faces, and (2) that familiarity, general distance-to-norm and more specific vector directions in face space make different and interactive contributions to different types of facial evaluations.

  14. Effect of familiarity and viewpoint on face recognition in chimpanzees

    PubMed Central

    Parr, Lisa A; Siebert, Erin; Taubert, Jessica

    2012-01-01

    Numerous studies have shown that familiarity strongly influences how well humans recognize faces. This is particularly true when faces are encountered across a change in viewpoint. In this situation, recognition may be accomplished by matching partial or incomplete information about a face to a stored representation of the known individual, whereas such representations are not available for unknown faces. Chimpanzees, our closest living relatives, share many of the same behavioral specializations for face processing as humans, but the influence of familiarity and viewpoint have never been compared in the same study. Here, we examined the ability of chimpanzees to match the faces of familiar and unfamiliar conspecifics in their frontal and 3/4 views using a computerized task. Results showed that, while chimpanzees were able to accurately match both familiar and unfamiliar faces in their frontal orientations, performance was significantly impaired only when unfamiliar faces were presented across a change in viewpoint. Therefore, like in humans, face processing in chimpanzees appears to be sensitive to individual familiarity. We propose that familiarization is a robust mechanism for strengthening the representation of faces and has been conserved in primates to achieve efficient individual recognition over a range of natural viewing conditions. PMID:22128558

  15. The automaticity of face perception is influenced by familiarity.

    PubMed

    Yan, Xiaoqian; Young, Andrew W; Andrews, Timothy J

    2017-10-01

    In this study, we explore the automaticity of encoding for different facial characteristics and ask whether it is influenced by face familiarity. We used a matching task in which participants had to report whether the gender, identity, race, or expression of two briefly presented faces was the same or different. The task was made challenging by allowing nonrelevant dimensions to vary across trials. To test for automaticity, we compared performance on trials in which the task instruction was given at the beginning of the trial, with trials in which the task instruction was given at the end of the trial. As a strong criterion for automatic processing, we reasoned that if perception of a given characteristic (gender, race, identity, or emotion) is fully automatic, the timing of the instruction should not influence performance. We compared automaticity for the perception of familiar and unfamiliar faces. Performance with unfamiliar faces was higher for all tasks when the instruction was given at the beginning of the trial. However, we found a significant interaction between instruction and task with familiar faces. Accuracy of gender and identity judgments to familiar faces was the same regardless of whether the instruction was given before or after the trial, suggesting automatic processing of these properties. In contrast, there was an effect of instruction for judgments of expression and race to familiar faces. These results show that familiarity enhances the automatic processing of some types of facial information more than others.

  16. Implicit Recognition of Familiar and Unfamiliar Faces in Schizophrenia: A Study of the Skin Conductance Response in Familiarity Disorders.

    PubMed

    Ameller, Aurely; Picard, Aline; D'Hondt, Fabien; Vaiva, Guillaume; Thomas, Pierre; Pins, Delphine

    2017-01-01

    Familiarity is a subjective sensation that contributes to person recognition. This process is described as an emotion-based memory-trace of previous meetings and could be disrupted in schizophrenia. Consequently, familiarity disorders could be involved in the impaired social interactions observed in patients with schizophrenia. Previous studies have primarily focused on famous people recognition. Our aim was to identify underlying features, such as emotional disturbances, that may contribute to familiarity disorders in schizophrenia. We hypothesize that patients with familiarity disorders will exhibit a lack of familiarity that could be detected by a flattened skin conductance response (SCR). The SCR was recorded to test the hypothesis that emotional reactivity disturbances occur in patients with schizophrenia during the categorization of specific familiar, famous and unknown faces as male or female. Forty-eight subjects were divided into the following 3 matched groups with 16 subjects per group: control subjects, schizophrenic people with familiarity disorder, and schizophrenic people without familiarity disorders. Emotional arousal is reflected by the skin conductance measures. The control subjects and the patients without familiarity disorders experienced a differential emotional response to the specific familiar faces compared with that to the unknown faces. Nevertheless, overall, the schizophrenic patients without familiarity disorders showed a weaker response across conditions compared with the control subjects. In contrast, the patients with familiarity disorders did not show any significant differences in their emotional response to the faces, regardless of the condition. Only patients with familiarity disorders fail to exhibit a difference in emotional response between familiar and non-familiar faces. These patients likely emotionally process familiar faces similarly to unknown faces. Hence, the lower feelings of familiarity in schizophrenia may be a

  17. Familiar Face Recognition in Children with Autism: The Differential Use of Inner and Outer Face Parts

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Wilson, Rebecca; Pascalis, Olivier; Blades, Mark

    2007-01-01

    We investigated whether children with autistic spectrum disorders (ASD) have a deficit in recognising familiar faces. Children with ASD were given a forced choice familiar face recognition task with three conditions: full faces, inner face parts and outer face parts. Control groups were children with developmental delay (DD) and typically…

  18. Tolerance for distorted faces: challenges to a configural processing account of familiar face recognition.

    PubMed

    Sandford, Adam; Burton, A Mike

    2014-09-01

    Face recognition is widely held to rely on 'configural processing', an analysis of spatial relations between facial features. We present three experiments in which viewers were shown distorted faces, and asked to resize these to their correct shape. Based on configural theories appealing to metric distances between features, we reason that this should be an easier task for familiar than unfamiliar faces (whose subtle arrangements of features are unknown). In fact, participants were inaccurate at this task, making between 8% and 13% errors across experiments. Importantly, we observed no advantage for familiar faces: in one experiment participants were more accurate with unfamiliars, and in two experiments there was no difference. These findings were not due to general task difficulty - participants were able to resize blocks of colour to target shapes (squares) more accurately. We also found an advantage of familiarity for resizing other stimuli (brand logos). If configural processing does underlie face recognition, these results place constraints on the definition of 'configural'. Alternatively, familiar face recognition might rely on more complex criteria - based on tolerance to within-person variation rather than highly specific measurement. Copyright © 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

  19. Emotional Processing of Personally Familiar Faces in the Vegetative State

    PubMed Central

    Sharon, Haggai; Pasternak, Yotam; Ben Simon, Eti; Gruberger, Michal; Giladi, Nir; Krimchanski, Ben Zion; Hassin, David; Hendler, Talma

    2013-01-01

    Background The Vegetative State (VS) is a severe disorder of consciousness in which patients are awake but display no signs of awareness. Yet, recent functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) studies have demonstrated evidence for covert awareness in VS patients by recording specific brain activations during a cognitive task. However, the possible existence of incommunicable subjective emotional experiences in VS patients remains largely unexplored. This study aimed to probe the question of whether VS patients retain a brain ability to selectively process external stimuli according to their emotional value and look for evidence of covert emotional awareness in patients. Methods and Findings In order to explore these questions we employed the emotive impact of observing personally familiar faces, known to provoke specific perceptual as well as emotional brain activations. Four VS patients and thirteen healthy controls first underwent an fMRI scan while viewing pictures of non-familiar faces, personally familiar faces and pictures of themselves. In a subsequent imagery task participants were asked to actively imagine one of their parent's faces. Analyses focused on face and familiarity selective regional brain activations and inter-regional functional connectivity. Similar to controls, all patients displayed face selective brain responses with further limbic and cortical activations elicited by familiar faces. In patients as well as controls, Connectivity was observed between emotional, visual and face specific areas, suggesting aware emotional perception. This connectivity was strongest in the two patients who later recovered. Notably, these two patients also displayed selective amygdala activation during familiar face imagery, with one further exhibiting face selective activations, indistinguishable from healthy controls. Conclusions Taken together, these results show that selective emotional processing can be elicited in VS patients both by external emotionally

  20. Active sleep is associated with the face preference in the newborns who familiarized with a responsive face.

    PubMed

    Cecchini, Marco; Iannoni, Maria Elena; Aceto, Paola; Baroni, Eleonora; Di Vito, Cinzia; Lai, Carlo

    2017-11-01

    Aim of this study was to investigate the preferential looking behaviour, subsequent to a familiarization task (8-min) with a previously responsive or motionless face, before and after a sleep cycle. Moreover, the role of the active sleep in memory consolidation of the responsive or motionless faces was explored. Hypotheses were that the newborns undergoing a motionless familiarization will exhibit a novelty effect (preference for the novel face) whereas the newborns undergoing a responsive familiarization will show a familiarity effect (preference for the known face) before and after the sleep cycle; moreover, the amount of active sleep will be associated with the looking time at the known face after a sleep cycle. Forty-five healthy full-term newborns were randomly assigned to two groups (group 1: motionless-familiarization and group 2: responsive-familiarization); in both groups newborns were video-recorded during four post-familiarization face-preference tasks, two of them performed before and two after a sleep cycle. During the pre-sleep-trials, there was not a significant preference for one face in both groups. During the post-sleep trials, the newborns showed a clear preference for the novel face. This effect was more evident in group 1. Only in group 2 there was a significant positive correlation between the active sleep duration and the looking duration at the known-face during the post-sleep trials (r=0.41; p=0.040). Multiple regression confirmed that only in the group 2 the total duration of the active sleep was associated with the looking duration at the known-face during the post-sleep trials (Adjusted R 2 =0.13; β=0.41; t=2.2; p=0.040). Findings showed that in newborns the face representation can be recalled after a sleep cycle. Moreover, the amount of the active sleep predicted the post-sleep looking toward the known-face only in the newborns who interactively familiarized with the face. Copyright © 2017 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

  1. Familiarity enhances visual working memory for faces.

    PubMed

    Jackson, Margaret C; Raymond, Jane E

    2008-06-01

    Although it is intuitive that familiarity with complex visual objects should aid their preservation in visual working memory (WM), empirical evidence for this is lacking. This study used a conventional change-detection procedure to assess visual WM for unfamiliar and famous faces in healthy adults. Across experiments, faces were upright or inverted and a low- or high-load concurrent verbal WM task was administered to suppress contribution from verbal WM. Even with a high verbal memory load, visual WM performance was significantly better and capacity estimated as significantly greater for famous versus unfamiliar faces. Face inversion abolished this effect. Thus, neither strategic, explicit support from verbal WM nor low-level feature processing easily accounts for the observed benefit of high familiarity for visual WM. These results demonstrate that storage of items in visual WM can be enhanced if robust visual representations of them already exist in long-term memory.

  2. Face shape and face identity processing in behavioral variant fronto-temporal dementia: A specific deficit for familiarity and name recognition of famous faces.

    PubMed

    De Winter, François-Laurent; Timmers, Dorien; de Gelder, Beatrice; Van Orshoven, Marc; Vieren, Marleen; Bouckaert, Miriam; Cypers, Gert; Caekebeke, Jo; Van de Vliet, Laura; Goffin, Karolien; Van Laere, Koen; Sunaert, Stefan; Vandenberghe, Rik; Vandenbulcke, Mathieu; Van den Stock, Jan

    2016-01-01

    Deficits in face processing have been described in the behavioral variant of fronto-temporal dementia (bvFTD), primarily regarding the recognition of facial expressions. Less is known about face shape and face identity processing. Here we used a hierarchical strategy targeting face shape and face identity recognition in bvFTD and matched healthy controls. Participants performed 3 psychophysical experiments targeting face shape detection (Experiment 1), unfamiliar face identity matching (Experiment 2), familiarity categorization and famous face-name matching (Experiment 3). The results revealed group differences only in Experiment 3, with a deficit in the bvFTD group for both familiarity categorization and famous face-name matching. Voxel-based morphometry regression analyses in the bvFTD group revealed an association between grey matter volume of the left ventral anterior temporal lobe and familiarity recognition, while face-name matching correlated with grey matter volume of the bilateral ventral anterior temporal lobes. Subsequently, we quantified familiarity-specific and name-specific recognition deficits as the sum of the celebrities of which respectively only the name or only the familiarity was accurately recognized. Both indices were associated with grey matter volume of the bilateral anterior temporal cortices. These findings extent previous results by documenting the involvement of the left anterior temporal lobe (ATL) in familiarity detection and the right ATL in name recognition deficits in fronto-temporal lobar degeneration.

  3. Familiarity Enhances Visual Working Memory for Faces

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Jackson, Margaret C.; Raymond, Jane E.

    2008-01-01

    Although it is intuitive that familiarity with complex visual objects should aid their preservation in visual working memory (WM), empirical evidence for this is lacking. This study used a conventional change-detection procedure to assess visual WM for unfamiliar and famous faces in healthy adults. Across experiments, faces were upright or…

  4. The modulatory effect of semantic familiarity on the audiovisual integration of face-name pairs.

    PubMed

    Li, Yuanqing; Wang, Fangyi; Huang, Biao; Yang, Wanqun; Yu, Tianyou; Talsma, Durk

    2016-12-01

    To recognize individuals, the brain often integrates audiovisual information from familiar or unfamiliar faces, voices, and auditory names. To date, the effects of the semantic familiarity of stimuli on audiovisual integration remain unknown. In this functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) study, we used familiar/unfamiliar facial images, auditory names, and audiovisual face-name pairs as stimuli to determine the influence of semantic familiarity on audiovisual integration. First, we performed a general linear model analysis using fMRI data and found that audiovisual integration occurred for familiar congruent and unfamiliar face-name pairs but not for familiar incongruent pairs. Second, we decoded the familiarity categories of the stimuli (familiar vs. unfamiliar) from the fMRI data and calculated the reproducibility indices of the brain patterns that corresponded to familiar and unfamiliar stimuli. The decoding accuracy rate was significantly higher for familiar congruent versus unfamiliar face-name pairs (83.2%) than for familiar versus unfamiliar faces (63.9%) and for familiar versus unfamiliar names (60.4%). This increase in decoding accuracy was not observed for familiar incongruent versus unfamiliar pairs. Furthermore, compared with the brain patterns associated with facial images or auditory names, the reproducibility index was significantly improved for the brain patterns of familiar congruent face-name pairs but not those of familiar incongruent or unfamiliar pairs. Our results indicate the modulatory effect that semantic familiarity has on audiovisual integration. Specifically, neural representations were enhanced for familiar congruent face-name pairs compared with visual-only faces and auditory-only names, whereas this enhancement effect was not observed for familiar incongruent or unfamiliar pairs. Hum Brain Mapp 37:4333-4348, 2016. © 2016 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. © 2016 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

  5. Is the N170 for faces cognitively penetrable? Evidence from repetition priming of Mooney faces of familiar and unfamiliar persons.

    PubMed

    Jemel, Boutheina; Pisani, Michèle; Calabria, Marco; Crommelinck, Marc; Bruyer, Raymond

    2003-07-01

    Impoverished images of faces, two-tone Mooney faces, severely impair the ability to recognize to whom the face pertains. However, previously seeing the corresponding face in a clear format helps fame-judgments to Mooney faces. In the present experiment, we sought to demonstrate that enhancement in the perceptual encoding of Mooney faces results from top-down effects, due to previous activation of familiar face representation. Event-related potentials (ERPs) were obtained for target Mooney images of familiar and unfamiliar faces preceded by clear pictures portraying either the same photo (same photo prime), or a different photo of the same person (different photo prime) or a new unfamiliar face (no-prime). In agreement with previous findings the use of primes was effective in enhancing the recognition of familiar faces in Mooney images; this priming effect was larger in the same than in different photo priming condition. ERP data revealed that the amplitude of the N170 face-sensitive component was smaller when elicited by familiar than by unfamiliar face targets, and for familiar face targets primed by the same than by different photos (a graded priming effect). Because the priming effect was restricted to familiar faces and occurred at the peak of the N170, we suggest that the early perceptual stage of face processing is likely to be penetrable by the top-down effect due to the activation of face representations within the face recognition system.

  6. The Role of Face Familiarity in Eye Tracking of Faces by Individuals with Autism Spectrum Disorders

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Sterling, Lindsey; Dawson, Geraldine; Webb, Sara; Murias, Michael; Munson, Jeffrey; Panagiotides, Heracles; Aylward, Elizabeth

    2008-01-01

    It has been shown that individuals with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) demonstrate normal activation in the fusiform gyrus when viewing familiar, but not unfamiliar faces. The current study utilized eye tracking to investigate patterns of attention underlying familiar versus unfamiliar face processing in ASD. Eye movements of 18 typically…

  7. Context effects in the processing of familiar faces.

    PubMed

    Brennen, T; Bruce, V

    1991-01-01

    In this paper we report five experiments that investigate the influence of prime faces upon the speed with which familiar faces are recognized and named. Previously, priming had been reported when the prime and target faces were closely associated, e.g., Prince Charles and Princess Diana (Bruce & Valentine, 1986). In Experiment 1 we show that there is a reliable effect of relatedness on a double-familiarity decision, even when the faces are only categorically related, e.g., Kirk Douglas and Clint Eastwood. Then it was shown that such an effect emerges only on a double decision task (Experiments 2 and 3). Experiment 4 showed that on a primed naming task, faces preceded by a categorically related prime were responded to more quickly than those preceded by an unrelated prime, and the effect was due to inhibition. Experiment 5 replicated this effect and also showed that when associatively related primes were used, a facilitatory, and not an inhibitory, effect is found. It is argued that the facilitation of associative priming arises at an earlier locus than the inhibition of categorial priming.

  8. Faces are special but not too special: Spared face recognition in amnesia is based on familiarity

    PubMed Central

    Aly, Mariam; Knight, Robert T.; Yonelinas, Andrew P.

    2014-01-01

    Most current theories of human memory are material-general in the sense that they assume that the medial temporal lobe (MTL) is important for retrieving the details of prior events, regardless of the specific type of materials. Recent studies of amnesia have challenged the material-general assumption by suggesting that the MTL may be necessary for remembering words, but is not involved in remembering faces. We examined recognition memory for faces and words in a group of amnesic patients, which included hypoxic patients and patients with extensive left or right MTL lesions. Recognition confidence judgments were used to plot receiver operating characteristics (ROCs) in order to more fully quantify recognition performance and to estimate the contributions of recollection and familiarity. Consistent with the extant literature, an analysis of overall recognition accuracy showed that the patients were impaired at word memory but had spared face memory. However, the ROC analysis indicated that the patients were generally impaired at high confidence recognition responses for faces and words, and they exhibited significant recollection impairments for both types of materials. Familiarity for faces was preserved in all patients, but extensive left MTL damage impaired familiarity for words. These results suggest that face recognition may appear to be spared because performance tends to rely heavily on familiarity, a process that is relatively well preserved in amnesia. The findings challenge material-general theories of memory, and suggest that both material and process are important determinants of memory performance in amnesia, and different types of materials may depend more or less on recollection and familiarity. PMID:20833190

  9. Socially Important Faces Are Processed Preferentially to Other Familiar and Unfamiliar Faces in a Priming Task across a Range of Viewpoints

    PubMed Central

    Keyes, Helen; Zalicks, Catherine

    2016-01-01

    Using a priming paradigm, we investigate whether socially important faces are processed preferentially compared to other familiar and unfamiliar faces, and whether any such effects are affected by changes in viewpoint. Participants were primed with frontal images of personally familiar, famous or unfamiliar faces, and responded to target images of congruent or incongruent identity, presented in frontal, three quarter or profile views. We report that participants responded significantly faster to socially important faces (a friend’s face) compared to other highly familiar (famous) faces or unfamiliar faces. Crucially, responses to famous and unfamiliar faces did not differ. This suggests that, when presented in the context of a socially important stimulus, socially unimportant familiar faces (famous faces) are treated in a similar manner to unfamiliar faces. This effect was not tied to viewpoint, and priming did not affect socially important face processing differently to other faces. PMID:27219101

  10. Sex differences in attraction to familiar and unfamiliar opposite-sex faces: men prefer novelty and women prefer familiarity.

    PubMed

    Little, Anthony C; DeBruine, Lisa M; Jones, Benedict C

    2014-07-01

    Familiarity is attractive in many types of stimuli and exposure generally increases feelings of liking. However, men desire a greater number of sexual partners than women, suggesting a preference for novelty. We examined sex differences in preferences for familiarity. In Study 1 (N = 83 women, 63 men), we exposed individuals to faces twice and found that faces were judged as more attractive on the second rating, reflecting attraction to familiar faces, with the exception that men's ratings of female faces decreased on the second rating, demonstrating attraction to novelty. In Studies 2 (N = 42 women, 28 men) and 3 (N = 51 women, 25 men), exposure particularly decreased men's ratings of women's attractiveness for short-term relationships and their sexiness. In Study 4 (N = 64 women, 50 men), women's attraction to faces was positively related to self-rated similarity to their current partner's face, while the effect was significantly weaker for men. Potentially, men's attraction to novelty may reflect an adaptation promoting the acquisition of a high number of sexual partners.

  11. Tracking the truth: the effect of face familiarity on eye fixations during deception.

    PubMed

    Millen, Ailsa E; Hope, Lorraine; Hillstrom, Anne P; Vrij, Aldert

    2017-05-01

    In forensic investigations, suspects sometimes conceal recognition of a familiar person to protect co-conspirators or hide knowledge of a victim. The current experiment sought to determine whether eye fixations could be used to identify memory of known persons when lying about recognition of faces. Participants' eye movements were monitored whilst they lied and told the truth about recognition of faces that varied in familiarity (newly learned, famous celebrities, personally known). Memory detection by eye movements during recognition of personally familiar and famous celebrity faces was negligibly affected by lying, thereby demonstrating that detection of memory during lies is influenced by the prior learning of the face. By contrast, eye movements did not reveal lies robustly for newly learned faces. These findings support the use of eye movements as markers of memory during concealed recognition but also suggest caution when familiarity is only a consequence of one brief exposure.

  12. Down Syndrome and Automatic Processing of Familiar and Unfamiliar Emotional Faces

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Morales, Guadalupe E.; Lopez, Ernesto O.

    2010-01-01

    Participants with Down syndrome (DS) were required to participate in a face recognition experiment to recognize familiar (DS faces) and unfamiliar emotional faces (non DS faces), by using an affective priming paradigm. Pairs of emotional facial stimuli were presented (one face after another) with a short Stimulus Onset Asynchrony of 300…

  13. An Inner Face Advantage in Children's Recognition of Familiar Peers

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Ge, Liezhong; Anzures, Gizelle; Wang, Zhe; Kelly, David J.; Pascalis, Olivier; Quinn, Paul C.; Slater, Alan M.; Yang, Zhiliang; Lee, Kang

    2008-01-01

    Children's recognition of familiar own-age peers was investigated. Chinese children (4-, 8-, and 14-year-olds) were asked to identify their classmates from photographs showing the entire face, the internal facial features only, the external facial features only, or the eyes, nose, or mouth only. Participants from all age groups were familiar with…

  14. Left-right facial orientation of familiar faces: developmental aspects of « the mere exposure hypothesis ».

    PubMed

    Amestoy, Anouck; Bouvard, Manuel P; Cazalets, Jean-René

    2010-01-01

    We investigated the developmental aspect of sensitivity to the orientation of familiar faces by asking 38 adults and 72 children from 3 to 12 years old to make a preference choice between standard and mirror images of themselves and of familiar faces, presented side-by-side or successively. When familiar (parental) faces were presented simultaneously, 3- to 5-year-olds showed no preference, but by age 5-7 years an adult-like preference for the standard image emerged. Similarly, the adult-like preference for the mirror image of their own face emerged by 5-7 years of age. When familiar or self faces were presented successively, 3- to 7-year-olds showed no preference, and adult-like preference for the standard image emerged by age 7-12 years. These results suggest the occurrence of a developmental process in the perception of familiar face asymmetries which is retained in memory related to knowledge about faces.

  15. Self- or familiar-face recognition advantage? New insight using ambient images.

    PubMed

    Bortolon, Catherine; Lorieux, Siméon; Raffard, Stéphane

    2018-06-01

    Self-face recognition has been widely explored in the past few years. Nevertheless, the current literature relies on the use of standardized photographs which do not represent daily-life face recognition. Therefore, we aim for the first time to evaluate self-face processing in healthy individuals using natural/ambient images which contain variations in the environment and in the face itself. In total, 40 undergraduate and graduate students performed a forced delayed-matching task, including images of one's own face, friend, famous and unknown individuals. For both reaction time and accuracy, results showed that participants were faster and more accurate when matching different images of their own face compared to both famous and unfamiliar faces. Nevertheless, no significant differences were found between self-face and friend-face and between friend-face and famous-face. They were also faster and more accurate when matching friend and famous faces compared to unfamiliar faces. Our results suggest that faster and more accurate responses to self-face might be better explained by a familiarity effect - that is, (1) the result of frequent exposition to one's own image through mirror and photos, (2) a more robust mental representation of one's own face and (3) strong face recognition units as for other familiar faces.

  16. Arguments Against a Configural Processing Account of Familiar Face Recognition.

    PubMed

    Burton, A Mike; Schweinberger, Stefan R; Jenkins, Rob; Kaufmann, Jürgen M

    2015-07-01

    Face recognition is a remarkable human ability, which underlies a great deal of people's social behavior. Individuals can recognize family members, friends, and acquaintances over a very large range of conditions, and yet the processes by which they do this remain poorly understood, despite decades of research. Although a detailed understanding remains elusive, face recognition is widely thought to rely on configural processing, specifically an analysis of spatial relations between facial features (so-called second-order configurations). In this article, we challenge this traditional view, raising four problems: (1) configural theories are underspecified; (2) large configural changes leave recognition unharmed; (3) recognition is harmed by nonconfigural changes; and (4) in separate analyses of face shape and face texture, identification tends to be dominated by texture. We review evidence from a variety of sources and suggest that failure to acknowledge the impact of familiarity on facial representations may have led to an overgeneralization of the configural account. We argue instead that second-order configural information is remarkably unimportant for familiar face recognition. © The Author(s) 2015.

  17. Is the Thatcher Illusion Modulated by Face Familiarity? Evidence from an Eye Tracking Study

    PubMed Central

    2016-01-01

    Thompson (1980) first detected and described the Thatcher Illusion, where participants instantly perceive an upright face with inverted eyes and mouth as grotesque, but fail to do so when the same face is inverted. One prominent but controversial explanation is that the processing of configural information is disrupted in inverted faces. Studies investigating the Thatcher Illusion either used famous faces or non-famous faces. Highly familiar faces were often thought to be processed in a pronounced configural mode, so they seem ideal candidates to be tested in one Thatcher study against unfamiliar faces–but this has never been addressed so far. In our study, participants evaluated 16 famous and 16 non-famous faces for their grotesqueness. We tested whether familiarity (famous/non-famous faces) modulates reaction times, correctness of grotesqueness assessments (accuracy), and eye movement patterns for the factors orientation (upright/inverted) and Thatcherisation (Thatcherised/non-Thatcherised). On a behavioural level, familiarity effects were only observable via face inversion (higher accuracy and sensitivity for famous compared to non-famous faces) but not via Thatcherisation. Regarding eye movements, however, Thatcherisation influenced the scanning of famous and non-famous faces, for instance, in scanning the mouth region of the presented faces (higher number, duration and dwell time of fixations for famous compared to non-famous faces if Thatcherised). Altogether, famous faces seem to be processed in a more elaborate, more expertise-based way than non-famous faces, whereas non-famous, inverted faces seem to cause difficulties in accurate and sensitive processing. Results are further discussed in the face of existing studies of familiar vs. unfamiliar face processing. PMID:27776145

  18. Neural Representations of Personally Familiar and Unfamiliar Faces in the Anterior Inferior Temporal Cortex of Monkeys

    PubMed Central

    Eifuku, Satoshi; De Souza, Wania C.; Nakata, Ryuzaburo; Ono, Taketoshi; Tamura, Ryoi

    2011-01-01

    To investigate the neural representations of faces in primates, particularly in relation to their personal familiarity or unfamiliarity, neuronal activities were chronically recorded from the ventral portion of the anterior inferior temporal cortex (AITv) of macaque monkeys during the performance of a facial identification task using either personally familiar or unfamiliar faces as stimuli. By calculating the correlation coefficients between neuronal responses to the faces for all possible pairs of faces given in the task and then using the coefficients as neuronal population-based similarity measures between the faces in pairs, we analyzed the similarity/dissimilarity relationship between the faces, which were potentially represented by the activities of a population of the face-responsive neurons recorded in the area AITv. The results showed that, for personally familiar faces, different identities were represented by different patterns of activities of the population of AITv neurons irrespective of the view (e.g., front, 90° left, etc.), while different views were not represented independently of their facial identities, which was consistent with our previous report. In the case of personally unfamiliar faces, the faces possessing different identities but presented in the same frontal view were represented as similar, which contrasts with the results for personally familiar faces. These results, taken together, outline the neuronal representations of personally familiar and unfamiliar faces in the AITv neuronal population. PMID:21526206

  19. You Look Familiar: How Malaysian Chinese Recognize Faces

    PubMed Central

    Tan, Chrystalle B. Y.; Stephen, Ian D.; Whitehead, Ross; Sheppard, Elizabeth

    2012-01-01

    East Asian and white Western observers employ different eye movement strategies for a variety of visual processing tasks, including face processing. Recent eye tracking studies on face recognition found that East Asians tend to integrate information holistically by focusing on the nose while white Westerners perceive faces featurally by moving between the eyes and mouth. The current study examines the eye movement strategy that Malaysian Chinese participants employ when recognizing East Asian, white Western, and African faces. Rather than adopting the Eastern or Western fixation pattern, Malaysian Chinese participants use a mixed strategy by focusing on the eyes and nose more than the mouth. The combination of Eastern and Western strategies proved advantageous in participants' ability to recognize East Asian and white Western faces, suggesting that individuals learn to use fixation patterns that are optimized for recognizing the faces with which they are more familiar. PMID:22253762

  20. The effects of familiarity and emotional expression on face processing examined by ERPs in patients with schizophrenia.

    PubMed

    Caharel, Stéphanie; Bernard, Christian; Thibaut, Florence; Haouzir, Sadec; Di Maggio-Clozel, Carole; Allio, Gabrielle; Fouldrin, Gaël; Petit, Michel; Lalonde, Robert; Rebaï, Mohamed

    2007-09-01

    The main objective of the study was to determine whether patients with schizophrenia are deficient relative to controls in the processing of faces at different levels of familiarity and types of emotion and the stage where such differences may occur. ERPs based on 18 patients with schizophrenia and 18 controls were compared in a face identification task at three levels of familiarity (unknown, familiar, subject's own) and for three types of emotion (disgust, smiling, neutral). The schizophrenic group was less accurate than controls in the face processing, especially for unknown faces and those expressing negative emotions such as disgust. P1 and N170 amplitudes were lower and P1, N170, P250 amplitudes were of slower onset in patients with schizophrenia. N170 and P250 amplitudes were modulated by familiarity and face expression in a different manner in patients than controls. Schizophrenia is associated with a genelarized defect of face processing, both in terms of familiarity and emotional expression, attributable to deficient processing at sensory (P1) and perceptual (N170) stages. These patients appear to have difficulty in encoding the structure of a face and thereby do not evaluate correctly familiarity and emotion.

  1. Sensitivity to feature displacement in familiar and unfamiliar faces: beyond the internal/external feature distinction.

    PubMed

    Brooks, Kevin R; Kemp, Richard I

    2007-01-01

    Previous studies of face recognition and of face matching have shown a general improvement for the processing of internal features as a face becomes more familiar to the participant. In this study, we used a psychophysical two-alternative forced-choice paradigm to investigate thresholds for the detection of a displacement of the eyes, nose, mouth, or ears for familiar and unfamiliar faces. No clear division between internal and external features was observed. Rather, for familiar (compared to unfamiliar) faces participants were more sensitive to displacements of internal features such as the eyes or the nose; yet, for our third internal feature-the mouth no such difference was observed. Despite large displacements, many subjects were unable to perform above chance when stimuli involved shifts in the position of the ears. These results are consistent with the proposal that familiarity effects may be mediated by the construction of a robust representation of a face, although the involvement of attention in the encoding of face stimuli cannot be ruled out. Furthermore, these effects are mediated by information from a spatial configuration of features, rather than by purely feature-based information.

  2. Familiar Person Recognition: Is Autonoetic Consciousness More Likely to Accompany Face Recognition Than Voice Recognition?

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Barsics, Catherine; Brédart, Serge

    2010-11-01

    Autonoetic consciousness is a fundamental property of human memory, enabling us to experience mental time travel, to recollect past events with a feeling of self-involvement, and to project ourselves in the future. Autonoetic consciousness is a characteristic of episodic memory. By contrast, awareness of the past associated with a mere feeling of familiarity or knowing relies on noetic consciousness, depending on semantic memory integrity. Present research was aimed at evaluating whether conscious recollection of episodic memories is more likely to occur following the recognition of a familiar face than following the recognition of a familiar voice. Recall of semantic information (biographical information) was also assessed. Previous studies that investigated the recall of biographical information following person recognition used faces and voices of famous people as stimuli. In this study, the participants were presented with personally familiar people's voices and faces, thus avoiding the presence of identity cues in the spoken extracts and allowing a stricter control of frequency exposure with both types of stimuli (voices and faces). In the present study, the rate of retrieved episodic memories, associated with autonoetic awareness, was significantly higher from familiar faces than familiar voices even though the level of overall recognition was similar for both these stimuli domains. The same pattern was observed regarding semantic information retrieval. These results and their implications for current Interactive Activation and Competition person recognition models are discussed.

  3. Infants prefer the faces of strangers or mothers to morphed faces: an uncanny valley between social novelty and familiarity.

    PubMed

    Matsuda, Yoshi-Taka; Okamoto, Yoko; Ida, Misako; Okanoya, Kazuo; Myowa-Yamakoshi, Masako

    2012-10-23

    The 'uncanny valley' response is a phenomenon involving the elicitation of a negative feeling and subsequent avoidant behaviour in human adults and infants as a result of viewing very realistic human-like robots or computer avatars. It is hypothesized that this uncanny feeling occurs because the realistic synthetic characters elicit the concept of 'human' but fail to satisfy it. Such violations of our normal expectations regarding social signals generate a feeling of unease. This conflict-induced uncanny valley between mutually exclusive categories (human and synthetic agent) raises a new question: could an uncanny feeling be elicited by other mutually exclusive categories, such as familiarity and novelty? Given that infants prefer both familiarity and novelty in social objects, we address this question as well as the associated developmental profile. Using the morphing technique and a preferential-looking paradigm, we demonstrated uncanny valley responses of infants to faces of mothers (i.e. familiarity) and strangers (i.e. novelty). Furthermore, this effect strengthened with the infant's age. We excluded the possibility that infants detect and avoid traces of morphing. This conclusion follows from our finding that the infants equally preferred strangers' faces and the morphed faces of two strangers. These results indicate that an uncanny valley between familiarity and novelty may accentuate the categorical perception of familiar and novel objects.

  4. Brain Network Activity During Face Perception: The Impact of Perceptual Familiarity and Individual Differences in Childhood Experience.

    PubMed

    Cloutier, Jasmin; Li, Tianyi; Mišic, Bratislav; Correll, Joshua; Berman, Marc G

    2017-09-01

    An extended distributed network of brain regions supports face perception. Face familiarity influences activity in brain regions involved in this network, but the impact of perceptual familiarity on this network has never been directly assessed with the use of partial least squares analysis. In the present work, we use this multivariate statistical analysis to examine how face-processing systems are differentially recruited by characteristics of the targets (i.e. perceptual familiarity and race) and of the perceivers (i.e. childhood interracial contact). Novel faces were found to preferentially recruit a large distributed face-processing network compared with perceptually familiar faces. Additionally, increased interracial contact during childhood led to decreased recruitment of distributed brain networks previously implicated in face perception, salience detection, and social cognition. Current results provide a novel perspective on the impact of cross-race exposure, suggesting that interracial contact early in life may dramatically shape the neural substrates of face perception generally. © The Author 2016. Published by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved. For Permissions, please e-mail: journals.permissions@oup.com.

  5. Startling similarity: Effects of facial self-resemblance and familiarity on the processing of emotional faces

    PubMed Central

    Larra, Mauro F.; Merz, Martina U.; Schächinger, Hartmut

    2017-01-01

    Facial self-resemblance has been associated with positive emotional evaluations, but this effect may be biased by self-face familiarity. Here we report two experiments utilizing startle modulation to investigate how the processing of facial expressions of emotion is affected by subtle resemblance to the self as well as to familiar faces. Participants of the first experiment (I) (N = 39) were presented with morphed faces showing happy, neutral, and fearful expressions which were manipulated to resemble either their own or unknown faces. At SOAs of either 300 ms or 3500–4500 ms after picture onset, startle responses were elicited by binaural bursts of white noise (50 ms, 105 dB), and recorded at the orbicularis oculi via EMG. Manual reaction time was measured in a simple emotion discrimination paradigm. Pictures preceding noise bursts by short SOA inhibited startle (prepulse inhibition, PPI). Both affective modulation and PPI of startle in response to emotional faces was altered by physical similarity to the self. As indexed both by relative facilitation of startle and faster manual responses, self-resemblance apparently induced deeper processing of facial affect, particularly in happy faces. Experiment II (N = 54) produced similar findings using morphs of famous faces, yet showed no impact of mere familiarity on PPI effects (or response time, either). The results are discussed with respect to differential (presumably pre-attentive) effects of self-specific vs. familiar information in face processing. PMID:29216226

  6. That's my teacher! Children's ability to recognize personally familiar and unfamiliar faces improves with age.

    PubMed

    Laurence, Sarah; Mondloch, Catherine J

    2016-03-01

    Most previous research on the development of face recognition has focused on recognition of highly controlled images. One of the biggest challenges of face recognition is to identify an individual across images that capture natural variability in appearance. We created a child-friendly version of Jenkins, White, Van Montford, and Burton's sorting task (Cognition, 2011, Vol. 121, pp. 313-323) to investigate children's recognition of personally familiar and unfamiliar faces. Children between 4 and 12years of age were presented with a familiar/unfamiliar teacher's house and a pile of face photographs (nine pictures each of the teacher and another identity). Each child was asked to put all the pictures of the teacher inside the house while keeping the other identity out. Children over 6years of age showed adult-like familiar face recognition. Unfamiliar face recognition improved across the entire age range, with considerable variability in children's performance. These findings suggest that children's ability to tolerate within-person variability improves with age and support a face-space framework in which faces are represented as regions, the size of which increases with age. Copyright © 2015 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

  7. Event-related potentials to structural familiar face incongruity processing.

    PubMed

    Jemel, B; George, N; Olivares, E; Fiori, N; Renault, B

    1999-07-01

    Thirty scalp sites were used to investigate the specific topography of the event-related potentials (ERPs) related to face associative priming when masked eyes of familiar faces were completed with either the proper features or incongruent ones. The enhanced negativity of N210 and N350, due to structural incongruity of faces, have a "category specific" inferotemporal localization on the scalp. Additional analyses support the existence of multiple ERP features within the temporal interval typically associated with N400 (N350 and N380), involving occipitotemporal and centroparietal areas. Seven reliable dipole locations have been evidenced using the brain electrical source analysis algorithm. Some of these localizations (fusiform, parahippocampal) are already known to be involved in face recognition, the other ones being related to general cognitive processes related to the task's demand. Because of their specific topography, the observed effects suggest that the face structural congruency process might involve early specialized neocortical areas in parallel with cortical memory circuits in the integration of perceptual and cognitive face processing.

  8. Effects of Familiarity on the Perceptual Integrality of the Identity and Expression of Faces: The Parallel-Route Hypothesis Revisited

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Ganel, Tzvi; Goshen-Gottstein, Yonatan

    2004-01-01

    The effects of familiarity on selective attention for the identity and expression of faces were tested using Garner's speeded-classification task. In 2 experiments, participants classified expression (or identity) of familiar and unfamiliar faces while the irrelevant dimension of identity (or expression) was either held constant (baseline…

  9. Feature saliency in judging the sex and familiarity of faces.

    PubMed

    Roberts, T; Bruce, V

    1988-01-01

    Two experiments are reported on the effect of feature masking on judgements of the sex and familiarity of faces. In experiment 1 the effect of masking the eyes, nose, or mouth of famous and nonfamous, male and female faces on response times in two tasks was investigated. In the first, recognition, task only masking of the eyes had a significant effect on response times. In the second, sex-judgement, task masking of the nose gave rise to a significant and large increase in response times. In experiment 2 it was found that when facial features were presented in isolation in a sex-judgement task, responses to noses were at chance level, unlike those for eyes or mouths. It appears that visual information available from the nose in isolation from the rest of the face is not sufficient for sex judgement, yet masking of the nose may disrupt the extraction of information about the overall topography of the face, information that may be more useful for sex judgement than for identification of a face.

  10. An Efficient ERP-Based Brain-Computer Interface Using Random Set Presentation and Face Familiarity

    PubMed Central

    Müller, Klaus-Robert; Lee, Seong-Whan

    2014-01-01

    Event-related potential (ERP)-based P300 spellers are commonly used in the field of brain-computer interfaces as an alternative channel of communication for people with severe neuro-muscular diseases. This study introduces a novel P300 based brain-computer interface (BCI) stimulus paradigm using a random set presentation pattern and exploiting the effects of face familiarity. The effect of face familiarity is widely studied in the cognitive neurosciences and has recently been addressed for the purpose of BCI. In this study we compare P300-based BCI performances of a conventional row-column (RC)-based paradigm with our approach that combines a random set presentation paradigm with (non-) self-face stimuli. Our experimental results indicate stronger deflections of the ERPs in response to face stimuli, which are further enhanced when using the self-face images, and thereby improving P300-based spelling performance. This lead to a significant reduction of stimulus sequences required for correct character classification. These findings demonstrate a promising new approach for improving the speed and thus fluency of BCI-enhanced communication with the widely used P300-based BCI setup. PMID:25384045

  11. An efficient ERP-based brain-computer interface using random set presentation and face familiarity.

    PubMed

    Yeom, Seul-Ki; Fazli, Siamac; Müller, Klaus-Robert; Lee, Seong-Whan

    2014-01-01

    Event-related potential (ERP)-based P300 spellers are commonly used in the field of brain-computer interfaces as an alternative channel of communication for people with severe neuro-muscular diseases. This study introduces a novel P300 based brain-computer interface (BCI) stimulus paradigm using a random set presentation pattern and exploiting the effects of face familiarity. The effect of face familiarity is widely studied in the cognitive neurosciences and has recently been addressed for the purpose of BCI. In this study we compare P300-based BCI performances of a conventional row-column (RC)-based paradigm with our approach that combines a random set presentation paradigm with (non-) self-face stimuli. Our experimental results indicate stronger deflections of the ERPs in response to face stimuli, which are further enhanced when using the self-face images, and thereby improving P300-based spelling performance. This lead to a significant reduction of stimulus sequences required for correct character classification. These findings demonstrate a promising new approach for improving the speed and thus fluency of BCI-enhanced communication with the widely used P300-based BCI setup.

  12. Perceptual Asymmetries Are Preserved in Memory for Highly Familiar Faces of Self and Friend

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Brady, N.; Campbell, M.; Flaherty, M.

    2005-01-01

    We investigated the effect of familiarity on people's perception of facial likeness by asking participants to choose which of two mirror-symmetric chimeric images (made from the left or right half of a photograph of a face) looked more like an original image. In separate trials the participants made this judgment for their own face and for the…

  13. The Representation and Processing of Familiar Faces in Dyslexia: Differences in Age of Acquisition Effects

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Smith-Spark, James H.; Moore, Viv

    2009-01-01

    Two under-explored areas of developmental dyslexia research, face naming and age of acquisition (AoA), were investigated. Eighteen dyslexic and 18 non-dyslexic university students named the faces of 50 well-known celebrities, matched for facial distinctiveness and familiarity. Twenty-five of the famous people were learned early in life, while the…

  14. Is the desire to eat familiar and unfamiliar meat products influenced by the emotions expressed on eaters' faces?

    PubMed

    Rousset, S; Schlich, P; Chatonnier, A; Barthomeuf, L; Droit-Volet, S

    2008-01-01

    The aim of the present study was to test if the social context represented by eaters' faces expressing emotions can modulate the desire to eat meat, especially for unfamiliar meat products. Forty-four young men and women were presented with two series of photographs. The first series (non-social context) was composed of eight meat pictures, four unfamiliar and four familiar. The second series (social context) consisted of the same pictures presented with eaters expressing three different emotions: disgust, pleasure or neutrality. For every picture, the participants were asked to estimate the intensity of their desire to eat the meat product viewed on the picture. Results showed that meat desire depended on interactions between product familiarity, social context and the participant's gender. In the non-social context, the men liked the familiar meat products more than the women, whereas their desire to eat unfamiliar meat products was similar. Compared to the non-social context, viewing another person eating with a neutral and a happy facial expression increased the desire to eat. Furthermore, the increase in the desire to eat meat associated with happy faces was greater for the unfamiliar than for the familiar meat products in men, and greater for the familiar than for the unfamiliar meats in women. In the presence of disgusted faces, the desire to eat meat remained constant for unfamiliar products in all participants whereas it only decreased for familiar products in men.

  15. Stimulus familiarity modulates functional connectivity of the perirhinal cortex and anterior hippocampus during visual discrimination of faces and objects

    PubMed Central

    McLelland, Victoria C.; Chan, David; Ferber, Susanne; Barense, Morgan D.

    2014-01-01

    Recent research suggests that the medial temporal lobe (MTL) is involved in perception as well as in declarative memory. Amnesic patients with focal MTL lesions and semantic dementia patients showed perceptual deficits when discriminating faces and objects. Interestingly, these two patient groups showed different profiles of impairment for familiar and unfamiliar stimuli. For MTL amnesics, the use of familiar relative to unfamiliar stimuli improved discrimination performance. By contrast, patients with semantic dementia—a neurodegenerative condition associated with anterolateral temporal lobe damage—showed no such facilitation from familiar stimuli. Given that the two patient groups had highly overlapping patterns of damage to the perirhinal cortex, hippocampus, and temporal pole, the neuroanatomical substrates underlying their performance discrepancy were unclear. Here, we addressed this question with a multivariate reanalysis of the data presented by Barense et al. (2011), using functional connectivity to examine how stimulus familiarity affected the broader networks with which the perirhinal cortex, hippocampus, and temporal poles interact. In this study, healthy participants were scanned while they performed an odd-one-out perceptual task involving familiar and novel faces or objects. Seed-based analyses revealed that functional connectivity of the right perirhinal cortex and right anterior hippocampus was modulated by the degree of stimulus familiarity. For familiar relative to unfamiliar faces and objects, both right perirhinal cortex and right anterior hippocampus showed enhanced functional correlations with anterior/lateral temporal cortex, temporal pole, and medial/lateral parietal cortex. These findings suggest that in order to benefit from stimulus familiarity, it is necessary to engage not only the perirhinal cortex and hippocampus, but also a network of regions known to represent semantic information. PMID:24624075

  16. Event-Related Potential Responses to Beloved and Familiar Faces in Different Marriage Styles: Evidence from Mosuo Subjects.

    PubMed

    Wu, Haiyan; Luo, Li; Dai, Junqiang; Yang, Suyong; Wang, Naiyi; Luo, Yue-Jia

    2016-01-01

    Research on familiar face recognition has largely focused on the neural correlates of recognizing a beloved partner or family member. However, no research has explored the effect of marriage style on the recognition of a beloved partner's face, especially in matriarchal societies. Here, we examined the time course of event-related potentials (ERP) in response to the face of a beloved partner, sibling, or unknown person in a sample of individuals from the matriarchal Mosuo tribe. Two groups were assessed: intermarriage and walking marriage groups (i.e., couples in a committed relationship who do not cohabitate during the daytime). In agreement with previous reports, ERP results revealed more positive VPP, N250, and P300 waveforms for beloved faces than sibling faces in both groups. Moreover, P300 was more positive for beloved partner versus sibling faces; however, this difference emerged at fronto-central sites for the walking marriage group and at posterior sites for the intermarriage group. Overall, we observed that marriage style affects the later stage processing of a beloved partner's face, and this may be associated with greater affective arousal and familiarity.

  17. Event-Related Potential Responses to Beloved and Familiar Faces in Different Marriage Styles: Evidence from Mosuo Subjects

    PubMed Central

    Wu, Haiyan; Luo, Li; Dai, Junqiang; Yang, Suyong; Wang, Naiyi; Luo, Yue-jia

    2016-01-01

    Research on familiar face recognition has largely focused on the neural correlates of recognizing a beloved partner or family member. However, no research has explored the effect of marriage style on the recognition of a beloved partner’s face, especially in matriarchal societies. Here, we examined the time course of event-related potentials (ERP) in response to the face of a beloved partner, sibling, or unknown person in a sample of individuals from the matriarchal Mosuo tribe. Two groups were assessed: intermarriage and walking marriage groups (i.e., couples in a committed relationship who do not cohabitate during the daytime). In agreement with previous reports, ERP results revealed more positive VPP, N250, and P300 waveforms for beloved faces than sibling faces in both groups. Moreover, P300 was more positive for beloved partner versus sibling faces; however, this difference emerged at fronto-central sites for the walking marriage group and at posterior sites for the intermarriage group. Overall, we observed that marriage style affects the later stage processing of a beloved partner’s face, and this may be associated with greater affective arousal and familiarity. PMID:26925002

  18. How does a newly encountered face become familiar? The effect of within-person variability on adults' and children's perception of identity.

    PubMed

    Baker, Kristen A; Laurence, Sarah; Mondloch, Catherine J

    2017-04-01

    Adults and children aged 6years and older easily recognize multiple images of a familiar face, but often perceive two images of an unfamiliar face as belonging to different identities. Here we examined the process by which a newly encountered face becomes familiar, defined as accurate recognition of multiple images that capture natural within-person variability in appearance. In Experiment 1 we examined whether exposure to within-person variability in appearance helps children learn a new face. Children aged 6-13years watched a 10-min video of a woman reading a story; she was filmed on a single day (low variability) or over three days, across which her appearance and filming conditions (e.g., camera, lighting) varied (high variability). After familiarization, participants sorted a set of images comprising novel images of the target identity intermixed with distractors. Compared to participants who received no familiarization, children showed evidence of learning only in the high-variability condition, in contrast to adults who showed evidence of learning in both the low- and high-variability conditions. Experiment 2 highlighted the efficiency with which adults learn a new face; their accuracy was comparable across training conditions despite variability in duration (1 vs. 10min) and type (video vs. static images) of training. Collectively, our findings show that exposure to variability leads to the formation of a robust representation of facial identity, consistent with perceptual learning in other domains (e.g., language), and that the development of face learning is protracted throughout childhood. We discuss possible underlying mechanisms. Copyright © 2016. Published by Elsevier B.V.

  19. Developmental Change in the ERP Responses to Familiar Faces in Toddlers with Autism Spectrum Disorders versus Typical Development

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Webb, Sara Jane; Jones, Emily J. H.; Merkle, Kristen; Venema, Kaitlin; Greenson, Jessica; Murias, Michael; Dawson, Geraldine

    2011-01-01

    Individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) show differences in face processing abilities from early in development. To examine whether these differences reflect an atypical versus delayed developmental trajectory, neural responses to familiar and unfamiliar faces in twenty-four 18- to 47-month-old children with ASD were compared with…

  20. Facelock: familiarity-based graphical authentication

    PubMed Central

    McLachlan, Jane L.; Renaud, Karen

    2014-01-01

    Authentication codes such as passwords and PIN numbers are widely used to control access to resources. One major drawback of these codes is that they are difficult to remember. Account holders are often faced with a choice between forgetting a code, which can be inconvenient, or writing it down, which compromises security. In two studies, we test a new knowledge-based authentication method that does not impose memory load on the user. Psychological research on face recognition has revealed an important distinction between familiar and unfamiliar face perception: When a face is familiar to the observer, it can be identified across a wide range of images. However, when the face is unfamiliar, generalisation across images is poor. This contrast can be used as the basis for a personalised ‘facelock’, in which authentication succeeds or fails based on image-invariant recognition of faces that are familiar to the account holder. In Study 1, account holders authenticated easily by detecting familiar targets among other faces (97.5% success rate), even after a one-year delay (86.1% success rate). Zero-acquaintance attackers were reduced to guessing (<1% success rate). Even personal attackers who knew the account holder well were rarely able to authenticate (6.6% success rate). In Study 2, we found that shoulder-surfing attacks by strangers could be defeated by presenting different photos of the same target faces in observed and attacked grids (1.9% success rate). Our findings suggest that the contrast between familiar and unfamiliar face recognition may be useful for developers of graphical authentication systems. PMID:25024913

  1. Facelock: familiarity-based graphical authentication.

    PubMed

    Jenkins, Rob; McLachlan, Jane L; Renaud, Karen

    2014-01-01

    Authentication codes such as passwords and PIN numbers are widely used to control access to resources. One major drawback of these codes is that they are difficult to remember. Account holders are often faced with a choice between forgetting a code, which can be inconvenient, or writing it down, which compromises security. In two studies, we test a new knowledge-based authentication method that does not impose memory load on the user. Psychological research on face recognition has revealed an important distinction between familiar and unfamiliar face perception: When a face is familiar to the observer, it can be identified across a wide range of images. However, when the face is unfamiliar, generalisation across images is poor. This contrast can be used as the basis for a personalised 'facelock', in which authentication succeeds or fails based on image-invariant recognition of faces that are familiar to the account holder. In Study 1, account holders authenticated easily by detecting familiar targets among other faces (97.5% success rate), even after a one-year delay (86.1% success rate). Zero-acquaintance attackers were reduced to guessing (<1% success rate). Even personal attackers who knew the account holder well were rarely able to authenticate (6.6% success rate). In Study 2, we found that shoulder-surfing attacks by strangers could be defeated by presenting different photos of the same target faces in observed and attacked grids (1.9% success rate). Our findings suggest that the contrast between familiar and unfamiliar face recognition may be useful for developers of graphical authentication systems.

  2. Sex difference in the processing of task-relevant and task-irrelevant social information: an event-related potential study of familiar face recognition.

    PubMed

    Wang, Jinzhao; Kitayama, Shinobu; Han, Shihui

    2011-08-23

    Behavioral studies suggest that men are more likely to develop independent self-construals whereas women are more likely to develop interdependent self-construals. The gender difference in self-construals leads to two predictions. First, independent self-construals may result in a bias of attentional processing of self-related information that is stronger in men than in women. Second, interdependent self-construals may induce greater sensitivity to contextual information from the environment in women than in men. The present study tested these hypotheses by recording event-related potentials (ERPs) to familiar faces (self-, mother-, and father-faces) and unfamiliar faces (gender/age matched strangers' faces) from 14 male and 14 female adults. Using an odd ball paradigm, in separate blocks of trials, familiar faces were designated as either targets that required behavioral responses or as non-targets that did not require a behavioral response. We found that a long latency positivity at 420-620 ms over the parietal area (the attention sensitive target P3) showed a larger amplitude to self-face than to mother-/father-faces that were designated as targets in men but not in women. In contrast, a long latency positivity at 430-530 ms over the central area (the context sensitive novelty P3) was enlarged to familiar compared to strangers' faces that were designated as non-targets and this effect was greater in women than in men. Our results showed ERP evidence for sex differences in the processing of task-relevant and task-irrelevant social information. Copyright © 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

  3. Recollection and familiarity for words and faces: a study comparing Remember-Know judgements and the Process Dissociation Procedure.

    PubMed

    Espinosa-García, María; Vaquero, Joaquín M M; Milliken, Bruce; Tudela, Pío

    2017-01-01

    Measures of recollection and familiarity often differ depending on the paradigm utilised. Remember-Know (R-K) and Process Dissociation Procedure (PDP) methods have been commonly used but rarely compared within a single study. In the current experiments, R-K and PDP were compared by examining the effect of attention at study and time to respond at test on recollection and familiarity using the same experimental procedures for each paradigm. We also included faces in addition to words to test the generality of the findings often obtained using words. The results from the R-K paradigm revealed that recollection and familiarity were similarly affected by attention at study and time to respond at test. However, in the case of PDP, the measures of recollection and familiarity showed a different pattern of results. The effects observed for recollection were similar to those obtained with the R-K method, whereas familiarity was affected by time to respond but not by attention at study. These results are discussed in relation to the controlled-automatic processing distinction and the contribution of each paradigm to research on recognition memory.

  4. Identification and Classification of Facial Familiarity in Directed Lying: An ERP Study

    PubMed Central

    Sun, Delin; Chan, Chetwyn C. H.; Lee, Tatia M. C.

    2012-01-01

    Recognizing familiar faces is essential to social functioning, but little is known about how people identify human faces and classify them in terms of familiarity. Face identification involves discriminating familiar faces from unfamiliar faces, whereas face classification involves making an intentional decision to classify faces as “familiar” or “unfamiliar.” This study used a directed-lying task to explore the differentiation between identification and classification processes involved in the recognition of familiar faces. To explore this issue, the participants in this study were shown familiar and unfamiliar faces. They responded to these faces (i.e., as familiar or unfamiliar) in accordance with the instructions they were given (i.e., to lie or to tell the truth) while their EEG activity was recorded. Familiar faces (regardless of lying vs. truth) elicited significantly less negative-going N400f in the middle and right parietal and temporal regions than unfamiliar faces. Regardless of their actual familiarity, the faces that the participants classified as “familiar” elicited more negative-going N400f in the central and right temporal regions than those classified as “unfamiliar.” The P600 was related primarily with the facial identification process. Familiar faces (regardless of lying vs. truth) elicited more positive-going P600f in the middle parietal and middle occipital regions. The results suggest that N400f and P600f play different roles in the processes involved in facial recognition. The N400f appears to be associated with both the identification (judgment of familiarity) and classification of faces, while it is likely that the P600f is only associated with the identification process (recollection of facial information). Future studies should use different experimental paradigms to validate the generalizability of the results of this study. PMID:22363597

  5. The warm glow heuristic: when liking leads to familiarity.

    PubMed

    Monin, Benoît

    2003-12-01

    Five studies demonstrate that the positive valence of a stimulus increases its perceived familiarity, even in the absence of prior exposure. For example, beautiful faces feel familiar. Two explanations for this effect stand out: (a). Stimulus prototypicality leads both to positivity and familiarity, and (b). positive affect is used to infer familiarity in a heuristic fashion. Studies 1 and 2 show that attractive faces feel more familiar than average ones and that prototypicality accounts for only part of this effect. In Study 3, the rated attractiveness of average faces was manipulated by contrast, and their perceived familiarity changed accordingly, although their inherent prototypicaliry remained the same. In Study 4, positive words felt more familiar to participants than neutral and negative words. Study 5 shows that the effect is strongest when recognition is difficult. The author concludes that both prototypicality and a warm glow heuristic are responsible for the "good-is-familiar" phenomenon.

  6. KDEF-PT: Valence, Emotional Intensity, Familiarity and Attractiveness Ratings of Angry, Neutral, and Happy Faces.

    PubMed

    Garrido, Margarida V; Prada, Marília

    2017-01-01

    The Karolinska Directed Emotional Faces (KDEF) is one of the most widely used human facial expressions database. Almost a decade after the original validation study (Goeleven et al., 2008), we present subjective rating norms for a sub-set of 210 pictures which depict 70 models (half female) each displaying an angry, happy and neutral facial expressions. Our main goals were to provide an additional and updated validation to this database, using a sample from a different nationality ( N = 155 Portuguese students, M = 23.73 years old, SD = 7.24) and to extend the number of subjective dimensions used to evaluate each image. Specifically, participants reported emotional labeling (forced-choice task) and evaluated the emotional intensity and valence of the expression, as well as the attractiveness and familiarity of the model (7-points rating scales). Overall, results show that happy faces obtained the highest ratings across evaluative dimensions and emotion labeling accuracy. Female (vs. male) models were perceived as more attractive, familiar and positive. The sex of the model also moderated the accuracy of emotional labeling and ratings of different facial expressions. Each picture of the set was categorized as low, moderate, or high for each dimension. Normative data for each stimulus (hits proportion, means, standard deviations, and confidence intervals per evaluative dimension) is available as supplementary material (available at https://osf.io/fvc4m/).

  7. Brain Responses Differ to Faces of Mothers and Fathers

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Arsalidou, Marie; Barbeau, Emmanuel J.; Bayless, Sarah J.; Taylor, Margot J.

    2010-01-01

    We encounter many faces each day but relatively few are personally familiar. Once faces are familiar, they evoke semantic and social information known about the person. Neuroimaging studies demonstrate differential brain activity to familiar and non-familiar faces; however, brain responses related to personally familiar faces have been more rarely…

  8. Target-context unitization effect on the familiarity-related FN400: a face recognition exclusion task.

    PubMed

    Guillaume, Fabrice; Etienne, Yann

    2015-03-01

    Using two exclusion tasks, the present study examined how the ERP correlates of face recognition are affected by the nature of the information to be retrieved. Intrinsic (facial expression) and extrinsic (background scene) visual information were paired with face identity and constituted the exclusion criterion at test time. Although perceptual information had to be taken into account in both situations, the FN400 old-new effect was observed only for old target faces on the expression-exclusion task, whereas it was found for both old target and old non-target faces in the background-exclusion situation. These results reveal that the FN400, which is generally interpreted as a correlate of familiarity, was modulated by the retrieval of intra-item and intrinsic face information, but not by the retrieval of extrinsic information. The observed effects on the FN400 depended on the nature of the information to be retrieved and its relationship (unitization) to the recognition target. On the other hand, the parietal old-new effect (generally described as an ERP correlate of recollection) reflected the retrieval of both types of contextual features equivalently. The current findings are discussed in relation to recent controversies about the nature of the recognition processes reflected by the ERP correlates of face recognition. Copyright © 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

  9. Predictive codes of familiarity and context during the perceptual learning of facial identities

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Apps, Matthew A. J.; Tsakiris, Manos

    2013-11-01

    Face recognition is a key component of successful social behaviour. However, the computational processes that underpin perceptual learning and recognition as faces transition from unfamiliar to familiar are poorly understood. In predictive coding, learning occurs through prediction errors that update stimulus familiarity, but recognition is a function of both stimulus and contextual familiarity. Here we show that behavioural responses on a two-option face recognition task can be predicted by the level of contextual and facial familiarity in a computational model derived from predictive-coding principles. Using fMRI, we show that activity in the superior temporal sulcus varies with the contextual familiarity in the model, whereas activity in the fusiform face area covaries with the prediction error parameter that updated facial familiarity. Our results characterize the key computations underpinning the perceptual learning of faces, highlighting that the functional properties of face-processing areas conform to the principles of predictive coding.

  10. Processing deficits for familiar and novel faces in patients with left posterior fusiform lesions.

    PubMed

    Roberts, Daniel J; Lambon Ralph, Matthew A; Kim, Esther; Tainturier, Marie-Josephe; Beeson, Pelagie M; Rapcsak, Steven Z; Woollams, Anna M

    2015-11-01

    Pure alexia (PA) arises from damage to the left posterior fusiform gyrus (pFG) and the striking reading disorder that defines this condition has meant that such patients are often cited as evidence for the specialisation of this region to processing of written words. There is, however, an alternative view that suggests this region is devoted to processing of high acuity foveal input, which is particularly salient for complex visual stimuli like letter strings. Previous reports have highlighted disrupted processing of non-linguistic visual stimuli after damage to the left pFG, both for familiar and unfamiliar objects and also for novel faces. This study explored the nature of face processing deficits in patients with left pFG damage. Identification of famous faces was found to be compromised in both expressive and receptive tasks. Discrimination of novel faces was also impaired, particularly for those that varied in terms of second-order spacing information, and this deficit was most apparent for the patients with the more severe reading deficits. Interestingly, discrimination of faces that varied in terms of feature identity was considerably better in these patients and it was performance in this condition that was related to the size of the length effects shown in reading. This finding complements functional imaging studies showing left pFG activation for faces varying only in spacing and frontal activation for faces varying only on features. These results suggest that the sequential part-based processing strategy that promotes the length effect in the reading of these patients also allows them to discriminate between faces on the basis of feature identity, but processing of second-order configural information is most compromised due to their left pFG lesion. This study supports a view in which the left pFG is specialised for processing of high acuity foveal visual information that supports processing of both words and faces. Copyright © 2015 The Authors

  11. Processing deficits for familiar and novel faces in patients with left posterior fusiform lesions

    PubMed Central

    Roberts, Daniel J.; Lambon Ralph, Matthew A.; Kim, Esther; Tainturier, Marie-Josephe; Beeson, Pelagie M.; Rapcsak, Steven Z.; Woollams, Anna M.

    2015-01-01

    Pure alexia (PA) arises from damage to the left posterior fusiform gyrus (pFG) and the striking reading disorder that defines this condition has meant that such patients are often cited as evidence for the specialisation of this region to processing of written words. There is, however, an alternative view that suggests this region is devoted to processing of high acuity foveal input, which is particularly salient for complex visual stimuli like letter strings. Previous reports have highlighted disrupted processing of non-linguistic visual stimuli after damage to the left pFG, both for familiar and unfamiliar objects and also for novel faces. This study explored the nature of face processing deficits in patients with left pFG damage. Identification of famous faces was found to be compromised in both expressive and receptive tasks. Discrimination of novel faces was also impaired, particularly for those that varied in terms of second-order spacing information, and this deficit was most apparent for the patients with the more severe reading deficits. Interestingly, discrimination of faces that varied in terms of feature identity was considerably better in these patients and it was performance in this condition that was related to the size of the length effects shown in reading. This finding complements functional imaging studies showing left pFG activation for faces varying only in spacing and frontal activation for faces varying only on features. These results suggest that the sequential part-based processing strategy that promotes the length effect in the reading of these patients also allows them to discriminate between faces on the basis of feature identity, but processing of second-order configural information is most compromised due to their left pFG lesion. This study supports a view in which the left pFG is specialised for processing of high acuity foveal visual information that supports processing of both words and faces. PMID:25837867

  12. Parallel effects of processing fluency and positive affect on familiarity-based recognition decisions for faces.

    PubMed

    Duke, Devin; Fiacconi, Chris M; Köhler, Stefan

    2014-01-01

    According to attribution models of familiarity assessment, people can use a heuristic in recognition-memory decisions, in which they attribute the subjective ease of processing of a memory probe to a prior encounter with the stimulus in question. Research in social cognition suggests that experienced positive affect may be the proximal cue that signals fluency in various experimental contexts. In the present study, we compared the effects of positive affect and fluency on recognition-memory judgments for faces with neutral emotional expression. We predicted that if positive affect is indeed the critical cue that signals processing fluency at retrieval, then its manipulation should produce effects that closely mirror those produced by manipulations of processing fluency. In two experiments, we employed a masked-priming procedure in combination with a Remember-Know (RK) paradigm that aimed to separate familiarity- from recollection-based memory decisions. In addition, participants performed a prime-discrimination task that allowed us to take inter-individual differences in prime awareness into account. We found highly similar effects of our priming manipulations of processing fluency and of positive affect. In both cases, the critical effect was specific to familiarity-based recognition responses. Moreover, in both experiments it was reflected in a shift toward a more liberal response bias, rather than in changed discrimination. Finally, in both experiments, the effect was found to be related to prime awareness; it was present only in participants who reported a lack of such awareness on the prime-discrimination task. These findings add to a growing body of evidence that points not only to a role of fluency, but also of positive affect in familiarity assessment. As such they are consistent with the idea that fluency itself may be hedonically marked.

  13. Brain responses differ to faces of mothers and fathers.

    PubMed

    Arsalidou, Marie; Barbeau, Emmanuel J; Bayless, Sarah J; Taylor, Margot J

    2010-10-01

    We encounter many faces each day but relatively few are personally familiar. Once faces are familiar, they evoke semantic and social information known about the person. Neuroimaging studies demonstrate differential brain activity to familiar and non-familiar faces; however, brain responses related to personally familiar faces have been more rarely studied. We examined brain activity with fMRI in adults in response to faces of their mothers and fathers compared to faces of celebrities and strangers. Overall, faces of mothers elicited more activity in core and extended brain regions associated with face processing, compared to fathers, celebrity or stranger faces. Fathers' faces elicited activity in the caudate, a deep brain structure associated with feelings of love. These new findings of differential brain responses elicited by faces of mothers and fathers are consistent with psychological research on attachment, evident even during adulthood. 2010 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

  14. From face processing to face recognition: Comparing three different processing levels.

    PubMed

    Besson, G; Barragan-Jason, G; Thorpe, S J; Fabre-Thorpe, M; Puma, S; Ceccaldi, M; Barbeau, E J

    2017-01-01

    Verifying that a face is from a target person (e.g. finding someone in the crowd) is a critical ability of the human face processing system. Yet how fast this can be performed is unknown. The 'entry-level shift due to expertise' hypothesis suggests that - since humans are face experts - processing faces should be as fast - or even faster - at the individual than at superordinate levels. In contrast, the 'superordinate advantage' hypothesis suggests that faces are processed from coarse to fine, so that the opposite pattern should be observed. To clarify this debate, three different face processing levels were compared: (1) a superordinate face categorization level (i.e. detecting human faces among animal faces), (2) a face familiarity level (i.e. recognizing famous faces among unfamiliar ones) and (3) verifying that a face is from a target person, our condition of interest. The minimal speed at which faces can be categorized (∼260ms) or recognized as familiar (∼360ms) has largely been documented in previous studies, and thus provides boundaries to compare our condition of interest to. Twenty-seven participants were included. The recent Speed and Accuracy Boosting procedure paradigm (SAB) was used since it constrains participants to use their fastest strategy. Stimuli were presented either upright or inverted. Results revealed that verifying that a face is from a target person (minimal RT at ∼260ms) was remarkably fast but longer than the face categorization level (∼240ms) and was more sensitive to face inversion. In contrast, it was much faster than recognizing a face as familiar (∼380ms), a level severely affected by face inversion. Face recognition corresponding to finding a specific person in a crowd thus appears achievable in only a quarter of a second. In favor of the 'superordinate advantage' hypothesis or coarse-to-fine account of the face visual hierarchy, these results suggest a graded engagement of the face processing system across processing

  15. Culturally familiar environment among immigrant Korean elders.

    PubMed

    Son, Gwi-Ryung; Kim, Hye-Ryoung

    2006-01-01

    This study's purpose was to describe the concept of familiarity for immigrant Korean elders as expressed through clothing, objects, songs/music, foods, and associated feelings. A descriptive exploratory design with in-depth, face-to-face interviews was used. A convenience sample of 14 immigrant Korean elders, age 63 to 82 years, was recruited from a Korean senior apartment complex. Interviews were tape-recorded and then transcribed in Korean by the first author. Constant comparative analysis was used to derive eight themes related to feelings and practice associated with culturally familiar items: homesickness, comfort, pleasure, mixed feelings, attachment, pride, nostalgic practice, and essentiality. These findings about familiarity could be utilized with ethnic minority elders to enhance their sense of belonging and physical and psychological comfort.

  16. Hemisphere-Dependent Holistic Processing of Familiar Faces

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Ramon, Meike; Rossion, Bruno

    2012-01-01

    In two behavioral experiments involving lateralized stimulus presentation, we tested whether one of the most commonly used measures of holistic face processing--the composite face effect--would be more pronounced for stimuli presented to the right as compared to the left hemisphere. In experiment 1, we investigated the composite face effect in a…

  17. Destination memory and familiarity: better memory for conversations with Elvis Presley than with unknown people.

    PubMed

    El Haj, Mohamad; Omigie, Diana; Samson, Séverine

    2015-06-01

    Familiarity is assumed to exert a beneficial effect on memory in older adults. Our paper investigated this issue specifically for destination memory, that is, memory of the destination of previously relayed information. Young and older adults were told familiar (Experiment 1) and unfamiliar (Experiment 2) proverbs associated with pictures depicting faces of celebrities (e.g., Elvis Presley) or unknown people, with a specific proverb assigned to each face. In a later recognition task, participants were presented with the previously exposed proverb-face pairs and for each pair had to decide whether they had previously relayed the given proverb to the given face. In general, destination performance was found to be higher for familiar than for unfamiliar faces. However while there was no difference between the two groups when the proverbs being relayed were unfamiliar, the advantage of face familiarity on destination memory was present only for older adults when the proverbs being relayed were familiar. Our results show that destination memory in older adults is sensitive to familiarity of both destination and output information.

  18. Making heads turn: the effect of familiarity and stimulus rotation on a gender-classification task.

    PubMed

    Stevenage, Sarah V; Osborne, Cara D

    2006-01-01

    Recent work has demonstrated that facial familiarity can moderate the influence of inversion when completing a configural processing task. Here, we examine whether familiarity interacts with intermediate angles of orientation in the same way that it interacts with inversion. Participants were asked to make a gender classification to familiar and unfamiliar faces shown at seven angles of orientation. Speed and accuracy of performance were assessed for stimuli presented (i) as whole faces and (ii) as internal features. When presented as whole faces, the task was easy, as revealed by ceiling levels of accuracy and no effect of familiarity or angle of rotation on response times. However, when stimuli were presented as internal features, an influence of facial familiarity was evident. Unfamiliar faces showed no increase in difficulty across angle of rotation, whereas familiar faces showed a marked increase in difficulty across angle, which was explained by significant linear and cubic trends in the data. Results were interpreted in terms of the benefit gained from a mental representation when face processing was impaired by stimulus rotation.

  19. The DalHouses: 100 new photographs of houses with ratings of typicality, familiarity, and degree of similarity to faces.

    PubMed

    Filliter, Jillian H; Glover, Jacqueline M; McMullen, Patricia A; Salmon, Joshua P; Johnson, Shannon A

    2016-03-01

    Houses have often been used as comparison stimuli in face-processing studies because of the many attributes they share with faces (e.g., distinct members of a basic category, consistent internal features, mono-orientation, and relative familiarity). Despite this, no large, well-controlled databases of photographs of houses that have been developed for research use currently exist. To address this gap, we photographed 100 houses and carefully edited these images. We then asked 41 undergraduate students (18 to 31 years of age) to rate each house on three dimensions: typicality, likeability, and face-likeness. The ratings had a high degree of face validity, and analyses revealed a significant positive correlation between typicality and likeability. We anticipate that this stimulus set (i.e., the DalHouses) and the associated ratings will prove useful to face-processing researchers by minimizing the effort required to acquire stimuli and allowing for easier replication and extension of studies. The photographs of all 100 houses and their ratings data can be obtained at http://dx.doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.1279430.

  20. From Familiar Faces to Family.

    PubMed

    Canham, Sarah L; Battersby, Lupin; Fang, Mei Lan; Sixsmith, Judith; Woolrych, Ryan; Sixsmith, Andrew

    2016-04-01

    Long-term care (LTC) facilities are increasingly intent on creating a "homelike" atmosphere for residents. Although residential staff are integral to the construction of a home within LTC settings, their perceptions have been relatively absent from the literature. Thirty-two LTC staff participants were interviewed about their experiences and perceptions of the physical environment and conceptualizations of home, and thematic analyses were conducted. An overarching category-interpersonal relationships-emerged from our analyses emphasizing the importance of relationships in creating a homelike environment within institutional settings. Sub-themes that inform our understanding include the following: (a) Staff members' perceptions of home; (b) "Their second home": Adjustment to and familiarity in LTC; and (c) "We become family": Relationality makes a home. The study provides evidence to inform current policies and practices in LTC. Specifically, enough time and space should be given to residents and staff to create and maintain personal relationships to make residential care homelike.

  1. Memory for faces with emotional expressions in Alzheimer's disease and healthy older participants: positivity effect is not only due to familiarity.

    PubMed

    Sava, Alina-Alexandra; Krolak-Salmon, Pierre; Delphin-Combe, Floriane; Cloarec, Morgane; Chainay, Hanna

    2017-01-01

    Young individuals better memorize initially seen faces with emotional rather than neutral expressions. Healthy older participants and Alzheimer's disease (AD) patients show better memory for faces with positive expressions. The socioemotional selectivity theory postulates that this positivity effect in memory reflects a general age-related preference for positive stimuli, subserving emotion regulation. Another explanation might be that older participants use compensatory strategies, often considering happy faces as previously seen. The question about the existence of this effect in tasks not permitting such compensatory strategies is still open. Thus, we compared the performance of healthy participants and AD patients for positive, neutral, and negative faces in such tasks. Healthy older participants and AD patients showed a positivity effect in memory, but there was no difference between emotional and neutral faces in young participants. Our results suggest that the positivity effect in memory is not entirely due to the sense of familiarity for smiling faces.

  2. Development of Category Formation for Faces Differing by Age in 9- to 12-month-olds: An Effect of Experience with Infant Faces

    PubMed Central

    Damon, Fabrice; Quinn, Paul C.; Heron-Delaney, Michelle; Lee, Kang; Pascalis, Olivier

    2016-01-01

    We examined category formation for faces differing in age in 9- and 12-month-olds, and the influence of exposure to infant faces on such ability. Infants were familiarized with adult or infant faces, and then tested with a novel exemplar from the familiarized category paired with a novel exemplar from a novel category (Experiment 1). Both age groups formed discrete categories of adult and infant faces, but exposure to infant faces in everyday life did not modulate performance. The same task was conducted with child versus infant faces (Experiment 2). Whereas 9-month-olds preferred infant faces after familiarization with child faces, but not child faces after familiarization with infant faces, 12-month-olds formed discrete categories of child and infant faces. Moreover, more exposure to infant faces correlated with higher novel category preference scores when infants were familiarized with infant faces in 12-month-olds, but not 9-month-olds. The 9-month-old asymmetry did not reflect spontaneous preference for infant over child faces (Experiment 3). These findings indicate that 9- and 12-month-olds can form age-based categories of faces. The ability of 12-month-olds to form separate child and infant categories suggests that they have a more exclusive representation of face age, one that may be influenced by prior experience with infant faces. PMID:27393740

  3. Familiarity and Within-Person Facial Variability: The Importance of the Internal and External Features.

    PubMed

    Kramer, Robin S S; Manesi, Zoi; Towler, Alice; Reynolds, Michael G; Burton, A Mike

    2018-01-01

    As faces become familiar, we come to rely more on their internal features for recognition and matching tasks. Here, we assess whether this same pattern is also observed for a card sorting task. Participants sorted photos showing either the full face, only the internal features, or only the external features into multiple piles, one pile per identity. In Experiments 1 and 2, we showed the standard advantage for familiar faces-sorting was more accurate and showed very few errors in comparison with unfamiliar faces. However, for both familiar and unfamiliar faces, sorting was less accurate for external features and equivalent for internal and full faces. In Experiment 3, we asked whether external features can ever be used to make an accurate sort. Using familiar faces and instructions on the number of identities present, we nevertheless found worse performance for the external in comparison with the internal features, suggesting that less identity information was available in the former. Taken together, we show that full faces and internal features are similarly informative with regard to identity. In comparison, external features contain less identity information and produce worse card sorting performance. This research extends current thinking on the shift in focus, both in attention and importance, toward the internal features and away from the external features as familiarity with a face increases.

  4. Can Faces Prime a Language?

    PubMed

    Woumans, Evy; Martin, Clara D; Vanden Bulcke, Charlotte; Van Assche, Eva; Costa, Albert; Hartsuiker, Robert J; Duyck, Wouter

    2015-09-01

    Bilinguals have two languages that are activated in parallel. During speech production, one of these languages must be selected on the basis of some cue. The present study investigated whether the face of an interlocutor can serve as such a cue. Spanish-Catalan and Dutch-French bilinguals were first familiarized with certain faces, each of which was associated with only one language, during simulated Skype conversations. Afterward, these participants performed a language production task in which they generated words associated with the words produced by familiar and unfamiliar faces displayed on-screen. When responding to familiar faces, participants produced words faster if the faces were speaking the same language as in the previous Skype simulation than if the same faces were speaking a different language. Furthermore, this language priming effect disappeared when it became clear that the interlocutors were actually bilingual. These findings suggest that faces can prime a language, but their cuing effect disappears when it turns out that they are unreliable as language cues. © The Author(s) 2015.

  5. Familiarity Detection is an Intrinsic Property of Cortical Microcircuits with Bidirectional Synaptic Plasticity.

    PubMed

    Zhang, Xiaoyu; Ju, Han; Penney, Trevor B; VanDongen, Antonius M J

    2017-01-01

    Humans instantly recognize a previously seen face as "familiar." To deepen our understanding of familiarity-novelty detection, we simulated biologically plausible neural network models of generic cortical microcircuits consisting of spiking neurons with random recurrent synaptic connections. NMDA receptor (NMDAR)-dependent synaptic plasticity was implemented to allow for unsupervised learning and bidirectional modifications. Network spiking activity evoked by sensory inputs consisting of face images altered synaptic efficacy, which resulted in the network responding more strongly to a previously seen face than a novel face. Network size determined how many faces could be accurately recognized as familiar. When the simulated model became sufficiently complex in structure, multiple familiarity traces could be retained in the same network by forming partially-overlapping subnetworks that differ slightly from each other, thereby resulting in a high storage capacity. Fisher's discriminant analysis was applied to identify critical neurons whose spiking activity predicted familiar input patterns. Intriguingly, as sensory exposure was prolonged, the selected critical neurons tended to appear at deeper layers of the network model, suggesting recruitment of additional circuits in the network for incremental information storage. We conclude that generic cortical microcircuits with bidirectional synaptic plasticity have an intrinsic ability to detect familiar inputs. This ability does not require a specialized wiring diagram or supervision and can therefore be expected to emerge naturally in developing cortical circuits.

  6. Familiarity Detection is an Intrinsic Property of Cortical Microcircuits with Bidirectional Synaptic Plasticity

    PubMed Central

    2017-01-01

    Abstract Humans instantly recognize a previously seen face as “familiar.” To deepen our understanding of familiarity-novelty detection, we simulated biologically plausible neural network models of generic cortical microcircuits consisting of spiking neurons with random recurrent synaptic connections. NMDA receptor (NMDAR)-dependent synaptic plasticity was implemented to allow for unsupervised learning and bidirectional modifications. Network spiking activity evoked by sensory inputs consisting of face images altered synaptic efficacy, which resulted in the network responding more strongly to a previously seen face than a novel face. Network size determined how many faces could be accurately recognized as familiar. When the simulated model became sufficiently complex in structure, multiple familiarity traces could be retained in the same network by forming partially-overlapping subnetworks that differ slightly from each other, thereby resulting in a high storage capacity. Fisher’s discriminant analysis was applied to identify critical neurons whose spiking activity predicted familiar input patterns. Intriguingly, as sensory exposure was prolonged, the selected critical neurons tended to appear at deeper layers of the network model, suggesting recruitment of additional circuits in the network for incremental information storage. We conclude that generic cortical microcircuits with bidirectional synaptic plasticity have an intrinsic ability to detect familiar inputs. This ability does not require a specialized wiring diagram or supervision and can therefore be expected to emerge naturally in developing cortical circuits. PMID:28534043

  7. Interference from familiar natural distractors is not eliminated by high perceptual load.

    PubMed

    He, Chunhong; Chen, Antao

    2010-05-01

    A crucial prediction of perceptual load theory is that high perceptual load can eliminate interference from distractors. However, Lavie et al. (Psychol Sci 14:510-515, 2003) found that high perceptual load did not eliminate interference when the distractor was a face. The current experiments examined the interaction between familiarity and perceptual load in modulating interference in a name search task. The data reveal that high perceptual load eliminated the interference effect for unfamiliar distractors that were faces or objects, but did not eliminate the interference for familiar distractors that were faces or objects. Based on these results, we proposed that the processing of familiar and natural stimuli may be immune to the effect of perceptual load.

  8. Familiarity effects in the construction of facial-composite images using modern software systems.

    PubMed

    Frowd, Charlie D; Skelton, Faye C; Butt, Neelam; Hassan, Amal; Fields, Stephen; Hancock, Peter J B

    2011-12-01

    We investigate the effect of target familiarity on the construction of facial composites, as used by law enforcement to locate criminal suspects. Two popular software construction methods were investigated. Participants were shown a target face that was either familiar or unfamiliar to them and constructed a composite of it from memory using a typical 'feature' system, involving selection of individual facial features, or one of the newer 'holistic' types, involving repeated selection and breeding from arrays of whole faces. This study found that composites constructed of a familiar face were named more successfully than composites of an unfamiliar face; also, naming of composites of internal and external features was equivalent for construction of unfamiliar targets, but internal features were better named than the external features for familiar targets. These findings applied to both systems, although benefit emerged for the holistic type due to more accurate construction of internal features and evidence for a whole-face advantage. STATEMENT OF RELEVANCE: This work is of relevance to practitioners who construct facial composites with witnesses to and victims of crime, as well as for software designers to help them improve the effectiveness of their composite systems.

  9. The Development of Differential Use of Inner and Outer Face Features in Familiar Face Identification.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Campbell, Ruth; And Others

    1995-01-01

    Studied 4- to 10-year-olds' familiarity judgments of peers. Found that, contrary to adults, external facial features were key. Also found that the switch to adult recognition pattern takes place after the ninth year. (ETB)

  10. How Fast is Famous Face Recognition?

    PubMed Central

    Barragan-Jason, Gladys; Lachat, Fanny; Barbeau, Emmanuel J.

    2012-01-01

    The rapid recognition of familiar faces is crucial for social interactions. However the actual speed with which recognition can be achieved remains largely unknown as most studies have been carried out without any speed constraints. Different paradigms have been used, leading to conflicting results, and although many authors suggest that face recognition is fast, the speed of face recognition has not been directly compared to “fast” visual tasks. In this study, we sought to overcome these limitations. Subjects performed three tasks, a familiarity categorization task (famous faces among unknown faces), a superordinate categorization task (human faces among animal ones), and a gender categorization task. All tasks were performed under speed constraints. The results show that, despite the use of speed constraints, subjects were slow when they had to categorize famous faces: minimum reaction time was 467 ms, which is 180 ms more than during superordinate categorization and 160 ms more than in the gender condition. Our results are compatible with a hierarchy of face processing from the superordinate level to the familiarity level. The processes taking place between detection and recognition need to be investigated in detail. PMID:23162503

  11. Not All Faces Are Processed Equally: Evidence for Featural Rather than Holistic Processing of One's Own Face in a Face-Imaging Task

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Greenberg, Seth N.; Goshen-Gottstein, Yonatan

    2009-01-01

    The present work considers the mental imaging of faces, with a focus in own-face imaging. Experiments 1 and 3 demonstrated an own-face disadvantage, with slower generation of mental images of one's own face than of other familiar faces. In contrast, Experiment 2 demonstrated that mental images of facial parts are generated more quickly for one's…

  12. Stable face representations

    PubMed Central

    Jenkins, Rob; Burton, A. Mike

    2011-01-01

    Photographs are often used to establish the identity of an individual or to verify that they are who they claim to be. Yet, recent research shows that it is surprisingly difficult to match a photo to a face. Neither humans nor machines can perform this task reliably. Although human perceivers are good at matching familiar faces, performance with unfamiliar faces is strikingly poor. The situation is no better for automatic face recognition systems. In practical settings, automatic systems have been consistently disappointing. In this review, we suggest that failure to distinguish between familiar and unfamiliar face processing has led to unrealistic expectations about face identification in applied settings. We also argue that a photograph is not necessarily a reliable indicator of facial appearance, and develop our proposal that summary statistics can provide more stable face representations. In particular, we show that image averaging stabilizes facial appearance by diluting aspects of the image that vary between snapshots of the same person. We review evidence that the resulting images can outperform photographs in both behavioural experiments and computer simulations, and outline promising directions for future research. PMID:21536553

  13. Long-Term Memory for Odors: Influences of Familiarity and Identification Across 64 Days

    PubMed Central

    Jönsson, Fredrik U.; Willander, Johan; Sikström, Sverker; Larsson, Maria

    2015-01-01

    Few studies have investigated long-term odor recognition memory, although some early observations suggested that the forgetting rate of olfactory representations is slower than for other sensory modalities. This study investigated recognition memory across 64 days for high and low familiar odors and faces. Memory was assessed in 83 young participants at 4 occasions; immediate, 4, 16, and 64 days after encoding. The results indicated significant forgetting for odors and faces across the 64 days. The forgetting functions for the 2 modalities were not fundamentally different. Moreover, high familiar odors and faces were better remembered than low familiar ones, indicating an important role of semantic knowledge on recognition proficiency for both modalities. Although odor recognition was significantly better than chance at the 64 days testing, memory for the low familiar odors was relatively poor. Also, the results indicated that odor identification consistency across sessions, irrespective of accuracy, was positively related to successful recognition. PMID:25740304

  14. The changing face of emotion: age-related patterns of amygdala activation to salient faces.

    PubMed

    Todd, Rebecca M; Evans, Jennifer W; Morris, Drew; Lewis, Marc D; Taylor, Margot J

    2011-01-01

    The present study investigated age-related differences in the amygdala and other nodes of face-processing networks in response to facial expression and familiarity. fMRI data were analyzed from 31 children (3.5-8.5 years) and 14 young adults (18-33 years) who viewed pictures of familiar (mothers) and unfamiliar emotional faces. Results showed that amygdala activation for faces over a scrambled image baseline increased with age. Children, but not adults, showed greater amygdala activation to happy than angry faces; in addition, amygdala activation for angry faces increased with age. In keeping with growing evidence of a positivity bias in young children, our data suggest that children find happy faces to be more salient or meaningful than angry faces. Both children and adults showed preferential activation to mothers' over strangers' faces in a region of rostral anterior cingulate cortex associated with self-evaluation, suggesting that some nodes in frontal evaluative networks are active early in development. This study presents novel data on neural correlates of face processing in childhood and indicates that preferential amygdala activation for emotional expressions changes with age.

  15. Event-related potentials of self-face recognition in children with pervasive developmental disorders.

    PubMed

    Gunji, Atsuko; Inagaki, Masumi; Inoue, Yuki; Takeshima, Yasuyuki; Kaga, Makiko

    2009-02-01

    Patients with pervasive developmental disorders (PDD) often have difficulty reading facial expressions and deciphering their implied meaning. We focused on semantic encoding related to face cognition to investigate event-related potentials (ERPs) to the subject's own face and familiar faces in children with and without PDD. Eight children with PDD (seven boys and one girl; aged 10.8+/-2.9 years; one left-handed) and nine age-matched typically developing children (four boys and five girls; aged 11.3+/-2.3 years; one left-handed) participated in this study. The stimuli consisted of three face images (self, familiar, and unfamiliar faces), one scrambled face image, and one object image (e.g., cup) with gray scale. We confirmed three major components: N170 and early posterior negativity (EPN) in the occipito-temporal regions (T5 and T6) and P300 in the parietal region (Pz). An enhanced N170 was observed as a face-specific response in all subjects. However, semantic encoding of each face might be unrelated to N170 because the amplitude and latency were not significantly different among the face conditions. On the other hand, an additional component after N170, EPN which was calculated in each subtracted waveform (self vs. familiar and familiar vs. unfamiliar), indicated self-awareness and familiarity with respect to face cognition in the control adults and children. Furthermore, the P300 amplitude in the control adults was significantly greater in the self-face condition than in the familiar-face condition. However, no significant differences in the EPN and P300 components were observed among the self-, familiar-, and unfamiliar-face conditions in the PDD children. The results suggest a deficit of semantic encoding of faces in children with PDD, which may be implicated in their delay in social communication.

  16. Meta-analytic review of the development of face discrimination in infancy: Face race, face gender, infant age, and methodology moderate face discrimination.

    PubMed

    Sugden, Nicole A; Marquis, Alexandra R

    2017-11-01

    Infants show facility for discriminating between individual faces within hours of birth. Over the first year of life, infants' face discrimination shows continued improvement with familiar face types, such as own-race faces, but not with unfamiliar face types, like other-race faces. The goal of this meta-analytic review is to provide an effect size for infants' face discrimination ability overall, with own-race faces, and with other-race faces within the first year of life, how this differs with age, and how it is influenced by task methodology. Inclusion criteria were (a) infant participants aged 0 to 12 months, (b) completing a human own- or other-race face discrimination task, (c) with discrimination being determined by infant looking. Our analysis included 30 works (165 samples, 1,926 participants participated in 2,623 tasks). The effect size for infants' face discrimination was small, 6.53% greater than chance (i.e., equal looking to the novel and familiar). There was a significant difference in discrimination by race, overall (own-race, 8.18%; other-race, 3.18%) and between ages (own-race: 0- to 4.5-month-olds, 7.32%; 5- to 7.5-month-olds, 9.17%; and 8- to 12-month-olds, 7.68%; other-race: 0- to 4.5-month-olds, 6.12%; 5- to 7.5-month-olds, 3.70%; and 8- to 12-month-olds, 2.79%). Multilevel linear (mixed-effects) models were used to predict face discrimination; infants' capacity to discriminate faces is sensitive to face characteristics including race, gender, and emotion as well as the methods used, including task timing, coding method, and visual angle. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2017 APA, all rights reserved).

  17. Identity-Specific Face Adaptation Effects: Evidence for Abstractive Face Representations

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Hole, Graham

    2011-01-01

    The effects of selective adaptation on familiar face perception were examined. After prolonged exposure to photographs of a celebrity, participants saw a series of ambiguous morphs that were varying mixtures between the face of that person and a different celebrity. Participants judged fewer of the morphs to resemble the celebrity to which they…

  18. Face learning and the emergence of view-independent face recognition: an event-related brain potential study.

    PubMed

    Zimmermann, Friederike G S; Eimer, Martin

    2013-06-01

    Recognizing unfamiliar faces is more difficult than familiar face recognition, and this has been attributed to qualitative differences in the processing of familiar and unfamiliar faces. Familiar faces are assumed to be represented by view-independent codes, whereas unfamiliar face recognition depends mainly on view-dependent low-level pictorial representations. We employed an electrophysiological marker of visual face recognition processes in order to track the emergence of view-independence during the learning of previously unfamiliar faces. Two face images showing either the same or two different individuals in the same or two different views were presented in rapid succession, and participants had to perform an identity-matching task. On trials where both faces showed the same view, repeating the face of the same individual triggered an N250r component at occipito-temporal electrodes, reflecting the rapid activation of visual face memory. A reliable N250r component was also observed on view-change trials. Crucially, this view-independence emerged as a result of face learning. In the first half of the experiment, N250r components were present only on view-repetition trials but were absent on view-change trials, demonstrating that matching unfamiliar faces was initially based on strictly view-dependent codes. In the second half, the N250r was triggered not only on view-repetition trials but also on view-change trials, indicating that face recognition had now become more view-independent. This transition may be due to the acquisition of abstract structural codes of individual faces during face learning, but could also reflect the formation of associative links between sets of view-specific pictorial representations of individual faces. Copyright © 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

  19. Familiar shapes attract attention in figure-ground displays.

    PubMed

    Nelson, Rolf A; Palmer, Stephen E

    2007-04-01

    We report five experiments that explore the effect of figure-ground factors on attention. We hypothesized that figural cues, such as familiar shape, would draw attention to the figural side in an attentional cuing task using bipartite figure-ground displays. The first two experiments used faces in profile as the familiar shape and found a perceptual advantage for targets presented on the meaningful side of the central contour in detection speed (Experiment 1) and discrimination accuracy (Experiment 2). The third experiment demonstrated the figural advantage in response time (RT) with nine other familiar shapes (including a sea horse, a guitar, a fir tree, etc.), but only when targets appeared in close proximity to the contour. A fourth experiment obtained a figural advantage in a discrimination task with the larger set of familiar shapes. The final experiment ruled out eye movements as a possible confounding factor by replicating the RT advantage for targets on the figural side of face displays when all trials containing eye movements were eliminated. The results are discussed in terms of ecological influences on attention, and are cast within the framework of Yantis and Jonides's hypothesis that attention is exogenously drawn to the onset of new perceptual objects. We argue that the figural side constitutes an "object" whereas the ground side does not, and that figural cues such as shape familiarity are effective in determining which areas represent objects.

  20. The changing face of emotion: age-related patterns of amygdala activation to salient faces

    PubMed Central

    Evans, Jennifer W.; Morris, Drew; Lewis, Marc D.; Taylor, Margot J.

    2011-01-01

    The present study investigated age-related differences in the amygdala and other nodes of face-processing networks in response to facial expression and familiarity. fMRI data were analyzed from 31 children (3.5–8.5 years) and 14 young adults (18–33 years) who viewed pictures of familiar (mothers) and unfamiliar emotional faces. Results showed that amygdala activation for faces over a scrambled image baseline increased with age. Children, but not adults, showed greater amygdala activation to happy than angry faces; in addition, amygdala activation for angry faces increased with age. In keeping with growing evidence of a positivity bias in young children, our data suggest that children find happy faces to be more salient or meaningful than angry faces. Both children and adults showed preferential activation to mothers’ over strangers’ faces in a region of rostral anterior cingulate cortex associated with self-evaluation, suggesting that some nodes in frontal evaluative networks are active early in development. This study presents novel data on neural correlates of face processing in childhood and indicates that preferential amygdala activation for emotional expressions changes with age. PMID:20194512

  1. Learning the moves: the effect of familiarity and facial motion on person recognition across large changes in viewing format.

    PubMed

    Roark, Dana A; O'Toole, Alice J; Abdi, Hervé; Barrett, Susan E

    2006-01-01

    Familiarity with a face or person can support recognition in tasks that require generalization to novel viewing contexts. Using naturalistic viewing conditions requiring recognition of people from face or whole body gait stimuli, we investigated the effects of familiarity, facial motion, and direction of learning/test transfer on person recognition. Participants were familiarized with previously unknown people from gait videos and were tested on faces (experiment 1a) or were familiarized with faces and were tested with gait videos (experiment 1b). Recognition was more accurate when learning from the face and testing with the gait videos, than when learning from the gait videos and testing with the face. The repetition of a single stimulus, either the face or gait, produced strong recognition gains across transfer conditions. Also, the presentation of moving faces resulted in better performance than that of static faces. In experiment 2, we investigated the role of facial motion further by testing recognition with static profile images. Motion provided no benefit for recognition, indicating that structure-from-motion is an unlikely source of the motion advantage found in the first set of experiments.

  2. Recognition memory in developmental prosopagnosia: electrophysiological evidence for abnormal routes to face recognition

    PubMed Central

    Burns, Edwin J.; Tree, Jeremy J.; Weidemann, Christoph T.

    2014-01-01

    Dual process models of recognition memory propose two distinct routes for recognizing a face: recollection and familiarity. Recollection is characterized by the remembering of some contextual detail from a previous encounter with a face whereas familiarity is the feeling of finding a face familiar without any contextual details. The Remember/Know (R/K) paradigm is thought to index the relative contributions of recollection and familiarity to recognition performance. Despite researchers measuring face recognition deficits in developmental prosopagnosia (DP) through a variety of methods, none have considered the distinct contributions of recollection and familiarity to recognition performance. The present study examined recognition memory for faces in eight individuals with DP and a group of controls using an R/K paradigm while recording electroencephalogram (EEG) data at the scalp. Those with DP were found to produce fewer correct “remember” responses and more false alarms than controls. EEG results showed that posterior “remember” old/new effects were delayed and restricted to the right posterior (RP) area in those with DP in comparison to the controls. A posterior “know” old/new effect commonly associated with familiarity for faces was only present in the controls whereas individuals with DP exhibited a frontal “know” old/new effect commonly associated with words, objects and pictures. These results suggest that individuals with DP do not utilize normal face-specific routes when making face recognition judgments but instead process faces using a pathway more commonly associated with objects. PMID:25177283

  3. General object recognition is specific: Evidence from novel and familiar objects.

    PubMed

    Richler, Jennifer J; Wilmer, Jeremy B; Gauthier, Isabel

    2017-09-01

    In tests of object recognition, individual differences typically correlate modestly but nontrivially across familiar categories (e.g. cars, faces, shoes, birds, mushrooms). In theory, these correlations could reflect either global, non-specific mechanisms, such as general intelligence (IQ), or more specific mechanisms. Here, we introduce two separate methods for effectively capturing category-general performance variation, one that uses novel objects and one that uses familiar objects. In each case, we show that category-general performance variance is unrelated to IQ, thereby implicating more specific mechanisms. The first approach examines three newly developed novel object memory tests (NOMTs). We predicted that NOMTs would exhibit more shared, category-general variance than familiar object memory tests (FOMTs) because novel objects, unlike familiar objects, lack category-specific environmental influences (e.g. exposure to car magazines or botany classes). This prediction held, and remarkably, virtually none of the substantial shared variance among NOMTs was explained by IQ. Also, while NOMTs correlated nontrivially with two FOMTs (faces, cars), these correlations were smaller than among NOMTs and no larger than between the face and car tests themselves, suggesting that the category-general variance captured by NOMTs is specific not only relative to IQ, but also, to some degree, relative to both face and car recognition. The second approach averaged performance across multiple FOMTs, which we predicted would increase category-general variance by averaging out category-specific factors. This prediction held, and as with NOMTs, virtually none of the shared variance among FOMTs was explained by IQ. Overall, these results support the existence of object recognition mechanisms that, though category-general, are specific relative to IQ and substantially separable from face and car recognition. They also add sensitive, well-normed NOMTs to the tools available to study

  4. An odd manifestation of the Capgras syndrome: loss of familiarity even with the sexual partner.

    PubMed

    Thomas Antérion, C; Convers, P; Desmales, S; Borg, C; Laurent, B

    2008-06-01

    We report the case of a patient who presented visual hallucinations and identification disorders associated with a Capgras syndrome. During the Capgras periods, there was not only a misidentification of his wife's face, but also a more global perceptive and emotional sexual identification disorder. Thus, he had sexual intercourse with his wife's "double" without having the slightest recollection feeling of familiarity towards his "wife" and even changed his sexual habits. To the best of our knowledge, he is the only neurological patient who made his wife a mistress. Starting from this global familiarity loss, we discuss the mechanism of Capgras delusion with reference to the role of the implicit system of face recognition. Such behavior of familiarity loss not only with face but also with all intimacy aspects argues for a specific disconnection between the ventral visual pathway of face identification and the limbic system involved in emotional and episodic memory contents.

  5. A face in a (temporal) crowd.

    PubMed

    Hacker, Catrina M; Meschke, Emily X; Biederman, Irving

    2018-03-20

    Familiar objects, specified by name, can be identified with high accuracy when embedded in a rapidly presented sequence of images at rates exceeding 10 images/s. Not only can target objects be detected at such brief presentation rates, they can also be detected under high uncertainty, where their classification is defined negatively, e.g., "Not a Tool." The identification of a familiar speaker's voice declines precipitously when uncertainty is increased from one to a mere handful of possible speakers. Is the limitation imposed by uncertainty, i.e., the number of possible individuals, a general characteristic of processes for person individuation such that the identifiability of a familiar face would undergo a similar decline with uncertainty? Specifically, could the presence of an unnamed celebrity, thus any celebrity, be detected when presented in a rapid sequence of unfamiliar faces? If so, could the celebrity be identified? Despite the markedly greater physical similarity of faces compared to objects that are, say, not tools, the presence of a celebrity could be detected with moderately high accuracy (∼75%) at rates exceeding 7 faces/s. False alarms were exceedingly rare as almost all the errors were misses. Detection accuracy by moderate congenital prosopagnosics was lower than controls, but still well above chance. Given the detection of the presence of a celebrity, all subjects were almost always able to identify that celebrity, providing no role for a covert familiarity signal outside of awareness. Copyright © 2018 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

  6. Learning new faces in typical and atypical populations of children.

    PubMed

    Jones, Rebecca R; Blades, Mark; Coleman, Mike; Pascalis, Olivier

    2013-02-01

    Recognizing an individual as familiar is an important aspect of our social cognition, which requires both learning a face and recalling it. It has been suggested that children with autistic spectrum disorder (ASD) have deficits and abnormalities in face processing. We investigated whether the process by which unfamiliar faces become familiar differs in typically developing (TD) children, children with ASD, and children with developmental delay. Children were familiarized with a set of moving novel faces presented over a three-day period. Recognition of the learned faces was assessed at five time points during the three-day period. Both immediate and delayed recall of faces was tested. All groups showed improvements in face recognition at immediate recall, which indicated that learning had occurred. The TD population showed slightly better performance than the two other groups, however no difference was specific to the ASD group. All groups showed similar levels of improvements with time. Our results are discussed in terms of learning in ASD. © 2013 The Authors. Scandinavian Journal of Psychology © 2013 The Scandinavian Psychological Associations.

  7. [False recognition of faces associated with fronto-temporal dementia with prosopagnosia].

    PubMed

    Verstichel, P

    2005-09-01

    The association of prosopagnosia and false recognition of faces is unusual and contributes to our understanding of the generation of facial familiarity. A 67-year-old man with a left prefrontal traumatic lesion, developed a temporal variety of fronto-temporal dementia (semantic dementia) with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis. Cerebral imagery demonstrated a bilateral, temporal anterior atrophy predominating in the right hemisphere. The main cognitive signs consisted in severe difficulties to recognize faces of familiar people (prosopagnosia), associated with systematic false recognition of unfamiliar people. Neuropsychological testing indicated that the prosopagnosia probably resulted from the association of an associative/mnemonic mechanism (inability to activate the Face Recognition Units (FRU) from the visual input) and a semantic mechanism (degradation of semantic/biographical information or deconnexion between FRU and this information). At the early stage of the disease, the patient could activate residual semantic information about individuals from their names, but after a 4-year course, he failed to do so. This worsening could be attributed to the extension of the degenerative lesions to the left temporal lobe. Familiar and unfamiliar faces triggered a marked feeling of knowing. False recognition concerned all the unfamiliar faces, and the patient claimed spontaneously that they corresponded to actors, but he could not provide any additional information about their specific identities. The coexistence of prosopagnosia and false recognition suggests the existence of different interconnected systems processing face recognition, one intended to identification of individuals, and the other producing the sense of familiarity. Dysfunctions at different stages of one or the other of these two processes could result in distortions in the feeling of knowing. From this case and others reported in literature, we propose to complete the classical model of face processing

  8. Training set extension for SVM ensemble in P300-speller with familiar face paradigm.

    PubMed

    Li, Qi; Shi, Kaiyang; Gao, Ning; Li, Jian; Bai, Ou

    2018-03-27

    P300-spellers are brain-computer interface (BCI)-based character input systems. Support vector machine (SVM) ensembles are trained with large-scale training sets and used as classifiers in these systems. However, the required large-scale training data necessitate a prolonged collection time for each subject, which results in data collected toward the end of the period being contaminated by the subject's fatigue. This study aimed to develop a method for acquiring more training data based on a collected small training set. A new method was developed in which two corresponding training datasets in two sequences are superposed and averaged to extend the training set. The proposed method was tested offline on a P300-speller with the familiar face paradigm. The SVM ensemble with extended training set achieved 85% classification accuracy for the averaged results of four sequences, and 100% for 11 sequences in the P300-speller. In contrast, the conventional SVM ensemble with non-extended training set achieved only 65% accuracy for four sequences, and 92% for 11 sequences. The SVM ensemble with extended training set achieves higher classification accuracies than the conventional SVM ensemble, which verifies that the proposed method effectively improves the classification performance of BCI P300-spellers, thus enhancing their practicality.

  9. The importance of unitization for familiarity-based learning.

    PubMed

    Parks, Colleen M; Yonelinas, Andrew P

    2015-05-01

    It is often assumed that recollection is necessary to support memory for novel associations, whereas familiarity supports memory for single items. However, the levels of unitization framework assumes that familiarity can support associative memory under conditions in which the components of an association are unitized (i.e., treated as a single coherent item). In the current study we tested two critical assumptions of this framework. First, does unitization reflect a specialized form of learning or is it simply a form of semantic or elaborative encoding, and, second, can the beneficial effects of unitization on familiarity be observed for across-domain associations or are they limited to creating new associations between items that are from the same stimulus domains? Unitization was found to increase associative recognition but not item recognition. It affected familiarity more than recollection, increased associative but not item priming, and was dissociable from levels of processing effects. Moreover, unitization effects were found to be particularly effective in supporting face-word and fractal-sound pairs. The current results indicate that unitization reflects a specialized form of learning that supports associative familiarity of within- and across-domain associations. (c) 2015 APA, all rights reserved).

  10. The importance of unitization for familiarity-based learning

    PubMed Central

    Parks, Colleen M.; Yonelinas, Andrew P.

    2014-01-01

    It is often assumed that recollection is necessary to support memory for novel associations, whereas familiarity supports memory for single items. However, the levels of unitization (LOU) framework assumes that familiarity can support associative memory under conditions in which the components of an association are unitized (i.e., treated as a single coherent item). In the current study we test two critical assumptions of this framework. First, does unitization reflect a specialized form of learning or is it simply a form of semantic or elaborative encoding, and, second, can the beneficial effects of unitization on familiarity be observed for across-domain associations or are they limited to creating new associations between items that are from the same stimulus domains? Unitization was found to increase associative recognition but not item recognition, it affected familiarity more so than recollection, it increased associative but not item priming, and it was dissociable from levels of processing effects. Moreover, unitization effects were found to be particularly effective in supporting face-word and fractal-sound pairs. The current results indicate that unitization reflects a specialized form of learning that supports associative familiarity of within- and across-domain associations. PMID:25329077

  11. Cognitive and Anatomical Underpinnings of the Conceptual Knowledge for Common Objects and Familiar People: A Repetitive Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation Study

    PubMed Central

    Campanella, Fabio; Fabbro, Franco; Urgesi, Cosimo

    2013-01-01

    Several studies have addressed the issue of how knowledge of common objects is organized in the brain, whereas the cognitive and anatomical underpinnings of familiar people knowledge have been less explored. Here we applied repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS) over the left and right temporal poles before asking healthy individuals to perform a speeded word-to-picture matching task using familiar people and common objects as stimuli. We manipulated two widely used semantic variables, namely the semantic distance and the familiarity of stimuli, to assess whether the semantic organization of familiar people knowledge is similar to that of common objects. For both objects and faces we reliably found semantic distance and familiarity effects, with less accurate and slower responses for stimulus pairs that were more closely related and less familiar. However, the effects of semantic variables differed across categories, with semantic distance effects larger for objects and familiarity effects larger for faces, suggesting that objects and faces might share a partially comparable organization of their semantic representations. The application of rTMS to the left temporal pole modulated, for both categories, semantic distance, but not familiarity effects, revealing that accessing object and face concepts might rely on overlapping processes within left anterior temporal regions. Crucially, rTMS of the left temporal pole affected only the recognition of pairs of stimuli that could be discriminated at specific levels of categorization (e.g., two kitchen tools or two famous persons), with no effect for discriminations at either superordinate or individual levels. Conversely, rTMS of the right temporal pole induced an overall slowing of reaction times that positively correlated with the visual similarity of the stimuli, suggesting a more perceptual rather than semantic role of the right anterior temporal regions. Results are discussed in the light of current

  12. Parallel Processing in Face Perception

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Martens, Ulla; Leuthold, Hartmut; Schweinberger, Stefan R.

    2010-01-01

    The authors examined face perception models with regard to the functional and temporal organization of facial identity and expression analysis. Participants performed a manual 2-choice go/no-go task to classify faces, where response hand depended on facial familiarity (famous vs. unfamiliar) and response execution depended on facial expression…

  13. Anterior temporal face patches: a meta-analysis and empirical study

    PubMed Central

    Von Der Heide, Rebecca J.; Skipper, Laura M.; Olson, Ingrid R.

    2013-01-01

    Evidence suggests the anterior temporal lobe (ATL) plays an important role in person identification and memory. In humans, neuroimaging studies of person memory report consistent activations in the ATL to famous and personally familiar faces and studies of patients report resection or damage of the ATL causes an associative prosopagnosia in which face perception is intact but face memory is compromised. In addition, high-resolution fMRI studies of non-human primates and electrophysiological studies of humans also suggest regions of the ventral ATL are sensitive to novel faces. The current study extends previous findings by investigating whether similar subregions in the dorsal, ventral, lateral, or polar aspects of the ATL are sensitive to personally familiar, famous, and novel faces. We present the results of two studies of person memory: a meta-analysis of existing fMRI studies and an empirical fMRI study using optimized imaging parameters. Both studies showed left-lateralized ATL activations to familiar individuals while novel faces activated the right ATL. Activations to famous faces were quite ventral, similar to what has been reported in previous high-resolution fMRI studies of non-human primates. These findings suggest that face memory-sensitive patches in the human ATL are in the ventral/polar ATL. PMID:23378834

  14. Reading Faces: From Features to Recognition.

    PubMed

    Guntupalli, J Swaroop; Gobbini, M Ida

    2017-12-01

    Chang and Tsao recently reported that the monkey face patch system encodes facial identity in a space of facial features as opposed to exemplars. Here, we discuss how such coding might contribute to face recognition, emphasizing the critical role of learning and interactions with other brain areas for optimizing the recognition of familiar faces. Copyright © 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

  15. Attractiveness of own-race, other-race, and mixed-race faces.

    PubMed

    Rhodes, Gillian; Lee, Kieran; Palermo, Romina; Weiss, Mahi; Yoshikawa, Sakiko; Clissa, Peter; Williams, Tamsyn; Peters, Marianne; Winkler, Chris; Jeffery, Linda

    2005-01-01

    Averaged face composites, which represent the central tendency of a familiar population of faces, are attractive. If this prototypicality contributes to their appeal, then averaged composites should be more attractive when their component faces come from a familiar, own-race population than when they come from a less familiar, other-race population. We compared the attractiveness of own-race composites, other-race composites, and mixed-race composites (where the component faces were from both races). In experiment 1, Caucasian participants rated own-race composites as more attractive than other-race composites, but only for male faces. However, mixed-race (Caucasian/Japanese) composites were significantly more attractive than own-race composites, particularly for the opposite sex. In experiment 2, Caucasian and Japanese participants living in Australia and Japan, respectively, selected the most attractive face from a continuum with exaggerated Caucasian characteristics at one end and exaggerated Japanese characteristics at the other, with intervening images including a Caucasian averaged composite, a mixed-race averaged composite, and a Japanese averaged composite. The most attractive face was, again, a mixed-race composite, for both Caucasian and Japanese participants. In experiment 3, Caucasian participants rated individual Eurasian faces as significantly more attractive than either Caucasian or Asian faces. Similar results were obtained with composites. Eurasian faces and composites were also rated as healthier than Caucasian or Asian faces and composites, respectively. These results suggest that signs of health may be more important than prototypicality in making average faces attractive.

  16. In what sense 'familiar'? Examining experiential differences within pathologies of facial recognition.

    PubMed

    Young, Garry

    2009-09-01

    Explanations of Capgras delusion and prosopagnosia typically incorporate a dual-route approach to facial recognition in which a deficit in overt or covert processing in one condition is mirror-reversed in the other. Despite this double dissociation, experiences of either patient-group are often reported in the same way--as lacking a sense of familiarity toward familiar faces. In this paper, deficits in the facial processing of these patients are compared to other facial recognition pathologies, and their experiential characteristics mapped onto the dual-route model in order to provide a less ambiguous link between facial processing and experiential content. The paper concludes that the experiential states of Capgras delusion, prosopagnosia, and related facial pathologies are quite distinct, and that this descriptive distinctiveness finds explanatory equivalence at the level of anatomical and functional disruption within the face recognition system. The role of skin conductance response (SCR) as a measure of 'familiarity' is also clarified.

  17. The ugliness-in-averageness effect: Tempering the warm glow of familiarity.

    PubMed

    Carr, Evan W; Huber, David E; Pecher, Diane; Zeelenberg, Rene; Halberstadt, Jamin; Winkielman, Piotr

    2017-06-01

    Mere exposure (i.e., stimulus repetition) and blending (i.e., stimulus averaging) are classic ways to increase social preferences, including facial attractiveness. In both effects, increases in preference involve enhanced familiarity. Prominent memory theories assume that familiarity depends on a match between the target and similar items in memory. These theories predict that when individual items are weakly learned, their blends (morphs) should be relatively familiar, and thus liked-a beauty-in-averageness effect ( BiA ). However, when individual items are strongly learned, they are also more distinguishable. This "differentiation" hypothesis predicts that with strongly encoded items, familiarity (and thus, preference) for the blend will be relatively lower than individual items-an ugliness-in-averageness effect ( UiA ). We tested this novel theoretical prediction in 5 experiments. Experiment 1 showed that with weak learning, facial morphs were more attractive than contributing individuals (BiA effect). Experiments 2A and 2B demonstrated that when participants first strongly learned a subset of individual faces (either in a face-name memory task or perceptual-tracking task), morphs of trained individuals were less attractive than the trained individuals (UiA effect). Experiment 3 showed that changes in familiarity for the trained morph (rather than interstimulus conflict) drove the UiA effect. Using a within-subjects design, Experiment 4 mapped out the transition from BiA to UiA solely as a function of memory training. Finally, computational modeling using a well-known memory framework (REM) illustrated the familiarity transition observed in Experiment 4. Overall, these results highlight how memory processes illuminate classic and modern social preference phenomena. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2017 APA, all rights reserved).

  18. Reactivity to fearful expressions of familiar and unfamiliar people in children with autism: an eye-tracking pupillometry study

    PubMed Central

    2014-01-01

    Background Individuals with autism are often reported to have difficulty with emotion processing. However, clinical and experimental data show that they are sensitive to familiarity; for example, they show normative attachment to familiar people, and have normative brain activity in response to familiar faces. To date, no study has measured their reactivity to the emotions of familiar vs. unfamiliar people. Thus, our aim was to determine whether individuals with autism would show normative reactivity to emotion in familiar people. Methods Participants were 21 children with autism and 21 children with typical development, aged two to five years, matched on age and gender. The children observed videos of familiar people (their child-care teachers) and unfamiliar people expressing fear, whilst their visual attention and pupillary reactions were recorded (the latter as an index of emotional reactivity), using eye tracking technology. Results The children with autism showed normative pupillary reactions (peak magnitude) to fear expressed by familiar people, but a reduced response to fear expressed by unfamiliar people. However, across familiarity conditions, the children with autism had longer latency peak responses than the typically developing children. This pattern of findings was independent of cognitive factors or visual attention as visual attention by group was not related to familiarity condition. The children with autism had reduced visual attention to neutral faces; however, on fearful faces there were no group differences. Abnormalities in pupillary reactivity in the autism group were related to less prosocial behaviour and more severe play and communication deficits. Conclusions Children with autism were less atypical in their responses to fearful expressions of people they know, arguing against a pervasive emotional impairment in autism, but rather one that may be mediated by familiarity. PMID:24982695

  19. A Qualitative Impairment in Face Perception in Alzheimer's Disease: Evidence from a Reduced Face Inversion Effect.

    PubMed

    Lavallée, Marie Maxime; Gandini, Delphine; Rouleau, Isabelle; Vallet, Guillaume T; Joannette, Maude; Kergoat, Marie-Jeanne; Busigny, Thomas; Rossion, Bruno; Joubert, Sven

    2016-01-01

    Prevalent face recognition difficulties in Alzheimer's disease (AD) have typically been attributed to the underlying episodic and semantic memory impairment. The aim of the current study was to determine if AD patients are also impaired at the perceptual level for faces, more specifically at extracting a visual representation of an individual face. To address this question, we investigated the matching of simultaneously presented individual faces and of other nonface familiar shapes (cars), at both upright and inverted orientation, in a group of mild AD patients and in a group of healthy older controls matched for age and education. AD patients showed a reduced inversion effect (i.e., larger performance for upright than inverted stimuli) for faces, but not for cars, both in terms of error rates and response times. While healthy participants showed a much larger decrease in performance for faces than for cars with inversion, the inversion effect did not differ significantly for faces and cars in AD. This abnormal inversion effect for faces was observed in a large subset of individual patients with AD. These results suggest that AD patients have deficits in higher-level visual processes, more specifically at perceiving individual faces, a function that relies on holistic representations specific to upright face stimuli. These deficits, combined with their memory impairment, may contribute to the difficulties in recognizing familiar people that are often reported in patients suffering from the disease and by their caregivers.

  20. Face averages enhance user recognition for smartphone security.

    PubMed

    Robertson, David J; Kramer, Robin S S; Burton, A Mike

    2015-01-01

    Our recognition of familiar faces is excellent, and generalises across viewing conditions. However, unfamiliar face recognition is much poorer. For this reason, automatic face recognition systems might benefit from incorporating the advantages of familiarity. Here we put this to the test using the face verification system available on a popular smartphone (the Samsung Galaxy). In two experiments we tested the recognition performance of the smartphone when it was encoded with an individual's 'face-average'--a representation derived from theories of human face perception. This technique significantly improved performance for both unconstrained celebrity images (Experiment 1) and for real faces (Experiment 2): users could unlock their phones more reliably when the device stored an average of the user's face than when they stored a single image. This advantage was consistent across a wide variety of everyday viewing conditions. Furthermore, the benefit did not reduce the rejection of imposter faces. This benefit is brought about solely by consideration of suitable representations for automatic face recognition, and we argue that this is just as important as development of matching algorithms themselves. We propose that this representation could significantly improve recognition rates in everyday settings.

  1. Face Averages Enhance User Recognition for Smartphone Security

    PubMed Central

    Robertson, David J.; Kramer, Robin S. S.; Burton, A. Mike

    2015-01-01

    Our recognition of familiar faces is excellent, and generalises across viewing conditions. However, unfamiliar face recognition is much poorer. For this reason, automatic face recognition systems might benefit from incorporating the advantages of familiarity. Here we put this to the test using the face verification system available on a popular smartphone (the Samsung Galaxy). In two experiments we tested the recognition performance of the smartphone when it was encoded with an individual’s ‘face-average’ – a representation derived from theories of human face perception. This technique significantly improved performance for both unconstrained celebrity images (Experiment 1) and for real faces (Experiment 2): users could unlock their phones more reliably when the device stored an average of the user’s face than when they stored a single image. This advantage was consistent across a wide variety of everyday viewing conditions. Furthermore, the benefit did not reduce the rejection of imposter faces. This benefit is brought about solely by consideration of suitable representations for automatic face recognition, and we argue that this is just as important as development of matching algorithms themselves. We propose that this representation could significantly improve recognition rates in everyday settings. PMID:25807251

  2. The roles of perceptual and conceptual information in face recognition.

    PubMed

    Schwartz, Linoy; Yovel, Galit

    2016-11-01

    The representation of familiar objects is comprised of perceptual information about their visual properties as well as the conceptual knowledge that we have about them. What is the relative contribution of perceptual and conceptual information to object recognition? Here, we examined this question by designing a face familiarization protocol during which participants were either exposed to rich perceptual information (viewing each face in different angles and illuminations) or with conceptual information (associating each face with a different name). Both conditions were compared with single-view faces presented with no labels. Recognition was tested on new images of the same identities to assess whether learning generated a view-invariant representation. Results showed better recognition of novel images of the learned identities following association of a face with a name label, but no enhancement following exposure to multiple face views. Whereas these findings may be consistent with the role of category learning in object recognition, face recognition was better for labeled faces only when faces were associated with person-related labels (name, occupation), but not with person-unrelated labels (object names or symbols). These findings suggest that association of meaningful conceptual information with an image shifts its representation from an image-based percept to a view-invariant concept. They further indicate that the role of conceptual information should be considered to account for the superior recognition that we have for familiar faces and objects. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2016 APA, all rights reserved).

  3. Personal Familiarity Influences the Processing of Upright and Inverted Faces in Infants

    PubMed Central

    Balas, Benjamin J.; Nelson, Charles A.; Westerlund, Alissa; Vogel-Farley, Vanessa; Riggins, Tracy; Kuefner, Dana

    2009-01-01

    Infant face processing becomes more selective during the first year of life as a function of varying experience with distinct face categories defined by species, race, and age. Given that any individual face belongs to many such categories (e.g. A young Caucasian man's face) we asked how the neural selectivity for one aspect of facial appearance was affected by category membership along another dimension of variability. 6-month-old infants were shown upright and inverted pictures of either their own mother or a stranger while event-related potentials (ERPs) were recorded. We found that the amplitude of the P400 (a face-sensitive ERP component) was only sensitive to the orientation of the mother's face, suggesting that “tuning” of the neural response to faces is realized jointly across multiple dimensions of face appearance. PMID:20204154

  4. Covert face recognition in congenital prosopagnosia: a group study.

    PubMed

    Rivolta, Davide; Palermo, Romina; Schmalzl, Laura; Coltheart, Max

    2012-03-01

    Even though people with congenital prosopagnosia (CP) never develop a normal ability to "overtly" recognize faces, some individuals show indices of "covert" (or implicit) face recognition. The aim of this study was to demonstrate covert face recognition in CP when participants could not overtly recognize the faces. Eleven people with CP completed three tasks assessing their overt face recognition ability, and three tasks assessing their "covert" face recognition: a Forced choice familiarity task, a Forced choice cued task, and a Priming task. Evidence of covert recognition was observed with the Forced choice familiarity task, but not the Priming task. In addition, we propose that the Forced choice cued task does not measure covert processing as such, but instead "provoked-overt" recognition. Our study clearly shows that people with CP demonstrate covert recognition for faces that they cannot overtly recognize, and that behavioural tasks vary in their sensitivity to detect covert recognition in CP. Copyright © 2011 Elsevier Srl. All rights reserved.

  5. Long-term information and distributed neural activation are relevant for the "internal features advantage" in face processing: electrophysiological and source reconstruction evidence.

    PubMed

    Olivares, Ela I; Saavedra, Cristina; Trujillo-Barreto, Nelson J; Iglesias, Jaime

    2013-01-01

    In face processing tasks, prior presentation of internal facial features, when compared with external ones, facilitates the recognition of subsequently displayed familiar faces. In a previous ERP study (Olivares & Iglesias, 2010) we found a visibly larger N400-like effect when identity mismatch familiar faces were preceded by internal features, as compared to prior presentation of external ones. In the present study we contrasted the processing of familiar and unfamiliar faces in the face-feature matching task to assess whether the so-called "internal features advantage" relies mainly on the use of stored face-identity-related information or if it might operate independently from stimulus familiarity. Our participants (N = 24) achieved better performance with internal features as primes and, significantly, with familiar faces. Importantly, ERPs elicited by identity mismatch complete faces displayed a negativity around 300-600 msec which was clearly enhanced for familiar faces primed by internal features when compared with the other experimental conditions. Source reconstruction showed incremented activity elicited by familiar stimuli in both posterior (ventral occipitotemporal) and more anterior (parahippocampal (ParaHIP) and orbitofrontal) brain regions. The activity elicited by unfamiliar stimuli was, in general, located in more posterior regions. Our findings suggest that the activation of multiple neural codes is required for optimal individuation in face-feature matching and that a cortical network related to long-term information for face-identity processing seems to support the internal feature effect. Copyright © 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

  6. Repetition priming of face recognition in a serial choice reaction-time task.

    PubMed

    Roberts, T; Bruce, V

    1989-05-01

    Marshall & Walker (1987) found that pictorial stimuli yield visual priming that is disrupted by an unpredictable visual event in the response-stimulus interval. They argue that visual stimuli are represented in memory in the form of distinct visual and object codes. Bruce & Young (1986) propose similar pictorial, structural and semantic codes which mediate the recognition of faces, yet repetition priming results obtained with faces as stimuli (Bruce & Valentine, 1985), and with objects (Warren & Morton, 1982) are quite different from those of Marshall & Walker (1987), in the sense that recognition is facilitated by pictures presented 20 minutes earlier. The experiment reported here used different views of familiar and unfamiliar faces as stimuli in a serial choice reaction-time task and found that, with identical pictures, repetition priming survives and intervening item requiring a response, with both familiar and unfamiliar faces. Furthermore, with familiar faces such priming was present even when the view of the prime was different from the target. The theoretical implications of these results are discussed.

  7. Do pictures of faces, and which ones, capture attention in the inattentional-blindness paradigm?

    PubMed

    Devue, Christel; Laloyaux, Cédric; Feyers, Dorothée; Theeuwes, Jan; Brédart, Serge

    2009-01-01

    Faces and self-referential material (eg one's own name) are more likely to capture attention in the inattentional-blindness (IB) paradigm than other stimuli. This effect is presumably due to the meaning of these stimuli rather than to their familiarity [Mack and Rock, 1998 Inattentional Blindness (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press)]. In previous work, IB has been investigated mostly with schematic stimuli. In the present study, the generalisability of this finding was tested with photographic stimuli. In support of the view that faces constitute a special category of stimuli, pictures of faces were found to resist more to IB than pictures of common objects (experiment 1) or than pictures of inverted faces (experiment 2). In a third experiment, the influence of face familiarity and identity (the participant's own face, a friend's face, and an unknown face) on IB rates was evaluated. Unexpectedly, no differential resistence to blindness across these three kinds of faces was found. In conclusion, pictures of faces attracted attention more than pictures of objects or inverted faces in the IB paradigm. However, this effect was not dependent on face familiarity or identity.

  8. Perceptual and Social Attributes Underlining Age-Related Preferences for Faces

    PubMed Central

    Kiiski, Hanni S. M.; Cullen, Brendan; Clavin, Sarah L.; Newell, Fiona N.

    2016-01-01

    Although aesthetic preferences are known to be important in person perception and can play a significant role in everyday social decisions, the effect of the age of the observer on aesthetic preferences for faces of different ages has not yet been fully investigated. In the present study we investigated whether aesthetic preferences change with aging, with an age-related bias in favoring faces from one’s own age group. In addition, we examined the role of age on both the perceptual qualities and the social attributes of faces that may influence these aesthetic judgements. Both younger and older adult observers provided ratings to images of younger, middle-aged and older unfamiliar faces. As well as attractiveness, the rating dimensions included other perceptual (distinctiveness, familiarity) and social (competence, trustworthiness and dominance) factors. The results suggested a consistent aesthetic preference for youthful faces across all ages of the observers but, surprisingly, no evidence for an age-related bias in attractiveness ratings. Older adults tended to provide higher ratings of attractiveness, competence and trustworthiness to the unfamiliar faces, consistent with the positivity effect previously reported. We also tested whether perceptual factors such as face familiarity or distinctiveness affected aesthetic ratings. Only ratings of familiarity, but not distinctiveness, were positively associated with the attractiveness of the faces. Moreover, ratings of familiarity decreased with increasing age of the face. With regard to the social characteristics of the faces, we found that the age of the face negatively correlated with ratings of trustworthiness provided by all observers, but with the competence ratings of older observers only. Interestingly, older adults provided higher ratings of perceived competence and trustworthiness to younger than older faces. However, our results also suggest that higher attractiveness ratings, together with older aged

  9. Attention to individual identities modulates face processing.

    PubMed

    Ruz, María; Aranda, Clara; Sarmiento, Beatriz R; Sanabria, Daniel

    2015-05-01

    The ability of attention to apply in a flexible manner to several types of information at various stages of processing has been studied extensively. However, the susceptibility of these effects to the nature of the idiosyncratic items being attended is less understood. In the current study, we used symbolic cues to orient the attention of participants to the subsequent appearance of the face of a famous person (the former king of Spain) or an unfamiliar face. These were matched in perceptual characteristics. Behavioral effects showed that face-specific attention optimized response speed in an orthogonal task when the target matched the cue (valid trials) compared to when it did not (invalid trials). According to topographical analyses of the electrophysiological data, the famous and unfamiliar faces engaged dissociable brain circuits in two different temporal windows, from 144 to 300 ms after target processing, and at a later 456-492 ms epoch. In addition, orienting attention to specific faces modulated the perceptual stages reflected in the P1 and N170 potentials but with a different laterality pattern that depended on the familiarity of the faces. Whereas only attention to the famous face enhanced the P1 potential at left posterior electrodes, with no corresponding effect for the unfamiliar face at this stage, the N170 was modulated at left posterior sites for the famous item and at right homologous electrodes for the unfamiliar face. Intermediate processing stages, previously linked to facial identity processing indexed by the P2 and N2 potentials, reflected item familiarity but were not affected by the cueing manipulation. At the P3 level, attention influenced again item processing but did so in an equivalent manner for the famous and unfamiliar face. Our results, showing that identity-specific attention modulates perceptual stages of facial processing at different locations depending on idiosyncratic stimulus familiarity, may inform comparison of studies

  10. Nestsite selection by male loons leads to sex-biased site familiarity.

    PubMed

    Piper, Walter H; Walcott, Charles; Mager, John N; Spilker, Frank J

    2008-03-01

    1. The concept that animals benefit from gaining familiarity with physical spaces is widespread among ecologists and constitutes a theoretical pillar in studies of territory defence, philopatry and habitat selection. Yet proximate causes and fitness benefits of site familiarity are poorly known. 2. We used data from marked common loons Gavia immer breeding on 98 territories over 14 years to investigate the 'win-stay, lose-switch rule' for nestsite placement (if eggs hatch, reuse nestsite; if predator takes eggs, move nestsite). Males controlled nest placement in this species: pairs used the rule if both members remained the same from the previous nesting attempt or if only the male remained the same but not if only the female remained the same. 3. By means of the nesting rule, male common loons benefited from site familiarity, increasing nesting success by 41% between their first and third years on a territory. In contrast, females exhibited no increase in nesting success with increased territorial tenure. 4. Owing to site familiarity, a male loon competing for a breeding territory faces a considerable 'familiarity deficit' compared with the male breeder already established there. The familiarity deficit probably explains why resident animals often fight hard to retain familiar territories, when challenged, and why animals of many species tend to remain on familiar territories rather than moving when territories of higher intrinsic quality become available nearby.

  11. A language-familiarity effect for speaker discrimination without comprehension.

    PubMed

    Fleming, David; Giordano, Bruno L; Caldara, Roberto; Belin, Pascal

    2014-09-23

    The influence of language familiarity upon speaker identification is well established, to such an extent that it has been argued that "Human voice recognition depends on language ability" [Perrachione TK, Del Tufo SN, Gabrieli JDE (2011) Science 333(6042):595]. However, 7-mo-old infants discriminate speakers of their mother tongue better than they do foreign speakers [Johnson EK, Westrek E, Nazzi T, Cutler A (2011) Dev Sci 14(5):1002-1011] despite their limited speech comprehension abilities, suggesting that speaker discrimination may rely on familiarity with the sound structure of one's native language rather than the ability to comprehend speech. To test this hypothesis, we asked Chinese and English adult participants to rate speaker dissimilarity in pairs of sentences in English or Mandarin that were first time-reversed to render them unintelligible. Even in these conditions a language-familiarity effect was observed: Both Chinese and English listeners rated pairs of native-language speakers as more dissimilar than foreign-language speakers, despite their inability to understand the material. Our data indicate that the language familiarity effect is not based on comprehension but rather on familiarity with the phonology of one's native language. This effect may stem from a mechanism analogous to the "other-race" effect in face recognition.

  12. Face-Recognition Memory: Implications for Children's Eyewitness Testimony.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Chance, June E.; Goldstein, Alvin G.

    1984-01-01

    Reviews studies of face-recognition memory and considers implications for assessing the dependability of children's performances as eyewitnesses. Considers personal factors (age, intellectual differences, and gender) and situational factors (familiarity of face, retention interval, and others). Also identifies developmental questions for future…

  13. Face recognition in schizophrenia: do individual and average ROCs tell the same story?

    PubMed

    Tiberghien, Guy; Martin, Clara; Baudouin, Jean-Yves; Franck, Nicolas; Guillaume, Fabrice; Huron, Caroline

    2015-01-01

    Many studies have shown that recollection process is impaired in patients with schizophrenia, whereas familiarity is generally spared. However, in these studies, the Receiver Operating Characteristic (ROC) presented is average ROC likely to mask individual differences. In the present study using a face-recognition task, we computed the individual ROC of patients with schizophrenia and control participants. Each group was divided into two subgroups on the basis of the type of recognition processes implemented: recognition based on familiarity only and recognition based on familiarity and recollection. The recognition performance of the schizophrenia patients was below that of the control participants only when recognition was based solely on familiarity. For the familiarity-alone patients, the score obtained on the Scale for the Assessment of Positive Symptoms (SAPS) was correlated with the variance of the old-face familiarity. For the familiarity-recollection patients, the score obtained on the Scale for the Assessment of Negative Symptoms (SANS) was correlated with the decision criterion and with the old-face recollection probability. These results show that one cannot ascribe the impaired recognition observed in patients with schizophrenia to a recollection deficit alone. These results show that individual ROC can be used to distinguish between subtypes of schizophrenia and could serve as a basis for setting up specific cognitive remediation therapy for individuals with schizophrenia.

  14. Face the Fats Quiz 2

    MedlinePlus

    ... heart? Ready to make informed choices about the foods you eat? From fish to French fries to fried chicken, test your knowledge about the fats in some familiar foods. Welcome to Face the Fats Quiz II - and ...

  15. Perceptual discrimination difficulty and familiarity in the Uncanny Valley: more like a "Happy Valley".

    PubMed

    Cheetham, Marcus; Suter, Pascal; Jancke, Lutz

    2014-01-01

    The Uncanny Valley Hypothesis (UVH) predicts that greater difficulty perceptually discriminating between categorically ambiguous human and humanlike characters (e.g., highly realistic robot) evokes negatively valenced (i.e., uncanny) affect. An ABX perceptual discrimination task and signal detection analysis was used to examine the profile of perceptual discrimination (PD) difficulty along the UVH' dimension of human likeness (DHL). This was represented using avatar-to-human morph continua. Rejecting the implicitly assumed profile of PD difficulty underlying the UVH' prediction, Experiment 1 showed that PD difficulty was reduced for categorically ambiguous faces but, notably, enhanced for human faces. Rejecting the UVH' predicted relationship between PD difficulty and negative affect (assessed in terms of the UVH' familiarity dimension), Experiment 2 demonstrated that greater PD difficulty correlates with more positively valenced affect. Critically, this effect was strongest for the ambiguous faces, suggesting a correlative relationship between PD difficulty and feelings of familiarity more consistent with the metaphor happy valley. This relationship is also consistent with a fluency amplification instead of the hitherto proposed hedonic fluency account of affect along the DHL. Experiment 3 found no evidence that the asymmetry in the profile of PD along the DHL is attributable to a differential processing bias (cf. other-race effect), i.e., processing avatars at a category level but human faces at an individual level. In conclusion, the present data for static faces show clear effects that, however, strongly challenge the UVH' implicitly assumed profile of PD difficulty along the DHL and the predicted relationship between this and feelings of familiarity.

  16. Reduced autonomic responses to faces in Capgras delusion.

    PubMed

    Ellis, H D; Young, A W; Quayle, A H; De Pauw, K W

    1997-07-22

    People experiencing the Capgras delusion claim that others, usually those quite close emotionally, have been replaced by near-identical impostors. Ellis & Young suggested in 1990 that the Capgras delusion results from damage to a neurological system involved in orienting responses to seen faces based on their personal significance. This hypothesis predicts that people suffering the Capgras delusion will be hyporesponsive to familiar faces. We tested this prediction in five people with Capgras delusion. Comparison data were obtained from five middle-aged members of the general public, and a psychiatric control group of five patients taking similar anti-psychotic medication. Capgras delusion patients did not reveal autonomic discrimination between familiar and unfamiliar faces, but orienting responses to auditory tones were normal in magnitude and rate of initial habituation, showing that the hyporesponsiveness is circumscribed.

  17. Reduced autonomic responses to faces in Capgras delusion.

    PubMed Central

    Ellis, H D; Young, A W; Quayle, A H; De Pauw, K W

    1997-01-01

    People experiencing the Capgras delusion claim that others, usually those quite close emotionally, have been replaced by near-identical impostors. Ellis & Young suggested in 1990 that the Capgras delusion results from damage to a neurological system involved in orienting responses to seen faces based on their personal significance. This hypothesis predicts that people suffering the Capgras delusion will be hyporesponsive to familiar faces. We tested this prediction in five people with Capgras delusion. Comparison data were obtained from five middle-aged members of the general public, and a psychiatric control group of five patients taking similar anti-psychotic medication. Capgras delusion patients did not reveal autonomic discrimination between familiar and unfamiliar faces, but orienting responses to auditory tones were normal in magnitude and rate of initial habituation, showing that the hyporesponsiveness is circumscribed. PMID:9263474

  18. Structural aspects of face recognition and the other-race effect.

    PubMed

    O'Toole, A J; Deffenbacher, K A; Valentin, D; Abdi, H

    1994-03-01

    The other-race effect was examined in a series of experiments and simulations that looked at the relationships among observer ratings of typicality, familiarity, attractiveness, memorability, and the performance variables of d' and criterion. Experiment 1 replicated the other-race effect with our Caucasian and Japanese stimuli for both Caucasian and Asian observers. In Experiment 2, we collected ratings from Caucasian observers on the faces used in the recognition task. A Varimax-rotated principal components analysis on the rating and performance data for the Caucasian faces replicated Vokey and Read's (1992) finding that typicality is composed of two orthogonal components, dissociable via their independent relationships to: (1) attractiveness and familiarity ratings and (2) memorability ratings. For Japanese faces, however, we found that typicality was related only to memorability. Where performance measures were concerned, two additional principal components dominated by criterion and by d' emerged for Caucasian faces. For the Japanese faces, however, the performance measures of d' and criterion merged into a single component that represented a second component of typicality, one orthogonal to the memorability-dominated component. A measure of face representation quality extracted from an autoassociative neural network trained with a majority of Caucasian faces and a minority of Japanese faces was incorporated into the principal components analysis. For both Caucasian and Japanese faces, the neural network measure related both to memorability ratings and to human accuracy measures. Combined, the human data and simulation results indicate that the memorability component of typicality may be related to small, local, distinctive features, whereas the attractiveness/familiarity component may be more related to the global, shape-based properties of the face.

  19. Movement cues aid face recognition in developmental prosopagnosia.

    PubMed

    Bennetts, Rachel J; Butcher, Natalie; Lander, Karen; Udale, Robert; Bate, Sarah

    2015-11-01

    Seeing a face in motion can improve face recognition in the general population, and studies of face matching indicate that people with face recognition difficulties (developmental prosopagnosia; DP) may be able to use movement cues as a supplementary strategy to help them process faces. However, the use of facial movement cues in DP has not been examined in the context of familiar face recognition. This study examined whether people with DP were better at recognizing famous faces presented in motion, compared to static. Nine participants with DP and 14 age-matched controls completed a famous face recognition task. Each face was presented twice across 2 blocks: once in motion and once as a still image. Discriminability (A) was calculated for each block. Participants with DP showed a significant movement advantage overall. This was driven by a movement advantage in the first block, but not in the second block. Participants with DP were significantly worse than controls at identifying faces from static images, but there was no difference between those with DP and controls for moving images. Seeing a familiar face in motion can improve face recognition in people with DP, at least in some circumstances. The mechanisms behind this effect are unclear, but these results suggest that some people with DP are able to learn and recognize patterns of facial motion, and movement can act as a useful cue when face recognition is impaired. (c) 2015 APA, all rights reserved).

  20. Face recognition in capuchin monkeys (Cebus apella).

    PubMed

    Pokorny, Jennifer J; de Waal, Frans B M

    2009-05-01

    Primates live in complex social groups that necessitate recognition of the individuals with whom they interact. In humans, faces provide a visual means by which to gain information such as identity, allowing us to distinguish between both familiar and unfamiliar individuals. The current study used a computerized oddity task to investigate whether a New World primate, Cebus apella, can discriminate the faces of In-group and Out-group conspecifics based on identity. The current study, improved on past methodologies, demonstrates that capuchins recognize the faces of both familiar and unfamiliar conspecifics. Once a performance criterion had been reached, subjects successfully transferred to a large number of novel images within the first 100 trials thus ruling out performance based on previous conditioning. Capuchins can be added to a growing list of primates that appear to recognize two-dimensional facial images of conspecifics. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2009 APA, all rights reserved).

  1. Characterizing the spatio-temporal dynamics of the neural events occurring prior to and up to overt recognition of famous faces.

    PubMed

    Jemel, Boutheina; Schuller, Anne-Marie; Goffaux, Valérie

    2010-10-01

    Although it is generally acknowledged that familiar face recognition is fast, mandatory, and proceeds outside conscious control, it is still unclear whether processes leading to familiar face recognition occur in a linear (i.e., gradual) or a nonlinear (i.e., all-or-none) manner. To test these two alternative accounts, we recorded scalp ERPs while participants indicated whether they recognize as familiar the faces of famous and unfamiliar persons gradually revealed in a descending sequence of frames, from the noisier to the least noisy. This presentation procedure allowed us to characterize the changes in scalp ERP responses occurring prior to and up to overt recognition. Our main finding is that gradual and all-or-none processes are possibly involved during overt recognition of familiar faces. Although the N170 and the N250 face-sensitive responses displayed an abrupt activity change at the moment of overt recognition of famous faces, later ERPs encompassing the N400 and late positive component exhibited an incremental increase in amplitude as the point of recognition approached. In addition, famous faces that were not overtly recognized at one trial before recognition elicited larger ERP potentials than unfamiliar faces, probably reflecting a covert recognition process. Overall, these findings present evidence that recognition of familiar faces implicates spatio-temporally complex neural processes exhibiting differential pattern activity changes as a function of recognition state.

  2. Mapping attractor fields in face space: the atypicality bias in face recognition.

    PubMed

    Tanaka, J; Giles, M; Kremen, S; Simon, V

    1998-09-01

    A familiar face can be recognized across many changes in the stimulus input. In this research, the many-to-one mapping of face stimuli to a single face memory is referred to as a face memory's 'attractor field'. According to the attractor field approach, a face memory will be activated by any stimuli falling within the boundaries of its attractor field. It was predicted that by virtue of its location in a multi-dimensional face space, the attractor field of an atypical face will be larger than the attractor field of a typical face. To test this prediction, subjects make likeness judgments to morphed faces that contained a 50/50 contribution from an atypical and a typical parent face. The main result of four experiments was that the morph face was judged to bear a stronger resemblance to the atypical face parent than the typical face parent. The computational basis of the atypicality bias was demonstrated in a neural network simulation where morph inputs of atypical and typical representations elicited stronger activation of atypical output units than of typical output units. Together, the behavioral and simulation evidence supports the view that the attractor fields of atypical faces span over a broader region of face space that the attractor fields of typical faces.

  3. Face recognition in newly hatched chicks at the onset of vision.

    PubMed

    Wood, Samantha M W; Wood, Justin N

    2015-04-01

    How does face recognition emerge in the newborn brain? To address this question, we used an automated controlled-rearing method with a newborn animal model: the domestic chick (Gallus gallus). This automated method allowed us to examine chicks' face recognition abilities at the onset of both face experience and object experience. In the first week of life, newly hatched chicks were raised in controlled-rearing chambers that contained no objects other than a single virtual human face. In the second week of life, we used an automated forced-choice testing procedure to examine whether chicks could distinguish that familiar face from a variety of unfamiliar faces. Chicks successfully distinguished the familiar face from most of the unfamiliar faces-for example, chicks were sensitive to changes in the face's age, gender, and orientation (upright vs. inverted). Thus, chicks can build an accurate representation of the first face they see in their life. These results show that the initial state of face recognition is surprisingly powerful: Newborn visual systems can begin encoding and recognizing faces at the onset of vision. (c) 2015 APA, all rights reserved).

  4. Eye tracking reveals a crucial role for facial motion in recognition of faces by infants

    PubMed Central

    Xiao, Naiqi G.; Quinn, Paul C.; Liu, Shaoying; Ge, Liezhong; Pascalis, Olivier; Lee, Kang

    2015-01-01

    Current knowledge about face processing in infancy comes largely from studies using static face stimuli, but faces that infants see in the real world are mostly moving ones. To bridge this gap, 3-, 6-, and 9-month-old Asian infants (N = 118) were familiarized with either moving or static Asian female faces and then their face recognition was tested with static face images. Eye tracking methodology was used to record eye movements during familiarization and test phases. The results showed a developmental change in eye movement patterns, but only for the moving faces. In addition, the more infants shifted their fixations across facial regions, the better was their face recognition, but only for the moving faces. The results suggest that facial movement influences the way faces are encoded from early in development. PMID:26010387

  5. Problems of Face Recognition in Patients with Behavioral Variant Frontotemporal Dementia.

    PubMed

    Chandra, Sadanandavalli Retnaswami; Patwardhan, Ketaki; Pai, Anupama Ramakanth

    2017-01-01

    Faces are very special as they are most essential for social cognition in humans. It is partly understood that face processing in its abstractness involves several extra striate areas. One of the most important causes for caregiver suffering in patients with anterior dementia is lack of empathy. This apart from being a behavioral disorder could be also due to failure to categorize the emotions of the people around them. Inlusion criteria: DSM IV for Bv FTD Tested for prosopagnosia - familiar faces, famous face, smiling face, crying face and reflected face using a simple picture card (figure 1). Advanced illness and mixed causes. 46 patients (15 females, 31 males) 24 had defective face recognition. (mean age 51.5),10/15 females (70%) and 14/31males(47. Familiar face recognition defect was found in 6/10 females and 6/14 males. Total- 40%(6/15) females and 19.35%(6/31)males with FTD had familiar face recognition. Famous Face: 9/10 females and 7/14 males. Total- 60% (9/15) females with FTD had famous face recognition defect as against 22.6%(7/31) males with FTD Smiling face defects in 8/10 female and no males. Total- 53.33% (8/15) females. Crying face recognition defect in 3/10 female and 2 /14 males. Total- 20%(3/15) females and 6.5%(2/31) males. Reflected face recognition defect in 4 females. Famous face recognition and positive emotion recognition defect in 80%, only 20% comprehend positive emotions, Face recognition defects are found in only 45% of males and more common in females. Face recognition is more affected in females with FTD There is differential involvement of different aspects of the face recognition could be one of the important factor underlying decline in the emotional and social behavior of these patients. Understanding these pathological processes will give more insight regarding patient behavior.

  6. Perceptual discrimination difficulty and familiarity in the Uncanny Valley: more like a “Happy Valley”

    PubMed Central

    Cheetham, Marcus; Suter, Pascal; Jancke, Lutz

    2014-01-01

    The Uncanny Valley Hypothesis (UVH) predicts that greater difficulty perceptually discriminating between categorically ambiguous human and humanlike characters (e.g., highly realistic robot) evokes negatively valenced (i.e., uncanny) affect. An ABX perceptual discrimination task and signal detection analysis was used to examine the profile of perceptual discrimination (PD) difficulty along the UVH' dimension of human likeness (DHL). This was represented using avatar-to-human morph continua. Rejecting the implicitly assumed profile of PD difficulty underlying the UVH' prediction, Experiment 1 showed that PD difficulty was reduced for categorically ambiguous faces but, notably, enhanced for human faces. Rejecting the UVH' predicted relationship between PD difficulty and negative affect (assessed in terms of the UVH' familiarity dimension), Experiment 2 demonstrated that greater PD difficulty correlates with more positively valenced affect. Critically, this effect was strongest for the ambiguous faces, suggesting a correlative relationship between PD difficulty and feelings of familiarity more consistent with the metaphor happy valley. This relationship is also consistent with a fluency amplification instead of the hitherto proposed hedonic fluency account of affect along the DHL. Experiment 3 found no evidence that the asymmetry in the profile of PD along the DHL is attributable to a differential processing bias (cf. other-race effect), i.e., processing avatars at a category level but human faces at an individual level. In conclusion, the present data for static faces show clear effects that, however, strongly challenge the UVH' implicitly assumed profile of PD difficulty along the DHL and the predicted relationship between this and feelings of familiarity. PMID:25477829

  7. The Familiar Observer: Seeing beyond the Expected in Educational Research

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Hollenbeck, Amy Feiker

    2015-01-01

    Reflection on subjectivity in the qualitative research process is fundamental to the methodology. Although much attention is paid to what to do (identify subjectivities), there is much less emphasis on how one should do this. Furthermore, a researcher engaged in an intimately familiar setting, such as a typical American classroom, faces the unique…

  8. Distinct but Overlapping Patterns of Response to Words and Faces in the Fusiform Gyrus.

    PubMed

    Harris, Richard J; Rice, Grace E; Young, Andrew W; Andrews, Timothy J

    2016-07-01

    Converging evidence suggests that the fusiform gyrus is involved in the processing of both faces and words. We used fMRI to investigate the extent to which the representation of words and faces in this region of the brain is based on a common neural representation. In Experiment 1, a univariate analysis revealed regions in the fusiform gyrus that were only selective for faces and other regions that were only selective for words. However, we also found regions that showed both word-selective and face-selective responses, particularly in the left hemisphere. We then used a multivariate analysis to measure the pattern of response to faces and words. Despite the overlap in regional responses, we found distinct patterns of response to both faces and words in the left and right fusiform gyrus. In Experiment 2, fMR adaptation was used to determine whether information about familiar faces and names is integrated in the fusiform gyrus. Distinct regions of the fusiform gyrus showed adaptation to either familiar faces or familiar names. However, there was no adaptation to sequences of faces and names with the same identity. Taken together, these results provide evidence for distinct, but overlapping, neural representations for words and faces in the fusiform gyrus. © The Author 2015. Published by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved. For Permissions, please e-mail: journals.permissions@oup.com.

  9. Neural correlates of facilitations in face learning by selective caricaturing of facial shape or reflectance.

    PubMed

    Itz, Marlena L; Schweinberger, Stefan R; Schulz, Claudia; Kaufmann, Jürgen M

    2014-11-15

    Spatially caricatured faces were recently shown to benefit face learning (Schulz et al., 2012a). Moreover, spatial information may be particularly important for encoding unfamiliar faces, but less so for recognizing familiar faces (Kaufmann et al., 2013). To directly test the possibility of a major role of reflectance information for the recognition of familiar faces, we compared effects of selective photorealistic caricaturing in either shape or reflectance on face learning and recognition. Participants learned 3D-photographed faces across different viewpoints, and different images were presented at learning and test. At test, performance benefits for both types of caricatures were modulated by familiarity: Benefits for learned faces were substantially larger for reflectance caricatures, whereas benefits for novel faces were numerically larger for shape caricatures. ERPs confirmed a consistent reduction of the occipitotemporal P200 (200-240 ms) by shape caricaturing, whereas the most prominent effect of reflectance caricaturing was seen in an enhanced posterior N250 (240-400 ms), a component that has been related to the activation of acquired face representations. Our results suggest that performance benefits for face learning caused by distinctive spatial versus reflectance information are mediated by different neural processes with different timing and support a prominent role of reflectance for the recognition of learned faces. Copyright © 2014 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

  10. Faces in Context: Does Face Perception Depend on the Orientation of the Visual Scene?

    PubMed

    Taubert, Jessica; van Golde, Celine; Verstraten, Frans A J

    2016-10-01

    The mechanisms held responsible for familiar face recognition are thought to be orientation dependent; inverted faces are more difficult to recognize than their upright counterparts. Although this effect of inversion has been investigated extensively, researchers have typically sliced faces from photographs and presented them in isolation. As such, it is not known whether the perceived orientation of a face is inherited from the visual scene in which it appears. Here, we address this question by measuring performance in a simultaneous same-different task while manipulating both the orientation of the faces and the scene. We found that the face inversion effect survived scene inversion. Nonetheless, an improvement in performance when the scene was upside down suggests that sensitivity to identity increased when the faces were more easily segmented from the scene. Thus, while these data identify congruency with the visual environment as a contributing factor in recognition performance, they imply different mechanisms operate on upright and inverted faces. © The Author(s) 2016.

  11. Beneficial effects of verbalization and visual distinctiveness on remembering and knowing faces.

    PubMed

    Brown, Charity; Lloyd-Jones, Toby J

    2006-03-01

    We examined the effect of verbally describing faces upon visual memory. In particular, we examined the locus of the facilitative effects of verbalization by manipulating the visual distinctiveness ofthe to-be-remembered faces and using the remember/know procedure as a measure of recognition performance (i.e., remember vs. know judgments). Participants were exposed to distinctive faces intermixed with typical faces and described (or not, in the control condition) each face following its presentation. Subsequently, the participants discriminated the original faces from distinctive and typical distractors in a yes/no recognition decision and made remember/know judgments. Distinctive faces elicited better discrimination performance than did typical faces. Furthermore, for both typical and distinctive faces, better discrimination performance was obtained in the description than in the control condition. Finally, these effects were evident for both recollection- and familiarity-based recognition decisions. We argue that verbalization and visual distinctiveness independently benefit face recognition, and we discuss these findings in terms of the nature of verbalization and the role of recollective and familiarity-based processes in recognition.

  12. Mothers Respond Differently to Infants' Familiar versus Non-Familiar Verbal Imitations

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Olson, Janet; Masur, Elise Frank

    2012-01-01

    Mothers' verbal responses to their infants' spontaneous imitations of familiar and non-familiar words during naturally occurring interactions were examined in a longitudinal sample observed at 1 ; 1, 1 ; 5 and 1 ; 9. Maternal responses to both familiar and non-familiar imitations exhibited structural characteristics likely to be facilitative of…

  13. Eye tracking reveals a crucial role for facial motion in recognition of faces by infants.

    PubMed

    Xiao, Naiqi G; Quinn, Paul C; Liu, Shaoying; Ge, Liezhong; Pascalis, Olivier; Lee, Kang

    2015-06-01

    Current knowledge about face processing in infancy comes largely from studies using static face stimuli, but faces that infants see in the real world are mostly moving ones. To bridge this gap, 3-, 6-, and 9-month-old Asian infants (N = 118) were familiarized with either moving or static Asian female faces, and then their face recognition was tested with static face images. Eye-tracking methodology was used to record eye movements during the familiarization and test phases. The results showed a developmental change in eye movement patterns, but only for the moving faces. In addition, the more infants shifted their fixations across facial regions, the better their face recognition was, but only for the moving faces. The results suggest that facial movement influences the way faces are encoded from early in development. (c) 2015 APA, all rights reserved).

  14. First Impressions From Faces.

    PubMed

    Zebrowitz, Leslie A

    2017-06-01

    Although cultural wisdom warns 'don't judge a book by its cover,' we seem unable to inhibit this tendency even though it can produce inaccurate impressions of people's psychological traits and has significant social consequences. One explanation for this paradox is that first impressions of faces overgeneralize our adaptive impressions of categories of people that those faces resemble (including babies, familiar or unfamiliar people, unfit people, emotional people). Research testing these 'overgeneralization' hypotheses elucidates why we form first impressions from faces, what impressions we form, and what cues influence these impressions. This article focuses on commonalities in impressions across diverse perceivers. However, brief attention is given to individual differences in impressions and impression accuracy.

  15. Internal versus external features in triggering the brain waveforms for conjunction and feature faces in recognition.

    PubMed

    Nie, Aiqing; Jiang, Jingguo; Fu, Qiao

    2014-08-20

    Previous research has found that conjunction faces (whose internal features, e.g. eyes, nose, and mouth, and external features, e.g. hairstyle and ears, are from separate studied faces) and feature faces (partial features of these are studied) can produce higher false alarms than both old and new faces (i.e. those that are exactly the same as the studied faces and those that have not been previously presented) in recognition. The event-related potentials (ERPs) that relate to conjunction and feature faces at recognition, however, have not been described as yet; in addition, the contributions of different facial features toward ERPs have not been differentiated. To address these issues, the present study compared the ERPs elicited by old faces, conjunction faces (the internal and the external features were from two studied faces), old internal feature faces (whose internal features were studied), and old external feature faces (whose external features were studied) with those of new faces separately. The results showed that old faces not only elicited an early familiarity-related FN400, but a more anterior distributed late old/new effect that reflected recollection. Conjunction faces evoked similar late brain waveforms as old internal feature faces, but not to old external feature faces. These results suggest that, at recognition, old faces hold higher familiarity than compound faces in the profiles of ERPs and internal facial features are more crucial than external ones in triggering the brain waveforms that are characterized as reflecting the result of familiarity.

  16. Mere Exposure and Racial Prejudice: Exposure to Other-Race Faces Increases Liking for Strangers of That Race

    PubMed Central

    Zebrowitz, Leslie A.; White, Benjamin; Wieneke, Kristin

    2009-01-01

    White participants were exposed to other-race or own-race faces to test the generalized mere exposure hypothesis in the domain of face perception, namely that exposure to a set of faces yields increased liking for similar faces that have never been seen. In Experiment 1, rapid supraliminal exposures to Asian faces increased White participants' subsequent liking for a different set of Asian faces. In Experiment 2, subliminal exposures to Black faces increased White participants' subsequent liking for a different set of Black faces. The findings are consistent with prominent explanations for mere exposure effects as well as with the familiar face overgeneralization hypothesis that prejudice derives in part from negative reactions to faces that deviate from the familiar own-race prototype, PMID:19584948

  17. Mere Exposure and Racial Prejudice: Exposure to Other-Race Faces Increases Liking for Strangers of That Race.

    PubMed

    Zebrowitz, Leslie A; White, Benjamin; Wieneke, Kristin

    2008-01-01

    White participants were exposed to other-race or own-race faces to test the generalized mere exposure hypothesis in the domain of face perception, namely that exposure to a set of faces yields increased liking for similar faces that have never been seen. In Experiment 1, rapid supraliminal exposures to Asian faces increased White participants' subsequent liking for a different set of Asian faces. In Experiment 2, subliminal exposures to Black faces increased White participants' subsequent liking for a different set of Black faces. The findings are consistent with prominent explanations for mere exposure effects as well as with the familiar face overgeneralization hypothesis that prejudice derives in part from negative reactions to faces that deviate from the familiar own-race prototype.

  18. The Role of External Features in Face Recognition with Central Vision Loss.

    PubMed

    Bernard, Jean-Baptiste; Chung, Susana T L

    2016-05-01

    We evaluated how the performance of recognizing familiar face images depends on the internal (eyebrows, eyes, nose, mouth) and external face features (chin, outline of face, hairline) in individuals with central vision loss. In experiment 1, we measured eye movements for four observers with central vision loss to determine whether they fixated more often on the internal or the external features of face images while attempting to recognize the images. We then measured the accuracy for recognizing face images that contained only the internal, only the external, or both internal and external features (experiment 2) and for hybrid images where the internal and external features came from two different source images (experiment 3) for five observers with central vision loss and four age-matched control observers. When recognizing familiar face images, approximately 40% of the fixations of observers with central vision loss was centered on the external features of faces. The recognition accuracy was higher for images containing only external features (66.8 ± 3.3% correct) than for images containing only internal features (35.8 ± 15.0%), a finding contradicting that of control observers. For hybrid face images, observers with central vision loss responded more accurately to the external features (50.4 ± 17.8%) than to the internal features (9.3 ± 4.9%), whereas control observers did not show the same bias toward responding to the external features. Contrary to people with normal vision who rely more on the internal features of face images for recognizing familiar faces, individuals with central vision loss show a higher dependence on using external features of face images.

  19. Infant discrimination of faces in naturalistic events: actions are more salient than faces.

    PubMed

    Bahrick, Lorraine E; Newell, Lisa C

    2008-07-01

    Despite the fact that faces are typically seen in the context of dynamic events, there is little research on infants' perception of moving faces. L. E. Bahrick, L. J. Gogate, and I. Ruiz (2002) demonstrated that 5-month-old infants discriminate and remember repetitive actions but not the faces of the women performing the actions. The present research tested an attentional salience explanation for these findings: that dynamic faces are discriminable to infants, but more salient actions compete for attention. Results demonstrated that 5-month-old infants discriminated faces in the context of actions when they had longer familiarization time (Experiment 1) and following habituation to a single person performing 3 different activities (Experiment 2). Further, 7-month-old infants who have had more experience with social events also discriminated faces in the context of actions. Overall, however, discrimination of actions was more robust and occurred earlier in processing time than discrimination of dynamic faces. These findings support an attentional salience hypothesis and indicate that faces are not special in the context of actions in early infancy.

  20. Efficient visual information for unfamiliar face matching despite viewpoint variations: It's not in the eyes!

    PubMed

    Royer, Jessica; Blais, Caroline; Barnabé-Lortie, Vincent; Carré, Mélissa; Leclerc, Josiane; Fiset, Daniel

    2016-06-01

    Faces are encountered in highly diverse angles in real-world settings. Despite this considerable diversity, most individuals are able to easily recognize familiar faces. The vast majority of studies in the field of face recognition have nonetheless focused almost exclusively on frontal views of faces. Indeed, a number of authors have investigated the diagnostic facial features for the recognition of frontal views of faces previously encoded in this same view. However, the nature of the information useful for identity matching when the encoded face and test face differ in viewing angle remains mostly unexplored. The present study addresses this issue using individual differences and bubbles, a method that pinpoints the facial features effectively used in a visual categorization task. Our results indicate that the use of features located in the center of the face, the lower left portion of the nose area and the center of the mouth, are significantly associated with individual efficiency to generalize a face's identity across different viewpoints. However, as faces become more familiar, the reliance on this area decreases, while the diagnosticity of the eye region increases. This suggests that a certain distinction can be made between the visual mechanisms subtending viewpoint invariance and face recognition in the case of unfamiliar face identification. Our results further support the idea that the eye area may only come into play when the face stimulus is particularly familiar to the observer. Copyright © 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

  1. Discrimination of human and dog faces and inversion responses in domestic dogs (Canis familiaris).

    PubMed

    Racca, Anaïs; Amadei, Eleonora; Ligout, Séverine; Guo, Kun; Meints, Kerstin; Mills, Daniel

    2010-05-01

    Although domestic dogs can respond to many facial cues displayed by other dogs and humans, it remains unclear whether they can differentiate individual dogs or humans based on facial cues alone and, if so, whether they would demonstrate the face inversion effect, a behavioural hallmark commonly used in primates to differentiate face processing from object processing. In this study, we first established the applicability of the visual paired comparison (VPC or preferential looking) procedure for dogs using a simple object discrimination task with 2D pictures. The animals demonstrated a clear looking preference for novel objects when simultaneously presented with prior-exposed familiar objects. We then adopted this VPC procedure to assess their face discrimination and inversion responses. Dogs showed a deviation from random behaviour, indicating discrimination capability when inspecting upright dog faces, human faces and object images; but the pattern of viewing preference was dependent upon image category. They directed longer viewing time at novel (vs. familiar) human faces and objects, but not at dog faces, instead, a longer viewing time at familiar (vs. novel) dog faces was observed. No significant looking preference was detected for inverted images regardless of image category. Our results indicate that domestic dogs can use facial cues alone to differentiate individual dogs and humans and that they exhibit a non-specific inversion response. In addition, the discrimination response by dogs of human and dog faces appears to differ with the type of face involved.

  2. Reverse engineering the face space: Discovering the critical features for face identification.

    PubMed

    Abudarham, Naphtali; Yovel, Galit

    2016-01-01

    How do we identify people? What are the critical facial features that define an identity and determine whether two faces belong to the same person or different people? To answer these questions, we applied the face space framework, according to which faces are represented as points in a multidimensional feature space, such that face space distances are correlated with perceptual similarities between faces. In particular, we developed a novel method that allowed us to reveal the critical dimensions (i.e., critical features) of the face space. To that end, we constructed a concrete face space, which included 20 facial features of natural face images, and asked human observers to evaluate feature values (e.g., how thick are the lips). Next, we systematically and quantitatively changed facial features, and measured the perceptual effects of these manipulations. We found that critical features were those for which participants have high perceptual sensitivity (PS) for detecting differences across identities (e.g., which of two faces has thicker lips). Furthermore, these high PS features vary minimally across different views of the same identity, suggesting high PS features support face recognition across different images of the same face. The methods described here set an infrastructure for discovering the critical features of other face categories not studied here (e.g., Asians, familiar) as well as other aspects of face processing, such as attractiveness or trait inferences.

  3. First Impressions From Faces

    PubMed Central

    Zebrowitz, Leslie A

    2016-01-01

    Although cultural wisdom warns ‘don’t judge a book by its cover,’ we seem unable to inhibit this tendency even though it can produce inaccurate impressions of people’s psychological traits and has significant social consequences. One explanation for this paradox is that first impressions of faces overgeneralize our adaptive impressions of categories of people that those faces resemble (including babies, familiar or unfamiliar people, unfit people, emotional people). Research testing these ‘overgeneralization’ hypotheses elucidates why we form first impressions from faces, what impressions we form, and what cues influence these impressions. This article focuses on commonalities in impressions across diverse perceivers. However, brief attention is given to individual differences in impressions and impression accuracy. PMID:28630532

  4. Suprasegmental information affects processing of talking faces at birth.

    PubMed

    Guellai, Bahia; Mersad, Karima; Streri, Arlette

    2015-02-01

    From birth, newborns show a preference for faces talking a native language compared to silent faces. The present study addresses two questions that remained unanswered by previous research: (a) Does the familiarity with the language play a role in this process and (b) Are all the linguistic and paralinguistic cues necessary in this case? Experiment 1 extended newborns' preference for native speakers to non-native ones. Given that fetuses and newborns are sensitive to the prosodic characteristics of speech, Experiments 2 and 3 presented faces talking native and nonnative languages with the speech stream being low-pass filtered. Results showed that newborns preferred looking at a person who talked to them even when only the prosodic cues were provided for both languages. Nonetheless, a familiarity preference for the previously talking face is observed in the "normal speech" condition (i.e., Experiment 1) and a novelty preference in the "filtered speech" condition (Experiments 2 and 3). This asymmetry reveals that newborns process these two types of stimuli differently and that they may already be sensitive to a mismatch between the articulatory movements of the face and the corresponding speech sounds. Copyright © 2014 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

  5. The importance of internal facial features in learning new faces.

    PubMed

    Longmore, Christopher A; Liu, Chang Hong; Young, Andrew W

    2015-01-01

    For familiar faces, the internal features (eyes, nose, and mouth) are known to be differentially salient for recognition compared to external features such as hairstyle. Two experiments are reported that investigate how this internal feature advantage accrues as a face becomes familiar. In Experiment 1, we tested the contribution of internal and external features to the ability to generalize from a single studied photograph to different views of the same face. A recognition advantage for the internal features over the external features was found after a change of viewpoint, whereas there was no internal feature advantage when the same image was used at study and test. In Experiment 2, we removed the most salient external feature (hairstyle) from studied photographs and looked at how this affected generalization to a novel viewpoint. Removing the hair from images of the face assisted generalization to novel viewpoints, and this was especially the case when photographs showing more than one viewpoint were studied. The results suggest that the internal features play an important role in the generalization between different images of an individual's face by enabling the viewer to detect the common identity-diagnostic elements across non-identical instances of the face.

  6. Evolutionary Relevance and Experience Contribute to Face Discrimination in Infant Macaques ("Macaca mulatta")

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Simpson, Elizabeth A.; Suomi, Stephen J.; Paukner, Annika

    2016-01-01

    In human children and adults, familiar face types--typically own-age and own-species faces--are discriminated better than other face types; however, human infants do not appear to exhibit an own-age bias but instead better discriminate adult faces, which they see more often. There are two possible explanations for this pattern: Perceptual…

  7. Looking at My Own Face: Visual Processing Strategies in Self–Other Face Recognition

    PubMed Central

    Chakraborty, Anya; Chakrabarti, Bhismadev

    2018-01-01

    We live in an age of ‘selfies.’ Yet, how we look at our own faces has seldom been systematically investigated. In this study we test if the visual processing of the highly familiar self-face is different from other faces, using psychophysics and eye-tracking. This paradigm also enabled us to test the association between the psychophysical properties of self-face representation and visual processing strategies involved in self-face recognition. Thirty-three adults performed a self-face recognition task from a series of self-other face morphs with simultaneous eye-tracking. Participants were found to look longer at the lower part of the face for self-face compared to other-face. Participants with a more distinct self-face representation, as indexed by a steeper slope of the psychometric response curve for self-face recognition, were found to look longer at upper part of the faces identified as ‘self’ vs. those identified as ‘other’. This result indicates that self-face representation can influence where we look when we process our own vs. others’ faces. We also investigated the association of autism-related traits with self-face processing metrics since autism has previously been associated with atypical self-processing. The study did not find any self-face specific association with autistic traits, suggesting that autism-related features may be related to self-processing in a domain specific manner. PMID:29487554

  8. Comparison of the BCI Performance between the Semitransparent Face Pattern and the Traditional Face Pattern.

    PubMed

    Cheng, Jiao; Jin, Jing; Wang, Xingyu

    2017-01-01

    Brain-computer interface (BCI) systems allow users to communicate with the external world by recognizing the brain activity without the assistance of the peripheral motor nervous system. P300-based BCI is one of the most common used BCI systems that can obtain high classification accuracy and information transfer rate (ITR). Face stimuli can result in large event-related potentials and improve the performance of P300-based BCI. However, previous studies on face stimuli focused mainly on the effect of various face types (i.e., face expression, face familiarity, and multifaces) on the BCI performance. Studies on the influence of face transparency differences are scarce. Therefore, we investigated the effect of semitransparent face pattern (STF-P) (the subject could see the target character when the stimuli were flashed) and traditional face pattern (F-P) (the subject could not see the target character when the stimuli were flashed) on the BCI performance from the transparency perspective. Results showed that STF-P obtained significantly higher classification accuracy and ITR than those of F-P ( p < 0.05).

  9. A Familiar(ity) Problem: Assessing the Impact of Prerequisites and Content Familiarity on Student Learning.

    PubMed

    Shaffer, Justin F; Dang, Jennifer V; Lee, Amanda K; Dacanay, Samantha J; Alam, Usman; Wong, Hollie Y; Richards, George J; Kadandale, Pavan; Sato, Brian K

    2016-01-01

    Prerequisites are embedded in most STEM curricula. However, the assumption that the content presented in these courses will improve learning in later courses has not been verified. Because a direct comparison of performance between students with and without required prerequisites is logistically difficult to arrange in a randomized fashion, we developed a novel familiarity scale, and used this to determine whether concepts introduced in a prerequisite course improved student learning in a later course (in two biology disciplines). Exam questions in the latter courses were classified into three categories, based on the degree to which the tested concept had been taught in the prerequisite course. If content familiarity mattered, it would be expected that exam scores on topics covered in the prerequisite would be higher than scores on novel topics. We found this to be partially true for "Very Familiar" questions (concepts covered in depth in the prerequisite). However, scores for concepts only briefly discussed in the prerequisite ("Familiar") were indistinguishable from performance on topics that were "Not Familiar" (concepts only taught in the later course). These results imply that merely "covering" topics in a prerequisite course does not result in improved future performance, and that some topics may be able to removed from a course thereby freeing up class time. Our results may therefore support the implementation of student-centered teaching methods such as active learning, as the time-intensive nature of active learning has been cited as a barrier to its adoption. In addition, we propose that our familiarity system could be broadly utilized to aid in the assessment of the effectiveness of prerequisites.

  10. Memory for faces: the effect of facial appearance and the context in which the face is encountered.

    PubMed

    Mattarozzi, Katia; Todorov, Alexander; Codispoti, Maurizio

    2015-03-01

    We investigated the effects of appearance of emotionally neutral faces and the context in which the faces are encountered on incidental face memory. To approximate real-life situations as closely as possible, faces were embedded in a newspaper article, with a headline that specified an action performed by the person pictured. We found that facial appearance affected memory so that faces perceived as trustworthy or untrustworthy were remembered better than neutral ones. Furthermore, the memory of untrustworthy faces was slightly better than that of trustworthy faces. The emotional context of encoding affected the details of face memory. Faces encountered in a neutral context were more likely to be recognized as only familiar. In contrast, emotionally relevant contexts of encoding, whether pleasant or unpleasant, increased the likelihood of remembering semantic and even episodic details associated with faces. These findings suggest that facial appearance (i.e., perceived trustworthiness) affects face memory. Moreover, the findings support prior evidence that the engagement of emotion processing during memory encoding increases the likelihood that events are not only recognized but also remembered.

  11. Metaphorical mapping between raw-cooked food and strangeness-familiarity in Chinese culture.

    PubMed

    Deng, Xiaohong; Qu, Yuan; Zheng, Huihui; Lu, Yang; Zhong, Xin; Ward, Anne; Li, Zijun

    2017-02-01

    Previous research has demonstrated metaphorical mappings between physical coldness-warmth and social distance-closeness. Since the concepts of interpersonal warmth are frequently expressed in terms of food-related words in Chinese, the present study sought to explore whether the concept of raw-cooked food could be unconsciously and automatically mapped onto strangeness-familiarity. After rating the nutritive value of raw or cooked foods, participants were presented with morphing movies in which their acquaintances gradually transformed into strangers or strangers gradually morphed into acquaintances, and were asked to stop the movies when the combined images became predominantly target faces. The results demonstrated that unconscious and automatic metaphorical mappings between raw-cooked food and strangeness-familiarity exist. This study provides a foundation for testing whether Chinese people can think about interpersonal familiarity using mental representations of raw-cooked food and supports cognitive metaphor theory from a crosslinguistic perspective.

  12. Adaptor Identity Modulates Adaptation Effects in Familiar Face Identification and Their Neural Correlates

    PubMed Central

    Walther, Christian; Schweinberger, Stefan R.; Kovács, Gyula

    2013-01-01

    Adaptation-related aftereffects (AEs) show how face perception can be altered by recent perceptual experiences. Along with contrastive behavioural biases, modulations of the early event-related potentials (ERPs) were typically reported on categorical levels. Nevertheless, the role of the adaptor stimulus per se for face identity-specific AEs is not completely understood and was therefore investigated in the present study. Participants were adapted to faces (S1s) varying systematically on a morphing continuum between pairs of famous identities (identities A and B), or to Fourier phase-randomized faces, and had to match the subsequently presented ambiguous faces (S2s; 50/50% identity A/B) to one of the respective original faces. We found that S1s identical with or near to the original identities led to strong contrastive biases with more identity B responses following A adaptation and vice versa. In addition, the closer S1s were to the 50/50% S2 on the morphing continuum, the smaller the magnitude of the AE was. The relation between S1s and AE was, however, not linear. Additionally, stronger AEs were accompanied by faster reaction times. Analyses of the simultaneously recorded ERPs revealed categorical adaptation effects starting at 100 ms post-stimulus onset, that were most pronounced at around 125–240 ms for occipito-temporal sites over both hemispheres. S1-specific amplitude modulations were found at around 300–400 ms. Response-specific analyses of ERPs showed reduced voltages starting at around 125 ms when the S1 biased perception in a contrastive way as compared to when it did not. Our results suggest that face identity AEs do not only depend on physical differences between S1 and S2, but also on perceptual factors, such as the ambiguity of S1. Furthermore, short-term plasticity of face identity processing might work in parallel to object-category processing, and is reflected in the first 400 ms of the ERP. PMID:23990908

  13. Beyond the Memory Mechanism: Person-Selective and Nonselective Processes in Recognition of Personally Familiar Faces

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Sugiura, Motoaki; Mano, Yoko; Sasaki, Akihiro; Sadato, Norihiro

    2011-01-01

    Special processes recruited during the recognition of personally familiar people have been assumed to reflect the rich episodic and semantic information that selectively represents each person. However, the processes may also include person nonselective ones, which may require interpretation in terms beyond the memory mechanism. To examine this…

  14. Own- and other-race face identity recognition in children: the effects of pose and feature composition.

    PubMed

    Anzures, Gizelle; Kelly, David J; Pascalis, Olivier; Quinn, Paul C; Slater, Alan M; de Viviés, Xavier; Lee, Kang

    2014-02-01

    We used a matching-to-sample task and manipulated facial pose and feature composition to examine the other-race effect (ORE) in face identity recognition between 5 and 10 years of age. Overall, the present findings provide a genuine measure of own- and other-race face identity recognition in children that is independent of photographic and image processing. The current study also confirms the presence of an ORE in children as young as 5 years of age using a recognition paradigm that is sensitive to their developing cognitive abilities. In addition, the present findings show that with age, increasing experience with familiar classes of own-race faces and further lack of experience with unfamiliar classes of other-race faces serves to maintain the ORE between 5 and 10 years of age rather than exacerbate the effect. All age groups also showed a differential effect of stimulus facial pose in their recognition of the internal regions of own- and other-race faces. Own-race inner faces were remembered best when three-quarter poses were used during familiarization and frontal poses were used during the recognition test. In contrast, other-race inner faces were remembered best when frontal poses were used during familiarization and three-quarter poses were used during the recognition test. Thus, children encode and/or retrieve own- and other-race faces from memory in qualitatively different ways.

  15. Own- and other-race face identity recognition in children: The effects of pose and feature composition

    PubMed Central

    Anzures, Gizelle; Kelly, David J.; Pascalis, Olivier; Quinn, Paul C.; Slater, Alan M.; de Viviés, Xavier; Lee, Kang

    2013-01-01

    We used a matching-to-sample task and manipulated facial pose and feature composition to examine the other-race effect (ORE) in face identity recognition between 5 and 10 years of age. Overall, the present findings provide a genuine measure of own- and other-race face identity recognition in children that is independent of photographic and image processing. The present study also confirms the presence of an ORE in children as young as 5 years of age using a recognition paradigm that is sensitive to their developing cognitive abilities. In addition, the present findings show that with age, increasing experience with familiar classes of own-race faces and further lack of experience with unfamiliar classes of other-race faces serves to maintain the ORE between 5 to 10 years of age rather than exacerbate the effect. All age groups also showed a differential effect of stimulus facial pose in their recognition of the internal regions of own- and other-race faces. Own-race inner faces were remembered best when three-quarter poses were used during familiarization and frontal poses were used during the recognition test. In contrast, other-race inner faces were remembered best when frontal poses were used during familiarization and three-quarter poses were used during the recognition test. Thus, children encode and/or retrieve own- and other-race faces from memory in qualitatively different ways. PMID:23731287

  16. Face processing in Williams syndrome is already atypical in infancy.

    PubMed

    D'Souza, Dean; Cole, Victoria; Farran, Emily K; Brown, Janice H; Humphreys, Kate; Howard, John; Rodic, Maja; Dekker, Tessa M; D'Souza, Hana; Karmiloff-Smith, Annette

    2015-01-01

    Face processing is a crucial socio-cognitive ability. Is it acquired progressively or does it constitute an innately-specified, face-processing module? The latter would be supported if some individuals with seriously impaired intelligence nonetheless showed intact face-processing abilities. Some theorists claim that Williams syndrome (WS) provides such evidence since, despite IQs in the 50s, adolescents/adults with WS score in the normal range on standardized face-processing tests. Others argue that atypical neural and cognitive processes underlie WS face-processing proficiencies. But what about infants with WS? Do they start with typical face-processing abilities, with atypicality developing later, or are atypicalities already evident in infancy? We used an infant familiarization/novelty design and compared infants with WS to typically developing controls as well as to a group of infants with Down syndrome matched on both mental and chronological age. Participants were familiarized with a schematic face, after which they saw a novel face in which either the features (eye shape) were changed or just the configuration of the original features. Configural changes were processed successfully by controls, but not by infants with WS who were only sensitive to featural changes and who showed syndrome-specific profiles different from infants with the other neurodevelopmental disorder. Our findings indicate that theorists can no longer use the case of WS to support claims that evolution has endowed the human brain with an independent face-processing module.

  17. Eye Tracking Reveals a Crucial Role for Facial Motion in Recognition of Faces by Infants

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Xiao, Naiqi G.; Quinn, Paul C.; Liu, Shaoying; Ge, Liezhong; Pascalis, Olivier; Lee, Kang

    2015-01-01

    Current knowledge about face processing in infancy comes largely from studies using static face stimuli, but faces that infants see in the real world are mostly moving ones. To bridge this gap, 3-, 6-, and 9-month-old Asian infants (N = 118) were familiarized with either moving or static Asian female faces, and then their face recognition was…

  18. The role of external features in face recognition with central vision loss: A pilot study

    PubMed Central

    Bernard, Jean-Baptiste; Chung, Susana T.L.

    2016-01-01

    Purpose We evaluated how the performance for recognizing familiar face images depends on the internal (eyebrows, eyes, nose, mouth) and external face features (chin, outline of face, hairline) in individuals with central vision loss. Methods In Experiment 1, we measured eye movements for four observers with central vision loss to determine whether they fixated more often on the internal or the external features of face images while attempting to recognize the images. We then measured the accuracy for recognizing face images that contained only the internal, only the external, or both internal and external features (Experiment 2), and for hybrid images where the internal and external features came from two different source images (Experiment 3), for five observers with central vision loss and four age-matched control observers. Results When recognizing familiar face images, approximately 40% of the fixations of observers with central vision loss were centered on the external features of faces. The recognition accuracy was higher for images containing only external features (66.8±3.3% correct) than for images containing only internal features (35.8±15.0%), a finding contradicting that of control observers. For hybrid face images, observers with central vision loss responded more accurately to the external features (50.4±17.8%) than to the internal features (9.3±4.9%), while control observers did not show the same bias toward responding to the external features. Conclusions Contrary to people with normal vision who rely more on the internal features of face images for recognizing familiar faces, individuals with central vision loss show a higher dependence on using external features of face images. PMID:26829260

  19. Naming and recognizing famous faces in temporal lobe epilepsy.

    PubMed

    Glosser, G; Salvucci, A E; Chiaravalloti, N D

    2003-07-08

    To assess naming and recognition of faces of familiar famous people in patients with epilepsy before and after anterior temporal lobectomy (ATL). Color photographs of famous people were presented for naming and description to 63 patients with temporal lobe epilepsy (TLE) either before or after ATL and to 10 healthy age- and education-matched controls. Spontaneous naming of photographed famous people was impaired in all patient groups, but was most abnormal in patients who had undergone left ATL. When allowed to demonstrate knowledge of the famous faces through verbal descriptions, rather than naming, patients with left TLE, left ATL, and right TLE improved to normal levels, but patients with right ATL were still impaired, suggesting a new deficit in identifying famous faces. Naming of famous people was related to naming of other common objects, verbal memory, and perceptual discrimination of faces. Recognition of the identity of pictured famous people was more related to visuospatial perception and memory. Lesions in anterior regions of the right temporal lobe impair recognition of the identities of familiar faces, as well as the learning of new faces. Lesions in the left temporal lobe, especially in anterior regions, disrupt access to the names of known people, but do not affect recognition of the identities of famous faces. Results are consistent with the hypothesized role of lateralized anterior temporal lobe structures in facial recognition and naming of unique entities.

  20. Impairments in the Face-Processing Network in Developmental Prosopagnosia and Semantic Dementia

    PubMed Central

    Mendez, Mario F.; Ringman, John M.; Shapira, Jill S.

    2015-01-01

    Background Developmental prosopagnosia (DP) and semantic dementia (SD) may be the two most common neurologic disorders of face processing, but their main clinical and pathophysiologic differences have not been established. To identify those features, we compared patients with DP and SD. Methods Five patients with DP, five with right temporal-predominant SD, and ten normal controls underwent cognitive, visual perceptual, and face-processing tasks. Results Although the patients with SD were more cognitively impaired than those with DP, the two groups did not differ statistically on the visual perceptual tests. On the face-processing tasks, the DP group had difficulty with configural analysis and they reported relying on serial, feature-by-feature analysis or awareness of salient features to recognize faces. By contrast, the SD group had problems with person knowledge and made semantically related errors. The SD group had better face familiarity scores, suggesting a potentially useful clinical test for distinguishing SD from DP. Conclusions These two disorders of face processing represent clinically distinguishable disturbances along a right hemisphere face-processing network: DP, characterized by early configural agnosia for faces, and SD, characterized primarily by a multimodal person knowledge disorder. We discuss these preliminary findings in the context of the current literature on the face-processing network; recent studies suggest an additional right anterior temporal, unimodal face familiarity-memory deficit consistent with an “associative prosopagnosia.” PMID:26705265

  1. The Effects of Inversion and Familiarity on Face versus Body Cues to Person Recognition

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Robbins, Rachel A.; Coltheart, Max

    2012-01-01

    Extensive research has focused on face recognition, and much is known about this topic. However, much of this work seems to be based on an assumption that faces are the most important aspect of person recognition. Here we test this assumption in two experiments. We show that when viewers are forced to choose, they "do" use the face more than the…

  2. Many faces of expertise: fusiform face area in chess experts and novices.

    PubMed

    Bilalić, Merim; Langner, Robert; Ulrich, Rolf; Grodd, Wolfgang

    2011-07-13

    The fusiform face area (FFA) is involved in face perception to such an extent that some claim it is a brain module for faces exclusively. The other possibility is that FFA is modulated by experience in individuation in any visual domain, not only faces. Here we test this latter FFA expertise hypothesis using the game of chess as a domain of investigation. We exploited the characteristic of chess, which features multiple objects forming meaningful spatial relations. In three experiments, we show that FFA activity is related to stimulus properties and not to chess skill directly. In all chess and non-chess tasks, experts' FFA was more activated than that of novices' only when they dealt with naturalistic full-board chess positions. When common spatial relationships formed by chess objects in chess positions were randomly disturbed, FFA was again differentially active only in experts, regardless of the actual task. Our experiments show that FFA contributes to the holistic processing of domain-specific multipart stimuli in chess experts. This suggests that FFA may not only mediate human expertise in face recognition but, supporting the expertise hypothesis, may mediate the automatic holistic processing of any highly familiar multipart visual input.

  3. Clinicians' perspectives of therapeutic alliance in face-to-face and telepractice speech-language pathology sessions.

    PubMed

    Freckmann, Anneka; Hines, Monique; Lincoln, Michelle

    2017-06-01

    To investigate the face validity of a measure of therapeutic alliance for paediatric speech-language pathology and to determine whether a difference exists in therapeutic alliance reported by speech-language pathologists (SLPs) conducting face-to-face sessions, compared with telepractice SLPs or in their ratings of confidence with technology. SLPs conducting telepractice (n = 14) or face-to-face therapy (n = 18) completed an online survey which included the Therapeutic Alliance Scales for Children - Revised (TASC-r) (Therapist Form) to rate clinicians' perceptions of rapport with up to three clients. Participants also reported their overall perception of rapport with each client and their comfort with technology. There was a strong correlation between TASC-r total scores and overall ratings of rapport, providing preliminary evidence of TASC-r face validity. There was no significant difference between TASC-r scores for telepractice and face-to-face therapy (p = 0.961), nor face-to-face and telepractice SLPs' confidence with familiar (p = 0.414) or unfamiliar technology (p = 0.780). The TASC-r may be a promising tool for measuring therapeutic alliance in speech-language pathology. Telepractice does not appear to have a negative effect on rapport between SLPs and paediatric clients. Future research is required to identify how SLPs develop rapport in telepractice.

  4. Elements of person knowledge: Episodic recollection helps us to identify people but not to recognize their faces.

    PubMed

    MacKenzie, Graham; Donaldson, David I

    2016-12-01

    Faces automatically draw attention, allowing rapid assessments of personality and likely behaviour. How we respond to people is, however, highly dependent on whether we know who they are. According to face processing models person knowledge comes from an extended neural system that includes structures linked to episodic memory. Here we use scalp recorded brain signals to demonstrate the specific role of episodic memory processes during face processing. In two experiments we recorded Event-Related Potentials (ERPs) while participants made identify, familiar or unknown responses to famous faces. ERPs revealed neural signals previously associated with episodic recollection for identify but not familiar faces. These findings provide novel evidence suggesting that recollection is central to face processing, providing one source of person knowledge that can be used to moderate the initial impressions gleaned from the core neural system that supports face recognition. Crown Copyright © 2016. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

  5. Caricature generalization benefits for faces learned with enhanced idiosyncratic shape or texture.

    PubMed

    Itz, Marlena L; Schweinberger, Stefan R; Kaufmann, Jürgen M

    2017-02-01

    Recent findings show benefits for learning and subsequent recognition of faces caricatured in shape or texture, but there is little evidence on whether this caricature learning advantage generalizes to recognition of veridical counterparts at test. Moreover, it has been reported that there is a relatively higher contribution of texture information, at the expense of shape information, for familiar compared to unfamiliar face recognition. The aim of this study was to examine whether veridical faces are recognized better when they were learned as caricatures compared to when they were learned as veridicals-what we call a caricature generalization benefit. Photorealistic facial stimuli derived from a 3-D camera system were caricatured selectively in either shape or texture by 50 %. Faces were learned across different images either as veridicals, shape caricatures, or texture caricatures. At test, all learned and novel faces were presented as previously unseen frontal veridicals, and participants performed an old-new task. We assessed accuracies, reaction times, and face-sensitive event-related potentials (ERPs). Faces learned as caricatures were recognized more accurately than faces learned as veridicals. At learning, N250 and LPC were largest for shape caricatures, suggesting encoding advantages of distinctive facial shape. At test, LPC was largest for faces that had been learned as texture caricatures, indicating the importance of texture for familiar face recognition. Overall, our findings demonstrate that caricature learning advantages can generalize to and, importantly, improve recognition of veridical versions of faces.

  6. Holistic face processing can inhibit recognition of forensic facial composites.

    PubMed

    McIntyre, Alex H; Hancock, Peter J B; Frowd, Charlie D; Langton, Stephen R H

    2016-04-01

    Facial composite systems help eyewitnesses to show the appearance of criminals. However, likenesses created by unfamiliar witnesses will not be completely accurate, and people familiar with the target can find them difficult to identify. Faces are processed holistically; we explore whether this impairs identification of inaccurate composite images and whether recognition can be improved. In Experiment 1 (n = 64) an imaging technique was used to make composites of celebrity faces more accurate and identification was contrasted with the original composite images. Corrected composites were better recognized, confirming that errors in production of the likenesses impair identification. The influence of holistic face processing was explored by misaligning the top and bottom parts of the composites (cf. Young, Hellawell, & Hay, 1987). Misalignment impaired recognition of corrected composites but identification of the original, inaccurate composites significantly improved. This effect was replicated with facial composites of noncelebrities in Experiment 2 (n = 57). We conclude that, like real faces, facial composites are processed holistically: recognition is impaired because unlike real faces, composites contain inaccuracies and holistic face processing makes it difficult to perceive identifiable features. This effect was consistent across composites of celebrities and composites of people who are personally familiar. Our findings suggest that identification of forensic facial composites can be enhanced by presenting composites in a misaligned format. (c) 2016 APA, all rights reserved).

  7. Recognition of computerized facial approximations by familiar assessors.

    PubMed

    Richard, Adam H; Monson, Keith L

    2017-11-01

    Studies testing the effectiveness of facial approximations typically involve groups of participants who are unfamiliar with the approximated individual(s). This limitation requires the use of photograph arrays including a picture of the subject for comparison to the facial approximation. While this practice is often necessary due to the difficulty in obtaining a group of assessors who are familiar with the approximated subject, it may not accurately simulate the thought process of the target audience (friends and family members) in comparing a mental image of the approximated subject to the facial approximation. As part of a larger process to evaluate the effectiveness and best implementation of the ReFace facial approximation software program, the rare opportunity arose to conduct a recognition study using assessors who were personally acquainted with the subjects of the approximations. ReFace facial approximations were generated based on preexisting medical scans, and co-workers of the scan donors were tested on whether they could accurately pick out the approximation of their colleague from arrays of facial approximations. Results from the study demonstrated an overall poor recognition performance (i.e., where a single choice within a pool is not enforced) for individuals who were familiar with the approximated subjects. Out of 220 recognition tests only 10.5% resulted in the assessor selecting the correct approximation (or correctly choosing not to make a selection when the array consisted only of foils), an outcome that was not significantly different from the 9% random chance rate. When allowed to select multiple approximations the assessors felt resembled the target individual, the overall sensitivity for ReFace approximations was 16.0% and the overall specificity was 81.8%. These results differ markedly from the results of a previous study using assessors who were unfamiliar with the approximated subjects. Some possible explanations for this disparity in

  8. Tolerance of geometric distortions in infant's face recognition.

    PubMed

    Yamashita, Wakayo; Kanazawa, So; Yamaguchi, Masami K

    2014-02-01

    The aim of the current study is to reveal the effect of global linear transformations (shearing, horizontal stretching, and vertical stretching) on the recognition of familiar faces (e.g., a mother's face) in 6- to 7-month-old infants. In this experiment, we applied the global linear transformations to both the infants' own mother's face and to a stranger's face, and we tested infants' preference between these faces. We found that only 7-month-old infants maintained preference for their own mother's face during the presentation of vertical stretching, while the preference for the mother's face disappeared during the presentation of shearing or horizontal stretching. These findings suggest that 7-month-old infants might not recognize faces based on calculating the absolute distance between facial features, and that the vertical dimension of facial features might be more related to infants' face recognition rather than the horizontal dimension. Copyright © 2013 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

  9. The hard-won benefits of familiarity in visual search: naturally familiar brand logos are found faster.

    PubMed

    Qin, Xiaoyan Angela; Koutstaal, Wilma; Engel, Stephen A

    2014-05-01

    Familiar items are found faster than unfamiliar ones in visual search tasks. This effect has important implications for cognitive theory, because it may reveal how mental representations of commonly encountered items are changed by experience to optimize performance. It remains unknown, however, whether everyday items with moderate levels of exposure would show benefits in visual search, and if so, what kind of experience would be required to produce them. Here, we tested whether familiar product logos were searched for faster than unfamiliar ones, and also familiarized subjects with previously unfamiliar logos. Subjects searched for preexperimentally familiar and unfamiliar logos, half of which were familiarized in the laboratory, amongst other, unfamiliar distractor logos. In three experiments, we used an N-back-like familiarization task, and in four others we used a task that asked detailed questions about the perceptual aspects of the logos. The number of familiarization exposures ranged from 30 to 84 per logo across experiments, with two experiments involving across-day familiarization. Preexperimentally familiar target logos were searched for faster than were unfamiliar, nonfamiliarized logos, by 8 % on average. This difference was reliable in all seven experiments. However, familiarization had little or no effect on search speeds; its average effect was to improve search times by 0.7 %, and its effect was significant in only one of the seven experiments. If priming, mere exposure, episodic memory, or relatively modest familiarity were responsible for familiarity's effects on search, then performance should have improved following familiarization. Our results suggest that the search-related advantage of familiar logos does not develop easily or rapidly.

  10. Familiarity in source memory.

    PubMed

    Mollison, Matthew V; Curran, Tim

    2012-09-01

    Familiarity and recollection are thought to be separate processes underlying recognition memory. Event-related potentials (ERPs) dissociate these processes, with an early (approximately 300-500ms) frontal effect relating to familiarity (the FN400) and a later (500-800ms) parietal old/new effect relating to recollection. It has been debated whether source information for a studied item (i.e., contextual associations from when the item was previously encountered) is only accessible through recollection, or whether familiarity can contribute to successful source recognition. It has been shown that familiarity can assist in perceptual source monitoring when the source attribute is an intrinsic property of the item (e.g., an object's surface color), but few studies have examined its contribution to recognizing extrinsic source associations. Extrinsic source associations were examined in three experiments involving memory judgments for pictures of common objects. In Experiment 1, source information was spatial and results suggested that familiarity contributed to accurate source recognition: the FN400 ERP component showed a source accuracy effect, and source accuracy was above chance for items judged to only feel familiar. Source information in Experiment 2 was an extrinsic color association; source accuracy was at chance for familiar items and the FN400 did not differ between correct and incorrect source judgments. Experiment 3 replicated the results using a within-subjects manipulation of spatial vs. color source. Overall, the results suggest that familiarity's contribution to extrinsic source monitoring depends on the type of source information being remembered. Copyright © 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

  11. Familiarity knowledge in student nurses' clinical studies: exemplified by student nurses in palliative care.

    PubMed

    Haugan, Grethe; Hanssen, Ingrid

    2012-01-01

    In this article based on a literary study, the form of knowledge named familiarity knowledge is examined. Although rooted in the philosophical tradition of Wittgenstein and Polanyi, the development of familiarity knowledge is tied in with clinical practice and particular patients and contexts while paying attention to the framework factors influencing the setting as a whole as well as with theoretical knowledge relevant to the situation at hand. Palliative care makes a backdrop for some of the discussion. Familiarity knowledge can never be context free and attends to that which is unique in every nurse-patient relationship. Both assertive and familiarity knowledge are needed to care for dying patients in a competent, sensitive, and truly caring manner. Mentors need to help students synthesize assertive knowledge and familiarity knowledge during their clinical studies to enrich both kinds of knowledge and deepen their understanding. Student nurses expertly mentored and tutored while caring for dying patients living at home become, for instance, less apprehensive about facing dying patients than students not so mentored. Nurses need to understand the complexity of nursing care to be able to see the uniqueness of the situation and approach the individual patient on the bases of experience and insight.

  12. The conscious, the unconscious, and familiarity.

    PubMed

    Scott, Ryan B; Dienes, Zoltán

    2008-09-01

    This article examines the role of subjective familiarity in the implicit and explicit learning of artificial grammars. Experiment 1 found that objective measures of similarity (including fragment frequency and repetition structure) predicted ratings of familiarity, that familiarity ratings predicted grammaticality judgments, and that the extremity of familiarity ratings predicted confidence. Familiarity was further shown to predict judgments in the absence of confidence, hence contributing to above-chance guessing. Experiment 2 found that confidence developed as participants refined their knowledge of the distribution of familiarity and that differences in familiarity could be exploited prior to confidence developing. Experiment 3 found that familiarity was consciously exploited to make grammaticality judgments including those made without confidence and that familiarity could in some instances influence participants' grammaticality judgments apparently without their awareness. All 3 experiments found that knowledge distinct from familiarity was derived only under deliberate learning conditions. The results provide decisive evidence that familiarity is the essential source of knowledge in artificial grammar learning while also supporting a dual-process model of implicit and explicit learning. (c) 2008 APA, all rights reserved.

  13. Influence of motion on face recognition.

    PubMed

    Bonfiglio, Natale S; Manfredi, Valentina; Pessa, Eliano

    2012-02-01

    The influence of motion information and temporal associations on recognition of non-familiar faces was investigated using two groups which performed a face recognition task. One group was presented with regular temporal sequences of face views designed to produce the impression of motion of the face rotating in depth, the other group with random sequences of the same views. In one condition, participants viewed the sequences of the views in rapid succession with a negligible interstimulus interval (ISI). This condition was characterized by three different presentation times. In another condition, participants were presented a sequence with a 1-sec. ISI among the views. That regular sequences of views with a negligible ISI and a shorter presentation time were hypothesized to give rise to better recognition, related to a stronger impression of face rotation. Analysis of data from 45 participants showed a shorter presentation time was associated with significantly better accuracy on the recognition task; however, differences between performances associated with regular and random sequences were not significant.

  14. The contribution of local features to familiarity judgments in music.

    PubMed

    Bigand, Emmanuel; Gérard, Yannick; Molin, Paul

    2009-07-01

    The contributions of local and global features to object identification depend upon the context. For example, while local features play an essential role in identification of words and objects, the global features are more influential in face recognition. In order to evaluate the respective strengths of local and global features for face recognition, researchers usually ask participants to recognize human faces (famous or learned) in normal and scrambled pictures. In this paper, we address a similar issue in music. We present the results of an experiment in which musically untrained participants were asked to differentiate famous from unknown musical excerpts that were presented in normal or scrambled ways. Manipulating the size of the temporal window on which the scrambling procedure was applied allowed us to evaluate the minimal length of time necessary for participants to make a familiarity judgment. Quite surprisingly, the minimum duration for differentiation of famous from unknown pieces is extremely short. This finding highlights the contribution of very local features to music memory.

  15. The neural basis of self-face recognition after self-concept threat and comparison with important others.

    PubMed

    Guan, Lili; Qi, Mingming; Zhang, Qinglin; Yang, Juan

    2014-01-01

    The implicit positive association (IPA) theory attributed self-face advantage to the IPA with self-concept. Previous behavioral study has found that self-concept threat (SCT) could eliminate the self-advantage in face recognition over familiar-face, without taking levels of facial familiarity into account. The current event-related potential study aimed to investigate whether SCT could eliminate the self-face advantage over stranger-face. Fifteen participants completed a "self-friend" comparison task in which participants identified the face orientation of self-face and friend-face after SCT and non-self-concept threat (NSCT) priming, and a "self-stranger" comparison task was also completed in which participants identified the face orientation of self-face and stranger-face after SCT and NSCT priming. The results showed that the N2 amplitudes were more negative for processing friend-face than self-face after NSCT priming, but there was no significant difference between them after SCT priming. Moreover, the N2 amplitudes were more negative for processing stranger-face than self-face both after SCT priming and after NSCT priming. Furthermore, SCT manipulated the N2 amplitudes of friend-face rather than self-face. Overall, the present study made a supplementary to the current IPA theory and further indicated that SCT would only eliminate this self-face recognition advantage when comparing with important others.

  16. Recognition of face and non-face stimuli in autistic spectrum disorder.

    PubMed

    Arkush, Leo; Smith-Collins, Adam P R; Fiorentini, Chiara; Skuse, David H

    2013-12-01

    The ability to remember faces is critical for the development of social competence. From childhood to adulthood, we acquire a high level of expertise in the recognition of facial images, and neural processes become dedicated to sustaining competence. Many people with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) have poor face recognition memory; changes in hairstyle or other non-facial features in an otherwise familiar person affect their recollection skills. The observation implies that they may not use the configuration of the inner face to achieve memory competence, but bolster performance in other ways. We aimed to test this hypothesis by comparing the performance of a group of high-functioning unmedicated adolescents with ASD and a matched control group on a "surprise" face recognition memory task. We compared their memory for unfamiliar faces with their memory for images of houses. To evaluate the role that is played by peripheral cues in assisting recognition memory, we cropped both sets of pictures, retaining only the most salient central features. ASD adolescents had poorer recognition memory for faces than typical controls, but their recognition memory for houses was unimpaired. Cropping images of faces did not disproportionately influence their recall accuracy, relative to controls. House recognition skills (cropped and uncropped) were similar in both groups. In the ASD group only, performance on both sets of task was closely correlated, implying that memory for faces and other complex pictorial stimuli is achieved by domain-general (non-dedicated) cognitive mechanisms. Adolescents with ASD apparently do not use domain-specialized processing of inner facial cues to support face recognition memory. © 2013 International Society for Autism Research, Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

  17. I know I've seen you before: Distinguishing recent-single-exposure-based familiarity from pre-existing familiarity

    PubMed Central

    Gimbel, Sarah I.; Brewer, James B.; Maril, Anat

    2018-01-01

    This study examines how individuals differentiate recent-single-exposure-based familiarity from pre-existing familiarity. If these are two distinct cognitive processes, are they supported by the same neural bases? This study examines how recent-single-exposure-based familiarity and multiple-previous-exposure-based familiarity are supported and represented in the brain using functional MRI. In a novel approach, we first behaviorally show that subjects can divide retrieval of items in pre-existing memory into judgments of recollection and familiarity. Then, using functional magnetic resonance imaging, we examine the differences in blood oxygen level dependent activity and regional connectivity during judgments of recent-single-exposure-based and pre-existing familiarity. Judgments of these two types of familiarity showed distinct regions of activation in a whole-brain analysis, in medial temporal lobe (MTL) substructures, and in MTL substructure functional-correlations with other brain regions. Specifically, within the MTL, perirhinal cortex showed increased activation during recent-single-exposure-based familiarity while parahippocampal cortex showed increased activation during judgments of pre-existing familiarity. We find that recent-single-exposure-based and pre-existing familiarity are represented as distinct neural processes in the brain; this is supported by differing patterns of brain activation and regional correlations. This spatially distinct regional brain involvement suggests that the two separate experiences of familiarity, recent-exposure-based familiarity and pre-existing familiarity, may be cognitively distinct. PMID:28073651

  18. Four heads are better than one: combining face composites yields improvements in face likeness.

    PubMed

    Bruce, Vicki; Ness, Hayley; Hancock, Peter J B; Newman, Craig; Rarity, Jenny

    2002-10-01

    Four participants constructed face composites, of familiar and unfamiliar targets, using Pro-Fit, with reference images present or from memory. The "mean" of all 4 composites, created by morphing (4-morph) was rated as a better likeness than individual composites on average and was as good as the best individual likeness. When participants attempted to identify targets from line-ups, 4-morphs again performed as well as the best individual composite. In a second experiment, participants familiar with target women attempted to identify composites, and the trend showed better recognition from multiple composites, whether combined or shown together. In a line-up task with unfamiliar participants, 4-morphs produced most correct choices and fewest false positives from target-absent or target-present arrays. These results have practical implications for the way evidence from different witnesses is used in police investigations.

  19. Geometric distortions affect face recognition in chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes) and monkeys (Macaca mulatta).

    PubMed

    Taubert, Jessica; Parr, Lisa A

    2011-01-01

    All primates can recognize faces and do so by analyzing the subtle variation that exists between faces. Through a series of three experiments, we attempted to clarify the nature of second-order information processing in nonhuman primates. Experiment one showed that both chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes) and rhesus monkeys (Macaca mulatta) tolerate geometric distortions along the vertical axis, suggesting that information about absolute position of features does not contribute to accurate face recognition. Chimpanzees differed from monkeys, however, in that they were more sensitive to distortions along the horizontal axis, suggesting that when building a global representation of facial identity, horizontal relations between features are more diagnostic of identity than vertical relations. Two further experiments were performed to determine whether the monkeys were simply less sensitive to horizontal relations compared to chimpanzees or were instead relying on local features. The results of these experiments confirm that monkeys can utilize a holistic strategy when discriminating between faces regardless of familiarity. In contrast, our data show that chimpanzees, like humans, use a combination of holistic and local features when the faces are unfamiliar, but primarily holistic information when the faces become familiar. We argue that our comparative approach to the study of face recognition reveals the impact that individual experience and social organization has on visual cognition.

  20. Self-esteem Modulates the P3 Component in Response to the Self-face Processing after Priming with Emotional Faces

    PubMed Central

    Guan, Lili; Zhao, Yufang; Wang, Yige; Chen, Yujie; Yang, Juan

    2017-01-01

    The self-face processing advantage (SPA) refers to the research finding that individuals generally recognize their own face faster than another’s face; self-face also elicits an enhanced P3 amplitude compared to another’s face. It has been suggested that social evaluation threats could weaken the SPA and that self-esteem could be regarded as a threat buffer. However, little research has directly investigated the neural evidence of how self-esteem modulates the social evaluation threat to the SPA. In the current event-related potential study, 27 healthy Chinese undergraduate students were primed with emotional faces (angry, happy, or neutral) and were asked to judge whether the target face (self, friend, and stranger) was familiar or unfamiliar. Electrophysiological results showed that after priming with emotional faces (angry and happy), self-face elicited similar P3 amplitudes to friend-face in individuals with low self-esteem, but not in individuals with high self-esteem. The results suggest that as low self-esteem raises fears of social rejection and exclusion, priming with emotional faces (angry and happy) can weaken the SPA in low self-esteem individuals but not in high self-esteem individuals. PMID:28868041

  1. Self-esteem Modulates the P3 Component in Response to the Self-face Processing after Priming with Emotional Faces.

    PubMed

    Guan, Lili; Zhao, Yufang; Wang, Yige; Chen, Yujie; Yang, Juan

    2017-01-01

    The self-face processing advantage (SPA) refers to the research finding that individuals generally recognize their own face faster than another's face; self-face also elicits an enhanced P3 amplitude compared to another's face. It has been suggested that social evaluation threats could weaken the SPA and that self-esteem could be regarded as a threat buffer. However, little research has directly investigated the neural evidence of how self-esteem modulates the social evaluation threat to the SPA. In the current event-related potential study, 27 healthy Chinese undergraduate students were primed with emotional faces (angry, happy, or neutral) and were asked to judge whether the target face (self, friend, and stranger) was familiar or unfamiliar. Electrophysiological results showed that after priming with emotional faces (angry and happy), self-face elicited similar P3 amplitudes to friend-face in individuals with low self-esteem, but not in individuals with high self-esteem. The results suggest that as low self-esteem raises fears of social rejection and exclusion, priming with emotional faces (angry and happy) can weaken the SPA in low self-esteem individuals but not in high self-esteem individuals.

  2. Walk this way: approaching bodies can influence the processing of faces.

    PubMed

    Pilz, Karin S; Vuong, Quoc C; Bülthoff, Heinrich H; Thornton, Ian M

    2011-01-01

    A highly familiar type of movement occurs whenever a person walks towards you. In the present study, we investigated whether this type of motion has an effect on face processing. We took a range of different 3D head models and placed them on a single, identical 3D body model. The resulting figures were animated to approach the observer. In a first series of experiments, we used a sequential matching task to investigate how the motion of an approaching person affects immediate responses to faces. We compared observers' responses following approach sequences to their performance with figures walking backwards (receding motion) or remaining still. Observers were significantly faster in responding to a target face that followed an approach sequence, compared to both receding and static primes. In a second series of experiments, we investigated long-term effects of motion using a delayed visual search paradigm. After studying moving or static avatars, observers searched for target faces in static arrays of varying set sizes. Again, observers were faster at responding to faces that had been learned in the context of an approach sequence. Together these results suggest that the context of a moving body influences face processing, and support the hypothesis that our visual system has mechanisms that aid the encoding of behaviourally-relevant and familiar dynamic events. Copyright © 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

  3. I know I've seen you before: Distinguishing recent-single-exposure-based familiarity from pre-existing familiarity.

    PubMed

    Gimbel, Sarah I; Brewer, James B; Maril, Anat

    2017-03-01

    This study examines how individuals differentiate recent-single-exposure-based familiarity from pre-existing familiarity. If these are two distinct cognitive processes, are they supported by the same neural bases? This study examines how recent-single-exposure-based familiarity and multiple-previous-exposure-based familiarity are supported and represented in the brain using functional MRI. In a novel approach, we first behaviorally show that subjects can divide retrieval of items in pre-existing memory into judgments of recollection and familiarity. Then, using functional magnetic resonance imaging, we examine the differences in blood oxygen level dependent activity and regional connectivity during judgments of recent-single-exposure-based and pre-existing familiarity. Judgments of these two types of familiarity showed distinct regions of activation in a whole-brain analysis, in medial temporal lobe (MTL) substructures, and in MTL substructure functional-correlations with other brain regions. Specifically, within the MTL, perirhinal cortex showed increased activation during recent-single-exposure-based familiarity while parahippocampal cortex showed increased activation during judgments of pre-existing familiarity. We find that recent-single-exposure-based and pre-existing familiarity are represented as distinct neural processes in the brain; this is supported by differing patterns of brain activation and regional correlations. This spatially distinct regional brain involvement suggests that the two separate experiences of familiarity, recent-exposure-based familiarity and pre-existing familiarity, may be cognitively distinct. Copyright © 2017 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

  4. Recognition of own-race and other-race faces by three-month-old infants.

    PubMed

    Sangrigoli, Sandy; De Schonen, Scania

    2004-10-01

    People are better at recognizing faces of their own race than faces of another race. Such race specificity may be due to differential expertise in the two races. In order to find out whether this other-race effect develops as early as face-recognition skills or whether it is a long-term effect of acquired expertise, we tested face recognition in 3-month-old Caucasian infants by conducting two experiments using Caucasian and Asiatic faces and a visual pair-comparison task. We hypothesized that if the other race effect develops together with face processing skills during the first months of life, the ability to recognize own-race faces will be greater than the ability to recognize other-race faces: 3-month-old Caucasian infants should be better at recognizing Caucasian faces than Asiatic faces. If, on the contrary, the other-race effect is the long-term result of acquired expertise, no difference between recognizing own- and other-race faces will be observed at that age. In Experiment 1, Caucasian infants were habituated to a single face. Recognition was assessed by a novelty preference paradigm. The infants' recognition performance was better for Caucasian than for Asiatic faces. In Experiment 2, Caucasian infants were familiarized with three individual faces. Recognition was demonstrated with both Caucasian and Asiatic faces. These results suggest that (i) the representation of face information by 3-month-olds may be race-experience-dependent (Experiment 1), and (ii) short-term familiarization with exemplars of another race group is sufficient to reduce the other-race effect and to extend the power of face processing (Experiment 2).

  5. The Development of Visual Search in Infancy: Attention to Faces versus Salience

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Kwon, Mee-Kyoung; Setoodehnia, Mielle; Baek, Jongsoo; Luck, Steven J.; Oakes, Lisa M.

    2016-01-01

    Four experiments examined how faces compete with physically salient stimuli for the control of attention in 4-, 6-, and 8-month-old infants (N = 117 total). Three computational models were used to quantify physical salience. We presented infants with visual search arrays containing a face and familiar object(s), such as shoes and flowers. Six- and…

  6. Positive facial affect facilitates the identification of famous faces.

    PubMed

    Gallegos, Diana R; Tranel, Daniel

    2005-06-01

    Several convergent lines of evidence have suggested that the presence of an emotion signal in a visual stimulus can influence processing of that stimulus. In the current study, we picked up on this idea, and explored the hypothesis that the presence of an emotional facial expression (happiness) would facilitate the identification of familiar faces. We studied two groups of normal participants (overall N=54), and neurological patients with either left (n=8) or right (n=10) temporal lobectomies. Reaction times were measured while participants named familiar famous faces that had happy expressions or neutral expressions. In support of the hypothesis, naming was significantly faster for the happy faces, and this effect obtained in the normal participants and in both patient groups. In the patients with left temporal lobectomies, the effect size for this facilitation was large (d=0.87), suggesting that this manipulation might have practical implications for helping such patients compensate for the types of naming defects that often accompany their brain damage. Consistent with other recent work, our findings indicate that emotion can facilitate visual identification, perhaps via a modulatory influence of the amygdala on extrastriate cortex.

  7. Face matching impairment in developmental prosopagnosia.

    PubMed

    White, David; Rivolta, Davide; Burton, A Mike; Al-Janabi, Shahd; Palermo, Romina

    2017-02-01

    Developmental prosopagnosia (DP) is commonly referred to as 'face blindness', a term that implies a perceptual basis to the condition. However, DP presents as a deficit in face recognition and is diagnosed using memory-based tasks. Here, we test face identification ability in six people with DP, who are severely impaired on face memory tasks, using tasks that do not rely on memory. First, we compared DP to control participants on a standardized test of unfamiliar face matching using facial images taken on the same day and under standardized studio conditions (Glasgow Face Matching Test; GFMT). Scores for DP participants did not differ from normative accuracy scores on the GFMT. Second, we tested face matching performance on a test created using images that were sourced from the Internet and so varied substantially due to changes in viewing conditions and in a person's appearance (Local Heroes Test; LHT). DP participants showed significantly poorer matching accuracy on the LHT than control participants, for both unfamiliar and familiar face matching. Interestingly, this deficit is specific to 'match' trials, suggesting that people with DP may have particular difficulty in matching images of the same person that contain natural day-to-day variations in appearance. We discuss these results in the broader context of individual differences in face matching ability.

  8. Reading words and other people: a comparison of exception word, familiar face and affect processing in the left and right temporal variants of primary progressive aphasia

    PubMed Central

    Binney, Richard J.; Henry, Maya L.; Babiak, Miranda; Pressman, Peter S.; Santos-Santos, Miguel A.; Narvid, Jared; Mandelli, Maria Luisa; Strain, Paul J.; Miller, Bruce L.; Rankin, Katherine P.; Rosen, Howard J.; Gorno-Tempini, Maria Luisa

    2016-01-01

    Semantic variant primary progressive aphasia (svPPA) typically presents with left-hemisphere predominant rostral temporal lobe atrophy and the most significant complaints within the language domain. Less frequently, patients present with right-hemisphere predominant temporal atrophy coupled with marked impairments in processing of famous faces and emotions. Few studies have objectively compared these patient groups in both domains and therefore it is unclear to what extent the syndromes overlap. Clinically diagnosed svPPA patients were characterized as left- (n= 21) or right-predominant (n = 12) using imaging and compared along with 14 healthy controls. Regarding language, our primary focus was upon two hallmark features of svPPA; confrontation naming and surface dyslexia. Both groups exhibited naming deficits and surface dyslexia although the impairments were more severe in the left-predominant group. Familiarity judgments on famous faces and affect processing were more profoundly impaired in the right-predominant group. Our findings suggest that the two syndromes overlap significantly but that early cases at the tail ends of the continuum constitute a challenge for current clinical criteria. Correlational neuroimaging analyses implicated a mid portion of the left lateral temporal lobe in exception word reading impairments in line with proposals that this region is an interface between phonology and semantic knowledge. PMID:27389800

  9. Understanding the mechanisms of familiar voice-identity recognition in the human brain.

    PubMed

    Maguinness, Corrina; Roswandowitz, Claudia; von Kriegstein, Katharina

    2018-03-31

    Humans have a remarkable skill for voice-identity recognition: most of us can remember many voices that surround us as 'unique'. In this review, we explore the computational and neural mechanisms which may support our ability to represent and recognise a unique voice-identity. We examine the functional architecture of voice-sensitive regions in the superior temporal gyrus/sulcus, and bring together findings on how these regions may interact with each other, and additional face-sensitive regions, to support voice-identity processing. We also contrast findings from studies on neurotypicals and clinical populations which have examined the processing of familiar and unfamiliar voices. Taken together, the findings suggest that representations of familiar and unfamiliar voices might dissociate in the human brain. Such an observation does not fit well with current models for voice-identity processing, which by-and-large assume a common sequential analysis of the incoming voice signal, regardless of voice familiarity. We provide a revised audio-visual integrative model of voice-identity processing which brings together traditional and prototype models of identity processing. This revised model includes a mechanism of how voice-identity representations are established and provides a novel framework for understanding and examining the potential differences in familiar and unfamiliar voice processing in the human brain. Copyright © 2018 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

  10. Recognizing Disguised Faces: Human and Machine Evaluation

    PubMed Central

    Dhamecha, Tejas Indulal; Singh, Richa; Vatsa, Mayank; Kumar, Ajay

    2014-01-01

    Face verification, though an easy task for humans, is a long-standing open research area. This is largely due to the challenging covariates, such as disguise and aging, which make it very hard to accurately verify the identity of a person. This paper investigates human and machine performance for recognizing/verifying disguised faces. Performance is also evaluated under familiarity and match/mismatch with the ethnicity of observers. The findings of this study are used to develop an automated algorithm to verify the faces presented under disguise variations. We use automatically localized feature descriptors which can identify disguised face patches and account for this information to achieve improved matching accuracy. The performance of the proposed algorithm is evaluated on the IIIT-Delhi Disguise database that contains images pertaining to 75 subjects with different kinds of disguise variations. The experiments suggest that the proposed algorithm can outperform a popular commercial system and evaluates them against humans in matching disguised face images. PMID:25029188

  11. Recognition of familiar people with a mobile cloud architecture for Alzheimer patients.

    PubMed

    Fardoun, Habib M; Mashat, Abdullah A; Ramirez Castillo, Jaime

    2017-02-01

    This article aims to the evaluation of a prototypal assistive technology for Alzheimer's disease (AD) patients that helps them to remember personal details of familiar people they meet in their daily lives. An architecture is proposed for a personal information system powered by face recognition, where the main AD patient's interaction is performed in a smart watch device and the face recognition is carried out on the Cloud. A prototype was developed to perform some tests in a real-life scenario. The prototype showed correct results as a personal information system based on face recognition. However, usability flaws were identified in the interaction with the smart watch. Our architecture showed correct performance and we realized that it could be introduced in other fields, apart from assistive technology. However, when being targeted to patients with dementia some usability problems appeared, such as difficulties to read information in a small screen or take a proper photo. These problems should be addressed in further research. Implications for Rehabilitation This article presents a prototypal assistive technology for Alzheimer's disease (AD) patients. It targets AD patients to recognize their familiars, especially in medium-advanced stages of the disease. Analysing pictures taken by a smart watch, which the patient carries, the person in front is recognized and information about him is sent to the watch. This technology enables patients to have all the information of any close person, as a remainder, easing their daily lives, improving their self-esteem and stimulating the patient with novel technology.

  12. Smells familiar: group-joining decisions of predatory mites are mediated by olfactory cues of social familiarity.

    PubMed

    Muleta, Muluken G; Schausberger, Peter

    2013-09-01

    Group-living animals frequently have to trade off the costs and benefits of leaving an established group and joining another group. Owing to their high fitness relevance, group-joining decisions are commonly nonrandom and may be based on traits of both individual members and the group such as life stage, body size, social status and group density or size, respectively. Many group-living animals are able to recognize and to associate preferentially with familiar individuals, i.e. those encountered before. Hence, after dispersing from established groups, animals commonly have to decide whether to join a new familiar or unfamiliar group. Using binary choice situations we assessed the effects of social familiarity on group-joining behaviour of the plant-inhabiting predatory mite Phytoseiulus persimilis . Group living in P. persimilis is brought about by the patchy distribution of its spider mite prey and mutual conspecific attraction. In the first experiment, gravid predator females given a choice between spider mite patches occupied by unfamiliar and familiar groups of females strongly preferred to join familiar groups and to deposit their eggs in these patches. Preference for socially familiar groups was robust across biases of spider mite prey densities between choice options. The second experiment revealed that the predatory mite females can smell social familiarity from a distance. Females subjected to odour choice situations in artificial cages were more strongly attracted to the odour of familiar than unfamiliar groups. We argue that P. persimilis females preferentially join socially familiar groups because a familiar social environment relaxes competition and optimizes foraging and reproduction.

  13. Is That Me or My Twin? Lack of Self-Face Recognition Advantage in Identical Twins

    PubMed Central

    Martini, Matteo; Bufalari, Ilaria; Stazi, Maria Antonietta; Aglioti, Salvatore Maria

    2015-01-01

    Despite the increasing interest in twin studies and the stunning amount of research on face recognition, the ability of adult identical twins to discriminate their own faces from those of their co-twins has been scarcely investigated. One’s own face is the most distinctive feature of the bodily self, and people typically show a clear advantage in recognizing their own face even more than other very familiar identities. Given the very high level of resemblance of their faces, monozygotic twins represent a unique model for exploring self-face processing. Herein we examined the ability of monozygotic twins to distinguish their own face from the face of their co-twin and of a highly familiar individual. Results show that twins equally recognize their own face and their twin’s face. This lack of self-face advantage was negatively predicted by how much they felt physically similar to their co-twin and by their anxious or avoidant attachment style. We speculate that in monozygotic twins, the visual representation of the self-face overlaps with that of the co-twin. Thus, to distinguish the self from the co-twin, monozygotic twins have to rely much more than control participants on the multisensory integration processes upon which the sense of bodily self is based. Moreover, in keeping with the notion that attachment style influences perception of self and significant others, we propose that the observed self/co-twin confusion may depend upon insecure attachment. PMID:25853249

  14. Learned face-voice pairings facilitate visual search.

    PubMed

    Zweig, L Jacob; Suzuki, Satoru; Grabowecky, Marcia

    2015-04-01

    Voices provide a rich source of information that is important for identifying individuals and for social interaction. During search for a face in a crowd, voices often accompany visual information, and they facilitate localization of the sought-after individual. However, it is unclear whether this facilitation occurs primarily because the voice cues the location of the face or because it also increases the salience of the associated face. Here we demonstrate that a voice that provides no location information nonetheless facilitates visual search for an associated face. We trained novel face-voice associations and verified learning using a two-alternative forced choice task in which participants had to correctly match a presented voice to the associated face. Following training, participants searched for a previously learned target face among other faces while hearing one of the following sounds (localized at the center of the display): a congruent learned voice, an incongruent but familiar voice, an unlearned and unfamiliar voice, or a time-reversed voice. Only the congruent learned voice speeded visual search for the associated face. This result suggests that voices facilitate the visual detection of associated faces, potentially by increasing their visual salience, and that the underlying crossmodal associations can be established through brief training.

  15. Robust representations of individual faces in chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes) but not monkeys (Macaca mulatta).

    PubMed

    Taubert, Jessica; Weldon, Kimberly B; Parr, Lisa A

    2017-03-01

    Being able to recognize the faces of our friends and family members no matter where we see them represents a substantial challenge for the visual system because the retinal image of a face can be degraded by both changes in the person (age, expression, pose, hairstyle, etc.) and changes in the viewing conditions (direction and degree of illumination). Yet most of us are able to recognize familiar people effortlessly. A popular theory for how face recognition is achieved has argued that the brain stabilizes facial appearance by building average representations that enhance diagnostic features that reliably vary between people while diluting features that vary between instances of the same person. This explains why people find it easier to recognize average images of people, created by averaging multiple images of the same person together, than single instances (i.e. photographs). Although this theory is gathering momentum in the psychological and computer sciences, there is no evidence of whether this mechanism represents a unique specialization for individual recognition in humans. Here we tested two species, chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes) and rhesus monkeys (Macaca mulatta), to determine whether average images of different familiar individuals were easier to discriminate than photographs of familiar individuals. Using a two-alternative forced-choice, match-to-sample procedure, we report a behaviour response profile that suggests chimpanzees encode the faces of conspecifics differently than rhesus monkeys and in a manner similar to humans.

  16. Testing the connections within face processing circuitry in Capgras delusion with diffusion imaging tractography

    PubMed Central

    Bobes, Maria A.; Góngora, Daylin; Valdes, Annette; Santos, Yusniel; Acosta, Yanely; Fernandez Garcia, Yuriem; Lage, Agustin; Valdés-Sosa, Mitchell

    2016-01-01

    Although Capgras delusion (CD) patients are capable of recognizing familiar faces, they present a delusional belief that some relatives have been replaced by impostors. CD has been explained as a selective disruption of a pathway processing affective values of familiar faces. To test the integrity of connections within face processing circuitry, diffusion tensor imaging was performed in a CD patient and 10 age-matched controls. Voxel-based morphometry indicated gray matter damage in right frontal areas. Tractography was used to examine two important tracts of the face processing circuitry: the inferior fronto-occipital fasciculus (IFOF) and the inferior longitudinal (ILF). The superior longitudinal fasciculus (SLF) and commissural tracts were also assessed. CD patient did not differ from controls in the commissural fibers, or the SLF. Right and left ILF, and right IFOF were also equivalent to those of controls. However, the left IFOF was significantly reduced respect to controls, also showing a significant dissociation with the ILF, which represents a selective impairment in the fiber-tract connecting occipital and frontal areas. This suggests a possible involvement of the IFOF in affective processing of faces in typical observers and in covert recognition in some cases with prosopagnosia. PMID:26909325

  17. Meet The Simpsons: top-down effects in face learning.

    PubMed

    Bonner, Lesley; Burton, A Mike; Jenkins, Rob; McNeill, Allan; Vicki, Bruce

    2003-01-01

    We examined whether prior knowledge of a person affects the visual processes involved in learning a face. In two experiments, subjects were taught to associate human faces with characters they knew (from the TV show The Simpsons) or characters they did not (novel names). In each experiment, knowledge of the character predicted performance in a recognition memory test, relying only on old/new confidence ratings. In experiment 1, we established the technique and showed that there is a face-learning advantage for known people, even when face items are counterbalanced for familiarity across the experiment. In experiment 2 we replicated the effect in a setting which discouraged subjects from attending more to known than unknown people, and eliminated any visual association between face stimuli and a character from The Simpsons. We conclude that prior knowledge about a person can enhance learning of a new face.

  18. Song Recognition without Identification: When People Cannot "Name that Tune" but Can Recognize It as Familiar

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Kostic, Bogdan; Cleary, Anne M.

    2009-01-01

    Recognition without identification (RWI) is a common day-to-day experience (as when recognizing a face or a tune as familiar without being able to identify the person or the song). It is also a well-established laboratory-based empirical phenomenon: When identification of recognition test items is prevented, participants can discriminate between…

  19. Feasibility, acceptability, and preliminary outcomes of the Fortalezas Familiares intervention for Latino families facing maternal depression

    PubMed Central

    Valdez, Carmen R.; Padilla, Brian; Moore, Sarah; Magaña, Sandra

    2014-01-01

    This pilot study examined the feasibility, acceptability, and preliminary outcomes of a linguistically- and culturally-adapted intervention for immigrant Latina mothers with depression and their families. Fortalezas Familiares (Family Strengths) is a community-based, 12-week, multi-family group intervention that aims to increase communication about family processes leading up to and affected by the mother’s depression, build child coping and efficacy, enhance parenting competence and skills, and promote cultural and social assets within the family. In terms of feasibility, of 16 families who enrolled and participated in the intervention, 13 families attended more than 90% of meetings and completed the intervention. Post-tests reported positive changes following the intervention, including improved psychological functioning, increased family and marital support, and enhanced family functioning, as reported by mothers and other caregivers. Mothers also reported decreased conduct and hyperactivity problems among their children. Children reported positive changes in their psychological functioning and coping, peer relations, parenting warmth and acceptance, and overall family functioning. Post-intervention focus groups and surveys measuring acceptability revealed families’ satisfaction with the intervention and suggested areas of improvement. We discuss similarities and differences in outcomes between the adapted intervention, Fortalezas Familiares, and the original intervention, Keeping Families Strong, and propose future areas of intervention adaptation and development. PMID:24033238

  20. The contribution of recollection and familiarity to recognition memory: a study of the effects of test format and aging.

    PubMed

    Bastin, Christine; Van der Linden, Martial

    2003-01-01

    Whether the format of a recognition memory task influences the contribution of recollection and familiarity to performance is a matter of debate. The authors investigated this issue by comparing the performance of 64 young (mean age = 21.7 years; mean education = 14.5 years) and 62 older participants (mean age = 64.4 years; mean education = 14.2 years) on a yes-no and a forced-choice recognition task for unfamiliar faces using the remember-know-guess procedure. Familiarity contributed more to forced-choice than to yes-no performance. Moreover, older participants, who showed a decrease in recollection together with an increase in familiarity, performed better on the forced-choice task than on the yes-no task, whereas younger participants showed the opposite pattern.

  1. Reading words and other people: A comparison of exception word, familiar face and affect processing in the left and right temporal variants of primary progressive aphasia.

    PubMed

    Binney, Richard J; Henry, Maya L; Babiak, Miranda; Pressman, Peter S; Santos-Santos, Miguel A; Narvid, Jared; Mandelli, Maria Luisa; Strain, Paul J; Miller, Bruce L; Rankin, Katherine P; Rosen, Howard J; Gorno-Tempini, Maria Luisa

    2016-09-01

    Semantic variant primary progressive aphasia (svPPA) typically presents with left-hemisphere predominant rostral temporal lobe (rTL) atrophy and the most significant complaints within the language domain. Less frequently, patients present with right-hemisphere predominant temporal atrophy coupled with marked impairments in processing of famous faces and emotions. Few studies have objectively compared these patient groups in both domains and therefore it is unclear to what extent the syndromes overlap. Clinically diagnosed svPPA patients were characterized as left- (n = 21) or right-predominant (n = 12) using imaging and compared along with 14 healthy controls. Regarding language, our primary focus was upon two hallmark features of svPPA; confrontation naming and surface dyslexia. Both groups exhibited naming deficits and surface dyslexia although the impairments were more severe in the left-predominant group. Familiarity judgments on famous faces and affect processing were more profoundly impaired in the right-predominant group. Our findings suggest that the two syndromes overlap significantly but that early cases at the tail ends of the continuum constitute a challenge for current clinical criteria. Correlational neuroimaging analyses implicated a mid portion of the left lateral temporal lobe in exception word reading impairments in line with proposals that this region is an interface between phonology and semantic knowledge. Copyright © 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

  2. Face coding is bilateral in the female brain.

    PubMed

    Proverbio, Alice Mado; Riva, Federica; Martin, Eleonora; Zani, Alberto

    2010-06-21

    It is currently believed that face processing predominantly activates the right hemisphere in humans, but available literature is very inconsistent. In this study, ERPs were recorded in 50 right-handed women and men in response to 390 faces (of different age and sex), and 130 technological objects. Results showed no sex difference in the amplitude of N170 to objects; a much larger face-specific response over the right hemisphere in men, and a bilateral response in women; a lack of face-age coding effect over the left hemisphere in men, with no differences in N170 to faces as a function of age; a significant bilateral face-age coding effect in women. LORETA reconstruction showed a significant left and right asymmetry in the activation of the fusiform gyrus (BA19), in women and men, respectively. The present data reveal a lesser degree of lateralization of brain functions related to face coding in women than men. In this light, they may provide an explanation of the inconsistencies in the available literature concerning the asymmetric activity of left and right occipito-temporal cortices devoted to face perception during processing of face identity, structure, familiarity or affective content.

  3. Women are better at seeing faces where there are none: an ERP study of face pareidolia

    PubMed Central

    Galli, Jessica

    2016-01-01

    Event-related potentials (ERPs) were recorded in 26 right-handed students while they detected pictures of animals intermixed with those of familiar objects, faces and faces-in-things (FITs). The face-specific N170 ERP component over the right hemisphere was larger in response to faces and FITs than to objects. The vertex positive potential (VPP) showed a difference in FIT encoding processes between males and females at frontal sites; while for men, the FIT stimuli elicited a VPP of intermediate amplitude (between that for faces and objects), for women, there was no difference in VPP responses to faces or FITs, suggesting a marked anthropomorphization of objects in women. SwLORETA source reconstructions carried out to estimate the intracortical generators of ERPs in the 150–190 ms time window showed how, in the female brain, FIT perception was associated with the activation of brain areas involved in the affective processing of faces (right STS, BA22; posterior cingulate cortex, BA22; and orbitofrontal cortex, BA10) in addition to regions linked to shape processing (left cuneus, BA18/30). Conversely, in the men, the activation of occipito/parietal regions was prevalent, with a considerably smaller activation of BA10. The data suggest that the female brain is more inclined to anthropomorphize perfectly real objects compared to the male brain. PMID:27217120

  4. Face Recognition by Metropolitan Police Super-Recognisers

    PubMed Central

    Robertson, David J.; Noyes, Eilidh; Dowsett, Andrew J.; Jenkins, Rob; Burton, A. Mike

    2016-01-01

    Face recognition is used to prove identity across a wide variety of settings. Despite this, research consistently shows that people are typically rather poor at matching faces to photos. Some professional groups, such as police and passport officers, have been shown to perform just as poorly as the general public on standard tests of face recognition. However, face recognition skills are subject to wide individual variation, with some people showing exceptional ability—a group that has come to be known as ‘super-recognisers’. The Metropolitan Police Force (London) recruits ‘super-recognisers’ from within its ranks, for deployment on various identification tasks. Here we test four working super-recognisers from within this police force, and ask whether they are really able to perform at levels above control groups. We consistently find that the police ‘super-recognisers’ perform at well above normal levels on tests of unfamiliar and familiar face matching, with degraded as well as high quality images. Recruiting employees with high levels of skill in these areas, and allocating them to relevant tasks, is an efficient way to overcome some of the known difficulties associated with unfamiliar face recognition. PMID:26918457

  5. Face Recognition by Metropolitan Police Super-Recognisers.

    PubMed

    Robertson, David J; Noyes, Eilidh; Dowsett, Andrew J; Jenkins, Rob; Burton, A Mike

    2016-01-01

    Face recognition is used to prove identity across a wide variety of settings. Despite this, research consistently shows that people are typically rather poor at matching faces to photos. Some professional groups, such as police and passport officers, have been shown to perform just as poorly as the general public on standard tests of face recognition. However, face recognition skills are subject to wide individual variation, with some people showing exceptional ability-a group that has come to be known as 'super-recognisers'. The Metropolitan Police Force (London) recruits 'super-recognisers' from within its ranks, for deployment on various identification tasks. Here we test four working super-recognisers from within this police force, and ask whether they are really able to perform at levels above control groups. We consistently find that the police 'super-recognisers' perform at well above normal levels on tests of unfamiliar and familiar face matching, with degraded as well as high quality images. Recruiting employees with high levels of skill in these areas, and allocating them to relevant tasks, is an efficient way to overcome some of the known difficulties associated with unfamiliar face recognition.

  6. Memory for friends or foes: the social context of past encounters with faces modulates their subsequent neural traces in the brain.

    PubMed

    Vrticka, Pascal; Andersson, Frédéric; Sander, David; Vuilleumier, Patrik

    2009-01-01

    Every day we encounter new people, interact with them, and form person impressions based on quick and automatic inferences from minimal contextual information. Previous studies have identified an extensive network of brain areas involved in familiar face recognition, but there is little evidence to date concerning the neural bases of negative vs. positive person impressions. In the present study, participants were repeatedly exposed to 16 unfamiliar face identities within a pseudo-interactive game context to generate a perception of either "friends" or "foes". Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) was then performed during an old/new memory task to assess any difference in brain responses to these now familiar face identities, relative to unfamiliar faces. Importantly, whereas facial expressions were always emotional (either smiling or angry) during the encoding phase, they were always neutral during the memory task. Our results reveal that several brain regions involved in familiar face recognition, including fusiform cortex, posterior cingulate gyrus, and amygdala, plus additional areas involved in motivational control such as caudate and anterior cingulate cortex, were differentially modulated as a function of a previous encounter, and generally more activated when faces were perceived as "foes" rather than "friends". These findings underscore that a key dimension of social judgments, based on past impressions of who may be supportive or hostile, may lead to long-lasting effects on memory for faces and thus influence affective reactions to people during a subsequent encounter even in a different (neutral) context.

  7. The Processing of Human Emotional Faces by Pet and Lab Dogs: Evidence for Lateralization and Experience Effects

    PubMed Central

    Barber, Anjuli L. A.; Randi, Dania; Müller, Corsin A.; Huber, Ludwig

    2016-01-01

    From all non-human animals dogs are very likely the best decoders of human behavior. In addition to a high sensitivity to human attentive status and to ostensive cues, they are able to distinguish between individual human faces and even between human facial expressions. However, so far little is known about how they process human faces and to what extent this is influenced by experience. Here we present an eye-tracking study with dogs emanating from two different living environments and varying experience with humans: pet and lab dogs. The dogs were shown pictures of familiar and unfamiliar human faces expressing four different emotions. The results, extracted from several different eye-tracking measurements, revealed pronounced differences in the face processing of pet and lab dogs, thus indicating an influence of the amount of exposure to humans. In addition, there was some evidence for the influences of both, the familiarity and the emotional expression of the face, and strong evidence for a left gaze bias. These findings, together with recent evidence for the dog's ability to discriminate human facial expressions, indicate that dogs are sensitive to some emotions expressed in human faces. PMID:27074009

  8. A Smile Enhances 3-Month-Olds' Recognition of an Individual Face

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Turati, Chiara; Montirosso, Rosario; Brenna, Viola; Ferrara, Veronica; Borgatti, Renato

    2011-01-01

    Recent studies demonstrated that in adults and children recognition of face identity and facial expression mutually interact (Bate, Haslam, & Hodgson, 2009; Spangler, Schwarzer, Korell, & Maier-Karius, 2010). Here, using a familiarization paradigm, we explored the relation between these processes in early infancy, investigating whether 3-month-old…

  9. The role of familiarity in binary choice inferences.

    PubMed

    Honda, Hidehito; Abe, Keiga; Matsuka, Toshihiko; Yamagishi, Kimihiko

    2011-07-01

    In research on the recognition heuristic (Goldstein & Gigerenzer, Psychological Review, 109, 75-90, 2002), knowledge of recognized objects has been categorized as "recognized" or "unrecognized" without regard to the degree of familiarity of the recognized object. In the present article, we propose a new inference model--familiarity-based inference. We hypothesize that when subjective knowledge levels (familiarity) of recognized objects differ, the degree of familiarity of recognized objects will influence inferences. Specifically, people are predicted to infer that the more familiar object in a pair of two objects has a higher criterion value on the to-be-judged dimension. In two experiments, using a binary choice task, we examined inferences about populations in a pair of two cities. Results support predictions of familiarity-based inference. Participants inferred that the more familiar city in a pair was more populous. Statistical modeling showed that individual differences in familiarity-based inference lie in the sensitivity to differences in familiarity. In addition, we found that familiarity-based inference can be generally regarded as an ecologically rational inference. Furthermore, when cue knowledge about the inference criterion was available, participants made inferences based on the cue knowledge about population instead of familiarity. Implications of the role of familiarity in psychological processes are discussed.

  10. Face Coding Is Bilateral in the Female Brain

    PubMed Central

    Proverbio, Alice Mado; Riva, Federica; Martin, Eleonora; Zani, Alberto

    2010-01-01

    Background It is currently believed that face processing predominantly activates the right hemisphere in humans, but available literature is very inconsistent. Methodology/Principal Findings In this study, ERPs were recorded in 50 right-handed women and men in response to 390 faces (of different age and sex), and 130 technological objects. Results showed no sex difference in the amplitude of N170 to objects; a much larger face-specific response over the right hemisphere in men, and a bilateral response in women; a lack of face-age coding effect over the left hemisphere in men, with no differences in N170 to faces as a function of age; a significant bilateral face-age coding effect in women. Conclusions/Significance LORETA reconstruction showed a significant left and right asymmetry in the activation of the fusiform gyrus (BA19), in women and men, respectively. The present data reveal a lesser degree of lateralization of brain functions related to face coding in women than men. In this light, they may provide an explanation of the inconsistencies in the available literature concerning the asymmetric activity of left and right occipito-temporal cortices devoted to face perception during processing of face identity, structure, familiarity or affective content. PMID:20574528

  11. Familiarity and Aptness in Metaphor Comprehension.

    PubMed

    Damerall, Alison Whiteford; Kellogg, Ronald T

    2016-01-01

    The career of metaphor hypothesis suggests that novel metaphors are understood through a search for shared features between the topic and vehicle, but with repeated exposure, the figurative meaning is understood directly as a new category is established. The categorization hypothesis argues that instead good or apt metaphors are understood through a categorization process, whether or not they are familiar. Only poor metaphors ever invoke a literal comparison. In Experiment 1, with aptness equated, we found that high familiarity speeded comprehension time over low-familiarity metaphors. In Experiment 2a, providing a literal prime failed to facilitate interpretation of low-familiarity metaphors, contrary to the career of metaphor hypothesis. In Experiment 2b, with familiarity equated, high- and low-aptness metaphors did not differ, contrary to the categorization hypothesis.

  12. Flashing characters with famous faces improves ERP-based brain-computer interface performance

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Kaufmann, T.; Schulz, S. M.; Grünzinger, C.; Kübler, A.

    2011-10-01

    Currently, the event-related potential (ERP)-based spelling device, often referred to as P300-Speller, is the most commonly used brain-computer interface (BCI) for enhancing communication of patients with impaired speech or motor function. Among numerous improvements, a most central feature has received little attention, namely optimizing the stimulus used for eliciting ERPs. Therefore we compared P300-Speller performance with the standard stimulus (flashing characters) against performance with stimuli known for eliciting particularly strong ERPs due to their psychological salience, i.e. flashing familiar faces transparently superimposed on characters. Our results not only indicate remarkably increased ERPs in response to familiar faces but also improved P300-Speller performance due to a significant reduction of stimulus sequences needed for correct character classification. These findings demonstrate a promising new approach for improving the speed and thus fluency of BCI-enhanced communication with the widely used P300-Speller.

  13. Women are better at seeing faces where there are none: an ERP study of face pareidolia.

    PubMed

    Proverbio, Alice M; Galli, Jessica

    2016-09-01

    Event-related potentials (ERPs) were recorded in 26 right-handed students while they detected pictures of animals intermixed with those of familiar objects, faces and faces-in-things (FITs). The face-specific N170 ERP component over the right hemisphere was larger in response to faces and FITs than to objects. The vertex positive potential (VPP) showed a difference in FIT encoding processes between males and females at frontal sites; while for men, the FIT stimuli elicited a VPP of intermediate amplitude (between that for faces and objects), for women, there was no difference in VPP responses to faces or FITs, suggesting a marked anthropomorphization of objects in women. SwLORETA source reconstructions carried out to estimate the intracortical generators of ERPs in the 150-190 ms time window showed how, in the female brain, FIT perception was associated with the activation of brain areas involved in the affective processing of faces (right STS, BA22; posterior cingulate cortex, BA22; and orbitofrontal cortex, BA10) in addition to regions linked to shape processing (left cuneus, BA18/30). Conversely, in the men, the activation of occipito/parietal regions was prevalent, with a considerably smaller activation of BA10. The data suggest that the female brain is more inclined to anthropomorphize perfectly real objects compared to the male brain. © The Author (2016). Published by Oxford University Press. For Permissions, please email: journals.permissions@oup.com.

  14. Implications of Chinese face reading on the aesthetic sense.

    PubMed

    Wong, Frederick T C; Soo, Gordon; Ng, Wai-pok; van Hasselt, C Andrew; Tong, Michael C F

    2010-01-01

    Chinese face reading is an ancient art that has been developed over centuries, not only in China but over the wider area of Asia owing to China's cultural dominance in Asia during its imperial rule. Similar to feng shui, Chinese face reading is based on a philosophy held by Chinese people all over the world that expresses itself in contemporary daily life and practices by coloring people's choices, likes, and dislikes. It is inevitable that the aesthetic sense is also affected by face reading principles, especially among those who are most familiar with them. An understanding of these principles and beliefs would help surgeons better understand their Asian patients' requests and perhaps allow them to better communicate appropriate suggestions accordingly.

  15. Age, familiarity, and visual processing schemes.

    PubMed

    De Haven, D T; Roberts-Gray, C

    1978-10-01

    In a partial-report task adults and 5-yr.-old children identified stimuli of two types (common objects and familiar common objects) in two representations (black-and-white line drawings or full color photographs). It was hypothesized that familiar items and photographic representation would enhance the children's accuracy. Although both children and adults were more accurate when the stimuli were from the familiar set, children performed more accurate when the stimuli were from the familiar set, children performed poorly in all stimulus conditions. Results suggest that the age difference in this task reflects the "concrete" nature of the perceptual process in children.

  16. The role of movement in the recognition of famous faces.

    PubMed

    Lander, K; Christie, F; Bruce, V

    1999-11-01

    The effects of movement on the recognition of famous faces shown in difficult conditions were investigated. Images were presented as negatives, upside down (inverted), and thresholded. Results indicate that, under all these conditions, moving faces were recognized significantly better than static ones. One possible explanation of this effect could be that a moving sequence contains more static information about the different views and expressions of the face than does a single static image. However, even when the amount of static information was equated (Experiments 3 and 4), there was still an advantage for moving sequences that contained their original dynamic properties. The results suggest that the dynamics of the motion provide additional information, helping to access an established familiar face representation. Both the theoretical and the practical implications for these findings are discussed.

  17. Recognizing the Face of Johnny, Suzy, and Me: Insensitivity to the Spacing Among Features at 4 Years of Age

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Mondloch, Catherine J.; Leis, Anishka; Maurer, Daphne

    2006-01-01

    Four-year-olds were tested for their ability to use differences in the spacing among features to recognize familiar faces. They were given a storybook depicting multiple views of 2 children. They returned to the laboratory 2 weeks later and used a "magic wand" to play a computer game that tested their ability to recognize the familiarized faces…

  18. Not That Heart-Stopping After All: Visuo-Cardiac Synchrony Does Not Boost Self-Face Attribution

    PubMed Central

    Porciello, Giuseppina; Daum, Moritz M.; Menghini, Cristina; Brugger, Peter; Lenggenhager, Bigna

    2016-01-01

    Recent experimental evidence and theoretical models suggest that an integration of exteroceptive and interoceptive signals underlies several key aspects of the bodily self. While it has been shown that self-attribution of both the hand and the full-body are altered by conflicting extero-exteroceptive (e.g. visuo-tactile) and extero-interoceptive (e.g. visuo-cardiac) information, no study has thus far investigated whether self-attribution of the face might be altered by visuo-cardiac stimulation similarly to visuo-tactile stimulation. In three independent groups of participants we presented ambiguous (i.e. morphed with a stranger's face) self-faces flashing synchronously or asynchronously with the participants’ heartbeat. We then measured the subjective percentages of self-face attribution of morphed stimuli. To control for a potential effect of visuo-cardiac synchrony on familiarity, a task assessing the attribution of a familiar face was introduced. Moreover, different durations of visuo-cardiac flashing and different degrees of asynchronicity were used. Based on previous studies showing that synchronous visuo-cardiac stimulation generally increases self-attribution of the full-body and the hand, and that synchronous visuo-tactile stimulation increases self-face attribution, we predicted higher self-face attribution during the synchronous visuo-cardiac flashing of the morphed stimuli. In contrast to this hypothesis, the results showed no difference between synchronous and asynchronous stimulation on self-face attribution in any of the three studies. We thus conclude that visuo-cardiac synchrony does not boost self-attribution of the face as it does that of hand and full-body. PMID:27541587

  19. Not That Heart-Stopping After All: Visuo-Cardiac Synchrony Does Not Boost Self-Face Attribution.

    PubMed

    Porciello, Giuseppina; Daum, Moritz M; Menghini, Cristina; Brugger, Peter; Lenggenhager, Bigna

    2016-01-01

    Recent experimental evidence and theoretical models suggest that an integration of exteroceptive and interoceptive signals underlies several key aspects of the bodily self. While it has been shown that self-attribution of both the hand and the full-body are altered by conflicting extero-exteroceptive (e.g. visuo-tactile) and extero-interoceptive (e.g. visuo-cardiac) information, no study has thus far investigated whether self-attribution of the face might be altered by visuo-cardiac stimulation similarly to visuo-tactile stimulation. In three independent groups of participants we presented ambiguous (i.e. morphed with a stranger's face) self-faces flashing synchronously or asynchronously with the participants' heartbeat. We then measured the subjective percentages of self-face attribution of morphed stimuli. To control for a potential effect of visuo-cardiac synchrony on familiarity, a task assessing the attribution of a familiar face was introduced. Moreover, different durations of visuo-cardiac flashing and different degrees of asynchronicity were used. Based on previous studies showing that synchronous visuo-cardiac stimulation generally increases self-attribution of the full-body and the hand, and that synchronous visuo-tactile stimulation increases self-face attribution, we predicted higher self-face attribution during the synchronous visuo-cardiac flashing of the morphed stimuli. In contrast to this hypothesis, the results showed no difference between synchronous and asynchronous stimulation on self-face attribution in any of the three studies. We thus conclude that visuo-cardiac synchrony does not boost self-attribution of the face as it does that of hand and full-body.

  20. Proverb familiarity and the mental status examination.

    PubMed

    Haynes, R M; Resnick, P J; Dougherty, K C; Althof, S E

    1993-01-01

    Asking patients to interpret proverbs is a traditional method of assessing abstract thinking ability. Familiarity with a proverb increases the likelihood of interpreting it correctly. Differences in proverb familiarity among patients could lead clinicians to incorrectly conclude that a patient is thinking concretely, and thus to underestimate the patient's cognitive ability. Clinicians should be aware of this possibility when assessing patients from different racial and gender groups. The authors surveyed 229 Afro-American and 104 Caucasian high school students to determine their familiarity with 25 proverbs. Thirty-seven clinicians were also asked to rate their patients' familiarity with the same proverbs. The authors found no differences in proverb familiarity between the black and white students or the male and female students. Clinicians' beliefs about proverb familiarity in their patients were found to be inaccurate.

  1. The effect of familiarity on perceived interestingness of images

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Chu, Sharon Lynn; Fedorovskaya, Elena; Quek, Francis; Snyder, Jeffrey

    2013-03-01

    We present an exploration of familiarity as a meaningful dimension for the individualized adaptation of media-rich interfaces. In this paper, we investigate in particular the effect of digital images personalized for familiarity on users' perceived interestingness. Two dimensions of familiarity, facial familiarity and familiarity with image context, are manipulated. Our investigation consisted of three studies: the first two address how morphing technology can be used to convey meaningful familiarity, and the third studies the effect of such familiarity on users' sense of interestingness. Four levels of person familiarity varying in degree of person knowledge, and two levels of context familiarity varying in frequency of exposure, were considered: Self, Friend, Celebrity, and Stranger in Familiar and Unfamiliar contexts. Experimental results showed significant main effects of context and person familiarity. Our findings deepen understanding of the critical element of familiarity in HCI and its relationship to the interestingness of images, and can have great impact for the design of media-rich systems.

  2. Age-Related Differences in Face Recognition: Neural Correlates of Repetition and Semantic Priming in Young and Older Adults

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Wiese, Holger; Komes, Jessica; Tüttenberg, Simone; Leidinger, Jana; Schweinberger, Stefan R.

    2017-01-01

    Difficulties in person recognition are among the common complaints associated with cognitive ageing. The present series of experiments therefore investigated face and person recognition in young and older adults. The authors examined how within-domain and cross-domain repetition as well as semantic priming affect familiar face recognition and…

  3. An appreciation of Bruce and Young's (1986) serial stage model of face naming after 25 years.

    PubMed

    Hanley, J Richard

    2011-11-01

    The current status of Bruce and Young's (1986) serial model of face naming is discussed 25 years after its original publication. In the first part of the paper, evidence for and against the serial model is reviewed. It is argued that there is no compelling reason why we should abandon Bruce and Young's claim that recall of a name is contingent upon prior retrieval of semantic information about the person. The current status of the claim that people's names are more difficult to recall than the names of objects is then evaluated. Finally, an account of the anatomical location in the brain of Bruce and Young's three processing stages (face familiarity, retrieval of semantic information, retrieval of names) is suggested. In particular, there is evidence that biographical knowledge about familiar people is stored in the right anterior temporal lobes (ATL) and that the left temporal pole (TP) is heavily involved in retrieval of the names of familiar people. The issue of whether these brain areas play a similar role in object processing is also discussed. ©2011 The British Psychological Society.

  4. Familiarity-Based Stimulus Generalization of Conditioned Suppression

    PubMed Central

    2017-01-01

    We report that stimulus novelty/familiarity is able to modulate stimulus generalization and discuss the theoretical implications of novelty/familiarity coding. Rats in Skinner boxes received clicker → shock pairings before generalization testing to a tone. Before clicker training, different groups of rats received preexposure treatments designed to systematically modulate the clicker and the tone’s novelty and familiarity. Rats whose preexposure matched novelty/familiarity (i.e., either both or neither clicker and tone were preexposed) showed enhanced suppression to the tone relative to rats whose preexposure mixed novelty/familiarity (i.e., only clicker or tone was preexposed). This was not the result of sensory preconditioning to clicker and tone. PMID:28383938

  5. Lag-length effect on repetition priming of famous and unfamiliar faces: evidence from N250r and N400.

    PubMed

    Nie, Aiqing; Li, Minye; Ye, Jingheng

    2016-07-06

    Previous event-related potentials research has reliably identified two repetition priming components in faces, the N250r and the N400, which are believed to reflect, respectively, the accessing to the stored structural representations and the semantic retrieval. However, the effect of lags longer than immediate repetition and shorter than 3 min on the two components has not been described as yet, and the interaction between lag length and familiarity is unclear. The current experiment aims to address these issues. In this experiment, famous and unfamiliar faces were represented after short, medium, or long lags, and participants were required to decide whether each face was known or not. The data showed that the frontal N250r, rather than the temporal counterpart, persisted to the medium lag case for famous faces; for unfamiliar faces, no N250r was observed. The frontal N400 was more regulated by lag length than the centroparietal counterpart. These results suggest that the frontal N250r and the frontal N400 are affected by the lag length; moreover, the former is more sensitive to the pre-experimental familiarity of faces.

  6. Familiarity and recollection in Williams syndrome.

    PubMed

    Costanzo, Floriana; Vicari, Stefano; Carlesimo, Giovanni A

    2013-01-01

    Interest is being shown in a componential analysis of performance on declarative memory tasks that distinguishes two different kinds of access to stored memories, recollection and familiarity. From a developmental perspective, it has been hypothesized that recollection emerges later and shows more developmental changes than familiarity. Nevertheless, the contribution of recollection and familiarity to the recognition performance of individuals with intellectual disabilities (ID) has been rarely examined. The present study was aimed at investigating the qualitative profile of declarative long-term memory in a group of individuals with Williams syndrome (WS). We compared 13 individuals with WS and 13 mental-age-matched typically developing children in two different experimental paradigms to assess the contribution of familiarity and recollection to recognition performance. We adopted a modified version of the process dissociation procedure and a task dissociation procedure, both of which are suited to individuals with ID. Results of both experimental paradigms demonstrated reduced recollection and spared familiarity in the declarative memory performances of individuals with WS. These results provide direct evidence of a dissociation between recollection and familiarity in a neurodevelopmental disorder and are discussed in relation to alternative approaches for explaining abnormal cognition in individuals with ID. Copyright © 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

  7. Relations between scanning and recognition of own- and other-race faces in 6- and 9-month-old infants.

    PubMed

    Liu, Shaoying; Quinn, Paul C; Xiao, Naiqi G; Wu, Zhijun; Liu, Guangxi; Lee, Kang

    2018-06-01

    Infants typically see more own-race faces than other-race faces. Existing evidence shows that this difference in face race experience has profound consequences for face processing: as early as 6 months of age, infants scan own- and other-race faces differently and display superior recognition for own- relative to other-race faces. However, it is unclear whether scanning of own-race faces is related to the own-race recognition advantage in infants. To bridge this gap in the literature, the current study used eye tracking to investigate the relation between own-race face scanning and recognition in 6- and 9-month-old Asian infants (N = 82). The infants were familiarized with dynamic own- and other-race faces, and then their face recognition was tested with static face images. Both age groups recognized own- but not other-race faces. Also, regardless of race, the more infants scanned the eyes of the novel versus familiar faces at test, the better their face-recognition performance. In addition, both 6- and 9-month-olds fixated significantly longer on the nose of own-race faces, and greater fixation on the nose during test trials correlated positively with individual novelty preference scores in the own- but not other-race condition. The results suggest that some aspects of the relation between recognition and scanning are independent of differential experience with face race, whereas other aspects are affected by such experience. More broadly, the findings imply that scanning and recognition may become linked during infancy at least in part through the influence of perceptual experience. © 2018 The Institute of Psychology, Chinese Academy of Sciences and John Wiley & Sons Australia, Ltd.

  8. Face-selective regions show invariance to linear, but not to non-linear, changes in facial images.

    PubMed

    Baseler, Heidi A; Young, Andrew W; Jenkins, Rob; Mike Burton, A; Andrews, Timothy J

    2016-12-01

    Familiar face recognition is remarkably invariant across huge image differences, yet little is understood concerning how image-invariant recognition is achieved. To investigate the neural correlates of invariance, we localized the core face-responsive regions and then compared the pattern of fMR-adaptation to different stimulus transformations in each region to behavioural data demonstrating the impact of the same transformations on familiar face recognition. In Experiment 1, we compared linear transformations of size and aspect ratio to a non-linear transformation affecting only part of the face. We found that adaptation to facial identity in face-selective regions showed invariance to linear changes, but there was no invariance to non-linear changes. In Experiment 2, we measured the sensitivity to non-linear changes that fell within the normal range of variation across face images. We found no adaptation to facial identity for any of the non-linear changes in the image, including to faces that varied in different levels of caricature. These results show a compelling difference in the sensitivity to linear compared to non-linear image changes in face-selective regions of the human brain that is only partially consistent with their effect on behavioural judgements of identity. We conclude that while regions such as the FFA may well be involved in the recognition of face identity, they are more likely to contribute to some form of normalisation that underpins subsequent recognition than to form the neural substrate of recognition per se. Copyright © 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

  9. How Does Familiarity Breed Contempt?

    PubMed

    Mann, Kevin; Clandinin, Thomas R

    2017-05-18

    Classifying sensory experiences as either novel or familiar represents a fundamental challenge to neural processing. In this issue of Cell, Hattori et al. describe a circuit mechanism by which a novel stimulus that initially interests a fruit fly turns into a familiar one. Copyright © 2017 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

  10. Prior familiarity with components enhances unconscious learning of relations.

    PubMed

    Scott, Ryan B; Dienes, Zoltan

    2010-03-01

    The influence of prior familiarity with components on the implicit learning of relations was examined using artificial grammar learning. Prior to training on grammar strings, participants were familiarized with either the novel symbols used to construct the strings or with irrelevant geometric shapes. Participants familiarized with the relevant symbols showed greater accuracy when judging the correctness of new grammar strings. Familiarity with elemental components did not increase conscious awareness of the basis for discriminations (structural knowledge) but increased accuracy even in its absence. The subjective familiarity of test strings predicted grammaticality judgments. However, prior exposure to relevant symbols did not increase overall test string familiarity or reliance on familiarity when making grammaticality judgments. Familiarity with the symbols increased the learning of relations between them (bigrams and trigrams) thus resulting in greater familiarity for grammatical versus ungrammatical strings. The results have important implications for models of implicit learning.

  11. Word-Form Familiarity Bootstraps Infant Speech Segmentation

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Altvater-Mackensen, Nicole; Mani, Nivedita

    2013-01-01

    At about 7 months of age, infants listen longer to sentences containing familiar words--but not deviant pronunciations of familiar words (Jusczyk & Aslin, 1995). This finding suggests that infants are able to segment familiar words from fluent speech and that they store words in sufficient phonological detail to recognize deviations from a…

  12. Recognition memory for emotional and neutral faces: an event-related potential study.

    PubMed

    Johansson, Mikael; Mecklinger, Axel; Treese, Anne-Cécile

    2004-12-01

    This study examined emotional influences on the hypothesized event-related potential (ERP) correlates of familiarity and recollection (Experiment 1) and the states of awareness (Experiment 2) accompanying recognition memory for faces differing in facial affect. Participants made gender judgments to positive, negative, and neutral faces at study and were in the test phase instructed to discriminate between studied and nonstudied faces. Whereas old-new discrimination was unaffected by facial expression, negative faces were recollected to a greater extent than both positive and neutral faces as reflected in the parietal ERP old-new effect and in the proportion of remember judgments. Moreover, emotion-specific modulations were observed in frontally recorded ERPs elicited by correctly rejected new faces that concurred with a more liberal response criterion for emotional as compared to neutral faces. Taken together, the results are consistent with the view that processes promoting recollection are facilitated for negative events and that emotion may affect recognition performance by influencing criterion setting mediated by the prefrontal cortex.

  13. Spatio-temporal dynamics and laterality effects of face inversion, feature presence and configuration, and face outline

    PubMed Central

    Marinkovic, Ksenija; Courtney, Maureen G.; Witzel, Thomas; Dale, Anders M.; Halgren, Eric

    2014-01-01

    Although a crucial role of the fusiform gyrus (FG) in face processing has been demonstrated with a variety of methods, converging evidence suggests that face processing involves an interactive and overlapping processing cascade in distributed brain areas. Here we examine the spatio-temporal stages and their functional tuning to face inversion, presence and configuration of inner features, and face contour in healthy subjects during passive viewing. Anatomically-constrained magnetoencephalography (aMEG) combines high-density whole-head MEG recordings and distributed source modeling with high-resolution structural MRI. Each person's reconstructed cortical surface served to constrain noise-normalized minimum norm inverse source estimates. The earliest activity was estimated to the occipital cortex at ~100 ms after stimulus onset and was sensitive to an initial coarse level visual analysis. Activity in the right-lateralized ventral temporal area (inclusive of the FG) peaked at ~160 ms and was largest to inverted faces. Images containing facial features in the veridical and rearranged configuration irrespective of the facial outline elicited intermediate level activity. The M160 stage may provide structural representations necessary for downstream distributed areas to process identity and emotional expression. However, inverted faces additionally engaged the left ventral temporal area at ~180 ms and were uniquely subserved by bilateral processing. This observation is consistent with the dual route model and spared processing of inverted faces in prosopagnosia. The subsequent deflection, peaking at ~240 ms in the anterior temporal areas bilaterally, was largest to normal, upright faces. It may reflect initial engagement of the distributed network subserving individuation and familiarity. These results support dynamic models suggesting that processing of unfamiliar faces in the absence of a cognitive task is subserved by a distributed and interactive neural circuit. PMID

  14. Tolerance to spatial-relational transformations in unfamiliar faces: A further challenge to a configural processing account of identity recognition.

    PubMed

    Lorenzino, Martina; Caminati, Martina; Caudek, Corrado

    2018-05-25

    One of the most important questions in face perception research is to understand what information is extracted from a face in order to recognize its identity. Recognition of facial identity has been attributed to a special sensitivity to "configural" information. However, recent studies have challenged the configural account by showing that participants are poor in discriminating variations of metric distances among facial features, especially for familiar as opposed to unfamiliar faces, whereas a configural account predicts the opposite. We aimed to extend these previous results by examining classes of unfamiliar faces with which we have different levels of expertise. We hypothesized an inverse relation between sensitivity to configural information and expertise with a given class of faces, but only for neutral expressions. By first matching perceptual discriminability, we measured tolerance to subtle configural transformations with same-race (SR) versus other-race (OR) faces, and with upright versus upside-down faces. Consistently with our predictions, we found a lower sensitivity to at-threshold configural changes for SR compared to OR faces. We also found that, for our stimuli, the face inversion effect disappeared for neutral but not for emotional faces - a result that can also be attributed to a lower sensitivity to configural transformations for faces presented in a more familiar orientation. The present findings question a purely configural account of face processing and suggest that the role of spatial-relational information in face processing varies according to the functional demands of the task and to the characteristics of the stimuli. Copyright © 2018 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

  15. Redesigning photo-ID to improve unfamiliar face matching performance.

    PubMed

    White, David; Burton, A Mike; Jenkins, Rob; Kemp, Richard I

    2014-06-01

    Viewers find it difficult to match photos of unfamiliar faces for identity. Despite this, the use of photographic ID is widespread. In this study we ask whether it is possible to improve face matching performance by replacing single photographs on ID documents with multiple photos or an average image of the bearer. In 3 experiments we compare photo-to-photo matching with photo-to-average matching (where the average is formed from multiple photos of the same person) and photo-to-array matching (where the array comprises separate photos of the same person). We consistently find an accuracy advantage for average images and photo arrays over single photos, and show that this improvement is driven by performance in match trials. In the final experiment, we find a benefit of 4-image arrays relative to average images for unfamiliar faces, but not for familiar faces. We propose that conventional photo-ID format can be improved, and discuss this finding in the context of face recognition more generally. PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2014 APA, all rights reserved.

  16. Recollection and familiarity in hippocampal amnesia.

    PubMed

    Turriziani, Patrizia; Serra, Laura; Fadda, Lucia; Caltagirone, Carlo; Carlesimo, Giovanni Augusto

    2008-01-01

    Currently, there is a general agreement that two distinct cognitive operations, recollection and familiarity, contribute to performance on recognition memory tests. However, there is a controversy about whether recollection and familiarity reflect different memory processes, mediated by distinct neural substrates (dual-process models), or whether they are the expression of memory traces of different strength in the context of a unitary declarative memory system (unitary-strength models). Critical in this debate is the status of recognition memory in hippocampal amnesia and, in particular, whether the various structures in the medial temporal lobe (MTL) contribute differentially to the recollection and familiarity components of recognition. The present study aimed to explore the relative contribution of recollection and familiarity to recognition of words that had been previously read or that had been previously generated in a group of severely amnesic patients with cerebral damage restricted to the hippocampus. A convergent pattern of results emerged when we used a subjective-based (remember/know; R/K) and an objective-based (process dissociation procedure; PDP) methods to estimate the contribution of recollection and familiarity to recognition performance. In both PDP and R/K procedures, healthy controls disclosed significantly higher recollection estimates for words that had been anagrammed than for words that had been read. Amnesic patients' recollection scores were not different for words that had been generated or that had been read, and the recollection estimate for words that had been generated was significantly reduced as compared to the group of healthy controls. For familiarity, both healthy controls and amnesic patients recognized as familiar more words that had been generated than words that had been read, and there was no difference between the two groups. These data support the hypothesis of a specific role of the hippocampus in recollection processes

  17. Adults Scan Own- and Other-Race Faces Differently

    PubMed Central

    Fu, Genyue; Hu, Chao S.; Wang, Qiandong; Quinn, Paul C.; Lee, Kang

    2012-01-01

    It is well established that individuals show an other-race effect (ORE) in face recognition: they recognize own-race faces better than other-race faces. The present study tested the hypothesis that individuals would also scan own- and other-race faces differently. We asked Chinese participants to remember Chinese and Caucasian faces and we tested their memory of the faces over five testing blocks. The participants' eye movements were recorded with the use of an eye tracker. The data were analyzed with an Area of Interest approach using the key AOIs of a face (eyes, nose, and mouth). Also, we used the iMap toolbox to analyze the raw data of participants' fixation on each pixel of the entire face. Results from both types of analyses strongly supported the hypothesis. When viewing target Chinese or Caucasian faces, Chinese participants spent a significantly greater proportion of fixation time on the eyes of other-race Caucasian faces than the eyes of own-race Chinese faces. In contrast, they spent a significantly greater proportion of fixation time on the nose and mouth of Chinese faces than the nose and mouth of Caucasian faces. This pattern of differential fixation, for own- and other-race eyes and nose in particular, was consistent even as participants became increasingly familiar with the target faces of both races. The results could not be explained by the perceptual salience of the Chinese nose or Caucasian eyes because these features were not differentially salient across the races. Our results are discussed in terms of the facial morphological differences between Chinese and Caucasian faces and the enculturation of mutual gaze norms in East Asian cultures. PMID:22675486

  18. Adults scan own- and other-race faces differently.

    PubMed

    Fu, Genyue; Hu, Chao S; Wang, Qiandong; Quinn, Paul C; Lee, Kang

    2012-01-01

    It is well established that individuals show an other-race effect (ORE) in face recognition: they recognize own-race faces better than other-race faces. The present study tested the hypothesis that individuals would also scan own- and other-race faces differently. We asked Chinese participants to remember Chinese and Caucasian faces and we tested their memory of the faces over five testing blocks. The participants' eye movements were recorded with the use of an eye tracker. The data were analyzed with an Area of Interest approach using the key AOIs of a face (eyes, nose, and mouth). Also, we used the iMap toolbox to analyze the raw data of participants' fixation on each pixel of the entire face. Results from both types of analyses strongly supported the hypothesis. When viewing target Chinese or Caucasian faces, Chinese participants spent a significantly greater proportion of fixation time on the eyes of other-race Caucasian faces than the eyes of own-race Chinese faces. In contrast, they spent a significantly greater proportion of fixation time on the nose and mouth of Chinese faces than the nose and mouth of Caucasian faces. This pattern of differential fixation, for own- and other-race eyes and nose in particular, was consistent even as participants became increasingly familiar with the target faces of both races. The results could not be explained by the perceptual salience of the Chinese nose or Caucasian eyes because these features were not differentially salient across the races. Our results are discussed in terms of the facial morphological differences between Chinese and Caucasian faces and the enculturation of mutual gaze norms in East Asian cultures.

  19. Eye contrast polarity is critical for face recognition by infants.

    PubMed

    Otsuka, Yumiko; Motoyoshi, Isamu; Hill, Harold C; Kobayashi, Megumi; Kanazawa, So; Yamaguchi, Masami K

    2013-07-01

    Just as faces share the same basic arrangement of features, with two eyes above a nose above a mouth, human eyes all share the same basic contrast polarity relations, with a sclera lighter than an iris and a pupil, and this is unique among primates. The current study examined whether this bright-dark relationship of sclera to iris plays a critical role in face recognition from early in development. Specifically, we tested face discrimination in 7- and 8-month-old infants while independently manipulating the contrast polarity of the eye region and of the rest of the face. This gave four face contrast polarity conditions: fully positive condition, fully negative condition, positive face with negated eyes ("negative eyes") condition, and negated face with positive eyes ("positive eyes") condition. In a familiarization and novelty preference procedure, we found that 7- and 8-month-olds could discriminate between faces only when the contrast polarity of the eyes was preserved (positive) and that this did not depend on the contrast polarity of the rest of the face. This demonstrates the critical role of eye contrast polarity for face recognition in 7- and 8-month-olds and is consistent with previous findings for adults. Copyright © 2013 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

  20. Preferring familiar emotions: As you want (and like) it?

    PubMed Central

    Ford, Brett Q.; Tamir, Maya

    2014-01-01

    Do people want to feel emotions that are familiar to them? In two studies, participants rated how much they typically felt various emotions (i.e., familiarity of the emotion) and how much they generally wanted to experience these emotions. We found that, in general, people wanted to feel pleasant emotions more than unpleasant emotions. However, for both pleasant and unpleasant emotions, people more (vs. less) familiar with an emotion also wanted to experience it more. Links between the familiarity of an emotion and wanting to experience that emotion were not explained by the concurrent experience of familiar emotions. Also, we show that although familiar emotions were also liked more, liking did not fully account for wanting familiar emotions. Finally, the familiarity of emotions mediated the links between trait affect and the emotions people wanted to feel. We propose that people are motivated to feel familiar emotions, in part, because of their instrumental value. PMID:23962316

  1. Preferring familiar emotions: as you want (and like) it?

    PubMed

    Ford, Brett Q; Tamir, Maya

    2014-01-01

    Do people want to feel emotions that are familiar to them? In two studies, participants rated how much they typically felt various emotions (i.e., familiarity of the emotion) and how much they generally wanted to experience these emotions. We found that, in general, people wanted to feel pleasant emotions more than unpleasant emotions. However, for both pleasant and unpleasant emotions, people more (vs. less) familiar with an emotion also wanted to experience it more. Links between the familiarity of an emotion and wanting to experience that emotion were not explained by the concurrent experience of familiar emotions. Also, we show that although familiar emotions were also liked more, liking did not fully account for wanting familiar emotions. Finally, the familiarity of emotions mediated the links between trait affect and the emotions people wanted to feel. We propose that people are motivated to feel familiar emotions, in part, because of their instrumental value.

  2. Neural evidence for reduced apprehensiveness of familiarized stimuli in a mere exposure paradigm.

    PubMed

    Zebrowitz, Leslie A; Zhang, Yi

    2012-07-01

    Mere familiarization with a stimulus increases liking for it or similar stimuli ("mere exposure" effects) as well as perceptual fluency, indexed by the speed and accuracy of categorizing it or similar stimuli ("priming" effects). Candidate mechanisms proposed to explain mere exposure effects include both increased positive affect associated with greater perceptual fluency, and reduced negative affect associated with diminished apprehensiveness of novel stimuli. Although these two mechanisms are not mutually exclusive, it is difficult for behavioral measures to disentangle them, since increased liking or other indices of greater positive affect toward exposed stimuli could result from increases in positive feelings or decreases in negative feelings or both. The present study sought to clarify this issue by building on research showing a dissociation at the neural level in which the lateral orbitofrontal cortex (LOFC) is activated more by negatively valenced than by neutral or positively valenced stimuli, with the reverse effect for medial orbitofrontal cortex (MOFC). Supporting the reduced apprehensiveness hypothesis, we found lower LOFC activation to familiarized faces and objects (repetition suppression). We did not find evidence to support the positive affect hypothesis in increased activation to familiarized stimuli in MOFC or in other parts of the reward circuit that respond more to positively valenced stimuli (repetition enhancement), although enhancement effects were shown in some regions.

  3. Neural Evidence for Reduced Apprehensiveness of Familiarized Stimuli in a Mere Exposure Paradigm

    PubMed Central

    Zebrowitz, Leslie A.; Zhang, Yi

    2012-01-01

    Mere familiarization with a stimulus increases liking for it or similar stimuli (‘mere exposure’ effects) as well as perceptual fluency, indexed by the speed and accuracy of categorizing it or similar stimuli (‘priming’ effects). Candidate mechanisms proposed to explain mere exposure effects include both increased positive affect associated with greater perceptual fluency, and also reduced negative affect associated with diminished apprehensiveness of novel stimuli. Although these two mechanisms are not mutually exclusive, it is difficult for behavioral measures to disentangle them, since increased liking or other indices of greater positive affect toward exposed stimuli could result from increases in positive feelings or decreases in negative feelings or both. The present study sought to clarify this issue by building on research showing a dissociation at the neural level in which the lateral orbital frontal cortex (LOFC) is activated more by negatively valenced than by neutral or positively valenced stimuli, with the reverse effect for medial orbital frontal cortex (MOFC). Supporting the reduced apprehensiveness hypothesis, we found lower LOFC activation to familiarized faces and objects (repetition suppression). We did not find evidence to support the positive affect hypothesis in increased activation to familiarized stimuli in MOFC or in other parts of the reward circuit that respond more to positively valenced stimuli (repetiton enhancement), although enhancement effects were shown in some regions. PMID:22017290

  4. Effects of oxytocin on behavioral and ERP measures of recognition memory for own-race and other-race faces in women and men

    PubMed Central

    Herzmann, Grit; Bird, Christopher W.; Freeman, Megan; Curran, Tim

    2013-01-01

    Oxytocin has been shown to affect human social information processing including recognition memory for faces. Here we investigated the neural processes underlying the effect of oxytocin on memorizing own-race and other-race faces in men and women. In a placebo-controlled, doubleblind, between-subject study, participants received either oxytocin or placebo before studying own-race and other-race faces. We recorded event-related potentials (ERPs) during both the study and recognition phase to investigate neural correlates of oxytocin’s effect on memory encoding, memory retrieval, and perception. Oxytocin increased the accuracy of familiarity judgments in the recognition test. Neural correlates for this effect were found in ERPs related to memory encoding and retrieval but not perception. In contrast to its facilitating effects on familiarity, oxytocin impaired recollection judgments, but in men only. Oxytocin did not differentially affect own-race and other-race faces. This study shows that oxytocin influences memory, but not perceptual processes, in a face recognition task and is the first to reveal sex differences in the effect of oxytocin on face memory. Contrary to recent findings in oxytocin and moral decision making, oxytocin did not preferentially improve memory for own-race faces. PMID:23648370

  5. Who is the Usual Suspect? Evidence of a Selection Bias Toward Faces That Make Direct Eye Contact in a Lineup Task

    PubMed Central

    van Golde, Celine; Verstraten, Frans A. J.

    2017-01-01

    The speed and ease with which we recognize the faces of our friends and family members belies the difficulty we have recognizing less familiar individuals. Nonetheless, overconfidence in our ability to recognize faces has carried over into various aspects of our legal system; for instance, eyewitness identification serves a critical role in criminal proceedings. For this reason, understanding the perceptual and psychological processes that underlie false identification is of the utmost importance. Gaze direction is a salient social signal and direct eye contact, in particular, is thought to capture attention. Here, we tested the hypothesis that differences in gaze direction may influence difficult decisions in a lineup context. In a series of experiments, we show that when a group of faces differed in their gaze direction, the faces that were making eye contact with the participants were more likely to be misidentified. Interestingly, this bias disappeared when the faces are presented with their eyes closed. These findings open a critical conversation between social neuroscience and forensic psychology, and imply that direct eye contact may (wrongly) increase the perceived familiarity of a face. PMID:28203355

  6. Age differences in accuracy and choosing in eyewitness identification and face recognition.

    PubMed

    Searcy, J H; Bartlett, J C; Memon, A

    1999-05-01

    Studies of aging and face recognition show age-related increases in false recognitions of new faces. To explore implications of this false alarm effect, we had young and senior adults perform (1) three eye-witness identification tasks, using both target present and target absent lineups, and (2) and old/new recognition task in which a study list of faces was followed by a test including old and new faces, along with conjunctions of old faces. Compared with the young, seniors had lower accuracy and higher choosing rates on the lineups, and they also falsely recognized more new faces on the recognition test. However, after screening for perceptual processing deficits, there was no age difference in false recognition of conjunctions, or in discriminating old faces from conjunctions. We conclude that the false alarm effect generalizes to lineup identification, but does not extend to conjunction faces. The findings are consistent with age-related deficits in recollection of context and relative age invariance in perceptual integrative processes underlying the experience of familiarity.

  7. Attachment representation modulates oxytocin effects on the processing of own-child faces in fathers.

    PubMed

    Waller, Christiane; Wittfoth, Matthias; Fritzsche, Konstantin; Timm, Lydia; Wittfoth-Schardt, Dina; Rottler, Edit; Heinrichs, Markus; Buchheim, Anna; Kiefer, Markus; Gündel, Harald

    2015-12-01

    Oxytocin (OT) plays a crucial role in parental-infant bonding and attachment. Recent functional imaging studies reveal specific attachment and reward related brain regions in individuals or within the parent-child dyad. However, the time course and functional stage of modulatory effects of OT on attachment-related processing, especially in fathers, are poorly understood. To elucidate the functional and neural mechanisms underlying the role of OT in paternal-child attachment, we performed an event-related potential study in 24 healthy fathers who received intranasal OT in a double-blind, placebo-controlled, within-subject experimental design. Participants passively viewed pictures of their own child (oC), a familiar (fC) and an unfamiliar child (ufC) while event-related potentials were recorded. Familiarity of the child's face modulated a broad negativity at occipital and temporo-parietal electrodes within a time window of 300-400ms, presumably reflecting a modulation of the N250 and N300 ERP components. The oC condition elicited a more negative potential compared to the other familiarity conditions suggesting different activation of perceptual memory representations and assignment of emotional valence. Most importantly, this familiarity effect was only observed under placebo (PL) and was abolished under OT, in particular at left temporo-parietal electrodes. This OT induced attenuation of ERP responses was related to habitual attachment representations in fathers. In summary, our results demonstrate an OT-specific effect at later stages of attachment-related face processing presumably reflecting both activation of perceptual memory representations and assignment of emotional value. Copyright © 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

  8. The different faces of one's self: an fMRI study into the recognition of current and past self-facial appearances.

    PubMed

    Apps, Matthew A J; Tajadura-Jiménez, Ana; Turley, Grainne; Tsakiris, Manos

    2012-11-15

    Mirror self-recognition is often considered as an index of self-awareness. Neuroimaging studies have identified a neural circuit specialised for the recognition of one's own current facial appearance. However, faces change considerably over a lifespan, highlighting the necessity for representations of one's face to continually be updated. We used fMRI to investigate the different neural circuits involved in the recognition of the childhood and current, adult, faces of one's self. Participants viewed images of either their own face as it currently looks morphed with the face of a familiar other or their childhood face morphed with the childhood face of the familiar other. Activity in areas which have a generalised selectivity for faces, including the inferior occipital gyrus, the superior parietal lobule and the inferior temporal gyrus, varied with the amount of current self in an image. Activity in areas involved in memory encoding and retrieval, including the hippocampus and the posterior cingulate gyrus, and areas involved in creating a sense of body ownership, including the temporo-parietal junction and the inferior parietal lobule, varied with the amount of childhood self in an image. We suggest that the recognition of one's own past or present face is underpinned by different cognitive processes in distinct neural circuits. Current self-recognition engages areas involved in perceptual face processing, whereas childhood self-recognition recruits networks involved in body ownership and memory processing. Copyright © 2012 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

  9. [Neural basis of self-face recognition: social aspects].

    PubMed

    Sugiura, Motoaki

    2012-07-01

    Considering the importance of the face in social survival and evidence from evolutionary psychology of visual self-recognition, it is reasonable that we expect neural mechanisms for higher social-cognitive processes to underlie self-face recognition. A decade of neuroimaging studies so far has, however, not provided an encouraging finding in this respect. Self-face specific activation has typically been reported in the areas for sensory-motor integration in the right lateral cortices. This observation appears to reflect the physical nature of the self-face which representation is developed via the detection of contingency between one's own action and sensory feedback. We have recently revealed that the medial prefrontal cortex, implicated in socially nuanced self-referential process, is activated during self-face recognition under a rich social context where multiple other faces are available for reference. The posterior cingulate cortex has also exhibited this activation modulation, and in the separate experiment showed a response to attractively manipulated self-face suggesting its relevance to positive self-value. Furthermore, the regions in the right lateral cortices typically showing self-face-specific activation have responded also to the face of one's close friend under the rich social context. This observation is potentially explained by the fact that the contingency detection for physical self-recognition also plays a role in physical social interaction, which characterizes the representation of personally familiar people. These findings demonstrate that neuroscientific exploration reveals multiple facets of the relationship between self-face recognition and social-cognitive process, and that technically the manipulation of social context is key to its success.

  10. Walk This Way: Approaching Bodies Can Influence the Processing of Faces

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Pilz, Karin S.; Vuong, Quoc C.; Bulthoff, Heinrich H.; Thornton, Ian M.

    2011-01-01

    A highly familiar type of movement occurs whenever a person walks towards you. In the present study, we investigated whether this type of motion has an effect on face processing. We took a range of different 3D head models and placed them on a single, identical 3D body model. The resulting figures were animated to approach the observer. In a first…

  11. 46 CFR 15.405 - Familiarity with vessel characteristics.

    Code of Federal Regulations, 2010 CFR

    2010-10-01

    ... 46 Shipping 1 2010-10-01 2010-10-01 false Familiarity with vessel characteristics. 15.405 Section... MANNING REQUIREMENTS Manning Requirements; All Vessels § 15.405 Familiarity with vessel characteristics. Each credentialed individual must become familiar with the relevant characteristics of the vessel on...

  12. Rigid Facial Motion Influences Featural, But Not Holistic, Face Processing

    PubMed Central

    Xiao, Naiqi; Quinn, Paul C.; Ge, Liezhong; Lee, Kang

    2012-01-01

    We report three experiments in which we investigated the effect of rigid facial motion on face processing. Specifically, we used the face composite effect to examine whether rigid facial motion influences primarily featural or holistic processing of faces. In Experiments 1, 2, and 3, participants were first familiarized with dynamic displays in which a target face turned from one side to another; then at test, participants judged whether the top half of a composite face (the top half of the target face aligned or misaligned with the bottom half of a foil face) belonged to the target face. We compared performance in the dynamic condition to various static control conditions in Experiments 1, 2, and 3, which differed from each other in terms of the display order of the multiple static images or the inter stimulus interval (ISI) between the images. We found that the size of the face composite effect in the dynamic condition was significantly smaller than that in the static conditions. In other words, the dynamic face display influenced participants to process the target faces in a part-based manner and consequently their recognition of the upper portion of the composite face at test became less interfered with by the aligned lower part of the foil face. The findings from the present experiments provide the strongest evidence to date to suggest that the rigid facial motion mainly influences facial featural, but not holistic, processing. PMID:22342561

  13. Gaze control during face exploration in schizophrenia.

    PubMed

    Delerue, Céline; Laprévote, Vincent; Verfaillie, Karl; Boucart, Muriel

    2010-10-04

    Patients with schizophrenia perform worse than controls on various face perception tasks. Studies monitoring eye movements have shown reduced scan paths and a lower number of fixations to relevant facial features (eyes, nose, mouth) than to other parts. We examine whether attentional control, through instructions, modulates visual scanning in schizophrenia. Visual scan paths were monitored in 20 patients with schizophrenia and 20 controls. Participants started with a "free viewing" task followed by tasks in which they were asked to determine the gender, identify the facial expression, estimate the age, or decide whether the face was known or unknown. Temporal and spatial characteristics of scan paths were compared for each group and task. Consistent with the literature, patients with schizophrenia showed reduced attention to salient facial features in the passive viewing. However, their scan paths did not differ from that of controls when asked to determine the facial expression, the gender, the age or the familiarity of the face. The results are interpreted in terms of attentional control and cognitive flexibility. (c) 2010 Elsevier Ireland Ltd. All rights reserved.

  14. 14 CFR 121.599 - Familiarity with weather conditions.

    Code of Federal Regulations, 2011 CFR

    2011-01-01

    ... 14 Aeronautics and Space 3 2011-01-01 2011-01-01 false Familiarity with weather conditions. 121... § 121.599 Familiarity with weather conditions. (a) Domestic and flag operations. No aircraft dispatcher may release a flight unless he is thoroughly familiar with reported and forecast weather conditions on...

  15. 14 CFR 121.599 - Familiarity with weather conditions.

    Code of Federal Regulations, 2014 CFR

    2014-01-01

    ... 14 Aeronautics and Space 3 2014-01-01 2014-01-01 false Familiarity with weather conditions. 121... § 121.599 Familiarity with weather conditions. (a) Domestic and flag operations. No aircraft dispatcher may release a flight unless he is thoroughly familiar with reported and forecast weather conditions on...

  16. 14 CFR 121.599 - Familiarity with weather conditions.

    Code of Federal Regulations, 2012 CFR

    2012-01-01

    ... 14 Aeronautics and Space 3 2012-01-01 2012-01-01 false Familiarity with weather conditions. 121... § 121.599 Familiarity with weather conditions. (a) Domestic and flag operations. No aircraft dispatcher may release a flight unless he is thoroughly familiar with reported and forecast weather conditions on...

  17. 14 CFR 121.599 - Familiarity with weather conditions.

    Code of Federal Regulations, 2013 CFR

    2013-01-01

    ... 14 Aeronautics and Space 3 2013-01-01 2013-01-01 false Familiarity with weather conditions. 121... § 121.599 Familiarity with weather conditions. (a) Domestic and flag operations. No aircraft dispatcher may release a flight unless he is thoroughly familiar with reported and forecast weather conditions on...

  18. 14 CFR 121.599 - Familiarity with weather conditions.

    Code of Federal Regulations, 2010 CFR

    2010-01-01

    ... 14 Aeronautics and Space 3 2010-01-01 2010-01-01 false Familiarity with weather conditions. 121... § 121.599 Familiarity with weather conditions. (a) Domestic and flag operations. No aircraft dispatcher may release a flight unless he is thoroughly familiar with reported and forecast weather conditions on...

  19. Talker familiarity and spoken word recognition in school-age children*

    PubMed Central

    Levi, Susannah V.

    2014-01-01

    Research with adults has shown that spoken language processing is improved when listeners are familiar with talkers’ voices, known as the familiar talker advantage. The current study explored whether this ability extends to school-age children, who are still acquiring language. Children were familiarized with the voices of three German–English bilingual talkers and were tested on the speech of six bilinguals, three of whom were familiar. Results revealed that children do show improved spoken language processing when they are familiar with the talkers, but this improvement was limited to highly familiar lexical items. This restriction of the familiar talker advantage is attributed to differences in the representation of highly familiar and less familiar lexical items. In addition, children did not exhibit accent-general learning; despite having been exposed to German-accented talkers during training, there was no improvement for novel German-accented talkers. PMID:25159173

  20. The different faces of one’s self: an fMRI study into the recognition of current and past self-facial appearances

    PubMed Central

    Apps, Matthew A. J.; Tajadura-Jiménez, Ana; Turley, Grainne; Tsakiris, Manos

    2013-01-01

    Mirror self-recognition is often considered as an index of self-awareness. Neuroimaging studies have identified a neural circuit specialised for the recognition of one’s own current facial appearance. However, faces change considerably over a lifespan, highlighting the necessity for representations of one’s face to continually be updated. We used fMRI to investigate the different neural circuits involved in the recognition of the childhood and current, adult, faces of one’s self. Participants viewed images of either their own face as it currently looks morphed with the face of a familiar other or their childhood face morphed with the childhood face of the familiar other. Activity in areas which have a generalised selectivity for faces, including the inferior occipital gyrus, the superior parietal lobule and the inferior temporal gyrus, varied with the amount of current self in an image. Activity in areas involved in memory encoding and retrieval, including the hippocampus and the posterior cingulate gyrus, and areas involved in creating a sense of body ownership, including the temporo-parietal junction and the inferior parietal lobule, varied with the amount of childhood self in an image. We suggest that the recognition of one’s own past or present face is underpinned by different cognitive processes in distinct neural circuits. Current self-recognition engages areas involved in perceptual face processing, whereas childhood self-recognition recruits networks involved in body ownership and memory processing. PMID:22940117

  1. 30 CFR 56.19096 - Familiarity with signal code.

    Code of Federal Regulations, 2011 CFR

    2011-07-01

    ... 30 Mineral Resources 1 2011-07-01 2011-07-01 false Familiarity with signal code. 56.19096 Section... Hoisting Signaling § 56.19096 Familiarity with signal code. Any person responsible for receiving or giving signals for cages, skips, and mantrips when persons or materials are being transported shall be familiar...

  2. 30 CFR 57.19096 - Familiarity with signal code.

    Code of Federal Regulations, 2011 CFR

    2011-07-01

    ... 30 Mineral Resources 1 2011-07-01 2011-07-01 false Familiarity with signal code. 57.19096 Section... Hoisting Signaling § 57.19096 Familiarity with signal code. Any person reponsible for receiving or giving signals for cages, skips, and mantrips when persons or materials are being transported shall be familiar...

  3. 30 CFR 56.19096 - Familiarity with signal code.

    Code of Federal Regulations, 2013 CFR

    2013-07-01

    ... 30 Mineral Resources 1 2013-07-01 2013-07-01 false Familiarity with signal code. 56.19096 Section... Hoisting Signaling § 56.19096 Familiarity with signal code. Any person responsible for receiving or giving signals for cages, skips, and mantrips when persons or materials are being transported shall be familiar...

  4. 30 CFR 56.19096 - Familiarity with signal code.

    Code of Federal Regulations, 2014 CFR

    2014-07-01

    ... 30 Mineral Resources 1 2014-07-01 2014-07-01 false Familiarity with signal code. 56.19096 Section... Hoisting Signaling § 56.19096 Familiarity with signal code. Any person responsible for receiving or giving signals for cages, skips, and mantrips when persons or materials are being transported shall be familiar...

  5. 30 CFR 57.19096 - Familiarity with signal code.

    Code of Federal Regulations, 2014 CFR

    2014-07-01

    ... 30 Mineral Resources 1 2014-07-01 2014-07-01 false Familiarity with signal code. 57.19096 Section... Hoisting Signaling § 57.19096 Familiarity with signal code. Any person reponsible for receiving or giving signals for cages, skips, and mantrips when persons or materials are being transported shall be familiar...

  6. 30 CFR 57.19096 - Familiarity with signal code.

    Code of Federal Regulations, 2013 CFR

    2013-07-01

    ... 30 Mineral Resources 1 2013-07-01 2013-07-01 false Familiarity with signal code. 57.19096 Section... Hoisting Signaling § 57.19096 Familiarity with signal code. Any person reponsible for receiving or giving signals for cages, skips, and mantrips when persons or materials are being transported shall be familiar...

  7. 30 CFR 57.19096 - Familiarity with signal code.

    Code of Federal Regulations, 2012 CFR

    2012-07-01

    ... 30 Mineral Resources 1 2012-07-01 2012-07-01 false Familiarity with signal code. 57.19096 Section... Hoisting Signaling § 57.19096 Familiarity with signal code. Any person reponsible for receiving or giving signals for cages, skips, and mantrips when persons or materials are being transported shall be familiar...

  8. 30 CFR 56.19096 - Familiarity with signal code.

    Code of Federal Regulations, 2012 CFR

    2012-07-01

    ... 30 Mineral Resources 1 2012-07-01 2012-07-01 false Familiarity with signal code. 56.19096 Section... Hoisting Signaling § 56.19096 Familiarity with signal code. Any person responsible for receiving or giving signals for cages, skips, and mantrips when persons or materials are being transported shall be familiar...

  9. Benefits for Voice Learning Caused by Concurrent Faces Develop over Time.

    PubMed

    Zäske, Romi; Mühl, Constanze; Schweinberger, Stefan R

    2015-01-01

    Recognition of personally familiar voices benefits from the concurrent presentation of the corresponding speakers' faces. This effect of audiovisual integration is most pronounced for voices combined with dynamic articulating faces. However, it is unclear if learning unfamiliar voices also benefits from audiovisual face-voice integration or, alternatively, is hampered by attentional capture of faces, i.e., "face-overshadowing". In six study-test cycles we compared the recognition of newly-learned voices following unimodal voice learning vs. bimodal face-voice learning with either static (Exp. 1) or dynamic articulating faces (Exp. 2). Voice recognition accuracies significantly increased for bimodal learning across study-test cycles while remaining stable for unimodal learning, as reflected in numerical costs of bimodal relative to unimodal voice learning in the first two study-test cycles and benefits in the last two cycles. This was independent of whether faces were static images (Exp. 1) or dynamic videos (Exp. 2). In both experiments, slower reaction times to voices previously studied with faces compared to voices only may result from visual search for faces during memory retrieval. A general decrease of reaction times across study-test cycles suggests facilitated recognition with more speaker repetitions. Overall, our data suggest two simultaneous and opposing mechanisms during bimodal face-voice learning: while attentional capture of faces may initially impede voice learning, audiovisual integration may facilitate it thereafter.

  10. Effects of oxytocin on behavioral and ERP measures of recognition memory for own-race and other-race faces in women and men.

    PubMed

    Herzmann, Grit; Bird, Christopher W; Freeman, Megan; Curran, Tim

    2013-10-01

    Oxytocin has been shown to affect human social information processing including recognition memory for faces. Here we investigated the neural processes underlying the effect of oxytocin on memorizing own-race and other-race faces in men and women. In a placebo-controlled, double-blind, between-subject study, participants received either oxytocin or placebo before studying own-race and other-race faces. We recorded event-related potentials (ERPs) during both the study and recognition phase to investigate neural correlates of oxytocin's effect on memory encoding, memory retrieval, and perception. Oxytocin increased the accuracy of familiarity judgments in the recognition test. Neural correlates for this effect were found in ERPs related to memory encoding and retrieval but not perception. In contrast to its facilitating effects on familiarity, oxytocin impaired recollection judgments, but in men only. Oxytocin did not differentially affect own-race and other-race faces. This study shows that oxytocin influences memory, but not perceptual processes, in a face recognition task and is the first to reveal sex differences in the effect of oxytocin on face memory. Contrary to recent findings in oxytocin and moral decision making, oxytocin did not preferentially improve memory for own-race faces. Copyright © 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

  11. Functional dissociation of the left and right fusiform gyrus in self-face recognition.

    PubMed

    Ma, Yina; Han, Shihui

    2012-10-01

    It is well known that the fusiform gyrus is engaged in face perception, such as the processes of face familiarity and identity. However, the functional role of the fusiform gyrus in face processing related to high-level social cognition remains unclear. The current study assessed the functional role of individually defined fusiform face area (FFA) in the processing of self-face physical properties and self-face identity. We used functional magnetic resonance imaging to monitor neural responses to rapidly presented face stimuli drawn from morph continua between self-face (Morph 100%) and a gender-matched friend's face (Morph 0%) in a face recognition task. Contrasting Morph 100% versus Morph 60% that differed in self-face physical properties but were both recognized as the self uncovered neural activity sensitive to self-face physical properties in the left FFA. Contrasting Morphs 50% that were recognized as the self versus a friend on different trials revealed neural modulations associated with self-face identity in the right FFA. Moreover, the right FFA activity correlated with the frequency of recognizing Morphs 50% as the self. Our results provide evidence for functional dissociations of the left and right FFAs in the representations of self-face physical properties and self-face identity. Copyright © 2011 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

  12. Process dissociation of familiarity and recollection in children: response deadline affects recollection but not familiarity.

    PubMed

    Koenig, Laura; Wimmer, Marina C; Hollins, Timothy J

    2015-03-01

    According to dual-process theories, recollection (slow and associated with contextual details) and familiarity (fast and automatic) are two independent processes underlying recognition memory. An adapted version of the process dissociation paradigm was used to measure recognition memory in 5-, 7-, and 11-year-olds and adults. In Experiment 1, it was found that 5-year-olds already recollect details of items (i.e., number). Recollection increased particularly between 5 and 7 years. Familiarity differed between 5 years and adulthood. In Experiment 2, under limited response time during retrieval, recollection was eliminated in 5-year-olds and reduced across all ages, whereas familiarity was left unaffected. Together, these findings are consistent with dual-process theories of recognition memory and provide support for two processes underlying recognition memory from a developmental perspective. Copyright © 2014 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

  13. The perceived familiarity gap hypothesis: examining how media attention and reflective integration relate to perceived familiarity with nanotechnology in Singapore

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Lee, Edmund W. J.; Ho, Shirley S.

    2015-05-01

    Public level of familiarity with nanotechnology partly determines their acceptance or rejection of the technology. This study examines the differential influence of public attention to science news in the media and reflective integration on perceived familiarity with nanotechnology among people in the higher and lower socioeconomic status (SES) groups in Singapore. Significant three-way interactions among education, science news attention, and reflective integration variables were found. Attention to television science news narrowed the level of perceived familiarity with nanotechnology between the higher and lower SES groups for those who engaged in high elaborative processing. Science newspaper attention, on the other hand, widened the familiarity gap between the higher and lower SES groups among those who engaged in high elaborative processing. Two-way interaction among education and elaborative processing were found—elaborative processing closed the familiarity gap between higher and lower SES groups. Theoretical and practical implications were discussed.

  14. Source Reconstruction of Brain Potentials Using Bayesian Model Averaging to Analyze Face Intra-Domain vs. Face-Occupation Cross-Domain Processing

    PubMed Central

    Olivares, Ela I.; Lage-Castellanos, Agustín; Bobes, María A.; Iglesias, Jaime

    2018-01-01

    We investigated the neural correlates of the access to and retrieval of face structure information in contrast to those concerning the access to and retrieval of person-related verbal information, triggered by faces. We experimentally induced stimulus familiarity via a systematic learning procedure including faces with and without associated verbal information. Then, we recorded event-related potentials (ERPs) in both intra-domain (face-feature) and cross-domain (face-occupation) matching tasks while N400-like responses were elicited by incorrect eyes-eyebrows completions and occupations, respectively. A novel Bayesian source reconstruction approach plus conjunction analysis of group effects revealed that in both cases the generated N170s were of similar amplitude but had different neural origin. Thus, whereas the N170 of faces was associated predominantly to right fusiform and occipital regions (the so-called “Fusiform Face Area”, “FFA” and “Occipital Face Area”, “OFA”, respectively), the N170 of occupations was associated to a bilateral very posterior activity, suggestive of basic perceptual processes. Importantly, the right-sided perceptual P200 and the face-related N250 were evoked exclusively in the intra-domain task, with sources in OFA and extensively in the fusiform region, respectively. Regarding later latencies, the intra-domain N400 seemed to be generated in right posterior brain regions encompassing mainly OFA and, to some extent, the FFA, likely reflecting neural operations triggered by structural incongruities. In turn, the cross-domain N400 was related to more anterior left-sided fusiform and temporal inferior sources, paralleling those described previously for the classic verbal N400. These results support the existence of differentiated neural streams for face structure and person-related verbal processing triggered by faces, which can be activated differentially according to specific task demands. PMID:29628877

  15. Source Reconstruction of Brain Potentials Using Bayesian Model Averaging to Analyze Face Intra-Domain vs. Face-Occupation Cross-Domain Processing.

    PubMed

    Olivares, Ela I; Lage-Castellanos, Agustín; Bobes, María A; Iglesias, Jaime

    2018-01-01

    We investigated the neural correlates of the access to and retrieval of face structure information in contrast to those concerning the access to and retrieval of person-related verbal information, triggered by faces. We experimentally induced stimulus familiarity via a systematic learning procedure including faces with and without associated verbal information. Then, we recorded event-related potentials (ERPs) in both intra-domain (face-feature) and cross-domain (face-occupation) matching tasks while N400-like responses were elicited by incorrect eyes-eyebrows completions and occupations, respectively. A novel Bayesian source reconstruction approach plus conjunction analysis of group effects revealed that in both cases the generated N170s were of similar amplitude but had different neural origin. Thus, whereas the N170 of faces was associated predominantly to right fusiform and occipital regions (the so-called "Fusiform Face Area", "FFA" and "Occipital Face Area", "OFA", respectively), the N170 of occupations was associated to a bilateral very posterior activity, suggestive of basic perceptual processes. Importantly, the right-sided perceptual P200 and the face-related N250 were evoked exclusively in the intra-domain task, with sources in OFA and extensively in the fusiform region, respectively. Regarding later latencies, the intra-domain N400 seemed to be generated in right posterior brain regions encompassing mainly OFA and, to some extent, the FFA, likely reflecting neural operations triggered by structural incongruities. In turn, the cross-domain N400 was related to more anterior left-sided fusiform and temporal inferior sources, paralleling those described previously for the classic verbal N400. These results support the existence of differentiated neural streams for face structure and person-related verbal processing triggered by faces, which can be activated differentially according to specific task demands.

  16. How Familiar are Clinician Teammates in the Emergency Department?

    PubMed Central

    Patterson, P. Daniel; Pfeiffer, Anthony J.; Lave, Judith R.; Weaver, Matthew D.; Abebe, Kaleab; Krackhardt, David; Arnold, Robert M.; Yealy, Donald M.

    2016-01-01

    Objectives Lack of familiarity between teammates is linked to worsened safety in high-risk settings. The Emergency Department (ED) is a high-risk health care setting where unfamiliar teams are created by diversity in clinician shift schedules and flexibility in clinician movement across the department. We sought to characterize familiarity between clinician teammates in one urban teaching hospital Emergency Department (ED) over a 22-week study period. Methods We used a retrospective study design of shift-scheduling data to calculate the mean weekly hours of familiarity between teammates at the dyadic level, and the proportion of clinicians with a minimum of 2-hours, 5-hours, 10-hours, and 20-hours of familiarity at any given hour during the study period. Results Mean weekly hours of familiarity between ED clinician dyads was 2 hours (SD 1.5). At any given hour over the study period, the proportion of clinicians with a minimum of 2, 5, 10, or 20-hours of familiarity was 80%, 51%, 27%, and 0.8%, respectively. Conclusions In our study, few clinicians could be described as having a high level of familiarity with teammates. The limited familiarity between ED clinicians identified in this study may be a natural feature of ED care delivery in academic settings. We provide a template for measurement of ED team familiarity. PMID:24351519

  17. Palatability, Familiarity, and Underage, Immoderate Drinking

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Lemon, Jim; Stevenson, Richard; Gates, Peter; Copeland, Jan

    2011-01-01

    Data gathered in a study of palatability ("liking") and familiarity ratings of alcoholic and nonalcoholic beverages by 350 subjects from 12 to 30 years of age included the usual number of drinks consumed. Blind ratings of palatability and familiarity for the beverages were tested for association with immoderate drinking (more than four for males,…

  18. PKM[zeta] Inactivation Induces Spatial Familiarity

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Moncada, Diego; Viola, Haydee

    2008-01-01

    Spatial familiarization consists of a decrease in the exploratory activity over time after exposure to a place. Here, we show that a 30-min exposure to an open field led to a pronounced decrease in the exploratory behavior of rats, generating context familiarity. This behavioral output is associated with a selective decrease in hippocampal…

  19. Right perceptual bias and self-face recognition in individuals with congenital prosopagnosia.

    PubMed

    Malaspina, Manuela; Albonico, Andrea; Daini, Roberta

    2016-01-01

    The existence of a drift to base judgments more on the right half-part of facial stimuli, which falls in the observer's left visual field (left perceptual bias (LPB)), in normal individuals has been demonstrated. However, less is known about the existence of this phenomenon in people affected by face impairment from birth, namely congenital prosopagnosics. In the current study, we aimed to investigate the presence of the LPB under face impairment conditions using chimeric stimuli and the most familiar face of all: the self-face. For this purpose we tested 10 participants with congenital prosopagnosia and 21 healthy controls with a face matching task using facial stimuli, involving a spatial manipulation of the left and the right hemi-faces of self-photos and photos of others. Even though congenital prosopagnosics performance was significantly lower than that of controls, both groups showed a consistent self-face advantage. Moreover, congenital prosopagnosics showed optimal performance when the right side of their face was presented, that is, right perceptual bias, suggesting a differential strategy for self-recognition in those subjects. A possible explanation for this result is discussed.

  20. Viewpoint dependence in the recognition of non-elongated familiar objects: testing the effects of symmetry, front-back axis, and familiarity.

    PubMed

    Niimi, Ryosuke; Yokosawa, Kazuhiko

    2009-01-01

    Visual recognition of three-dimensional (3-D) objects is relatively impaired for some particular views, called accidental views. For most familiar objects, the front and top views are considered to be accidental views. Previous studies have shown that foreshortening of the axes of elongation of objects in these views impairs recognition, but the influence of other possible factors is largely unknown. Using familiar objects without a salient axis of elongation, we found that a foreshortened symmetry plane of the object and low familiarity of the viewpoint accounted for the relatively worse recognition for front views and top views, independently of the effect of a foreshortened axis of elongation. We found no evidence that foreshortened front-back axes impaired recognition in front views. These results suggest that the viewpoint dependence of familiar object recognition is not a unitary phenomenon. The possible role of symmetry (either 2-D or 3-D) in familiar object recognition is also discussed.

  1. Famous face identification in temporal lobe epilepsy: Support for a multimodal integration model of semantic memory

    PubMed Central

    Drane, Daniel L.; Ojemann, Jeffrey G.; Phatak, Vaishali; Loring, David W.; Gross, Robert E.; Hebb, Adam O.; Silbergeld, Daniel L.; Miller, John W.; Voets, Natalie L.; Saindane, Amit M.; Barsalou, Lawrence; Meador, Kimford J.; Ojemann, George A.; Tranel, Daniel

    2012-01-01

    This study aims to demonstrate that the left and right anterior temporal lobes (ATLs) perform critical but unique roles in famous face identification, with damage to either leading to differing deficit patterns reflecting decreased access to lexical or semantic concepts but not their degradation. Famous face identification was studied in 22 presurgical and 14 postsurgical temporal lobe epilepsy (TLE) patients and 20 healthy comparison subjects using free recall and multiple choice (MC) paradigms. Right TLE patients exhibited presurgical deficits in famous face recognition, and postsurgical deficits in both famous face recognition and familiarity judgments. However, they did not exhibit any problems with naming before or after surgery. In contrast, left TLE patients demonstrated both pre-and postsurgical deficits in famous face naming but no significant deficits in recognition or familiarity. Double dissociations in performance between groups were alleviated by altering task demands. Postsurgical right TLE patients provided with MC options correctly identified greater than 70% of famous faces they initially rated as unfamiliar. Left TLE patients accurately chose the name for nearly all famous faces they recognized (based on their verbal description) but initially failed to name, although they tended to rapidly lose access to this name. We believe alterations in task demands activate alternative routes to semantic and lexical networks, demonstrating that unique pathways to such stored information exist, and suggesting a different role for each ATL in identifying visually presented famous faces. The right ATL appears to play a fundamental role in accessing semantic information from a visual route, with the left ATL serving to link semantic information to the language system to produce a specific name. These findings challenge several assumptions underlying amodal models of semantic memory, and provide support for the integrated multimodal theories of semantic memory

  2. Famous face identification in temporal lobe epilepsy: support for a multimodal integration model of semantic memory.

    PubMed

    Drane, Daniel L; Ojemann, Jeffrey G; Phatak, Vaishali; Loring, David W; Gross, Robert E; Hebb, Adam O; Silbergeld, Daniel L; Miller, John W; Voets, Natalie L; Saindane, Amit M; Barsalou, Lawrence; Meador, Kimford J; Ojemann, George A; Tranel, Daniel

    2013-06-01

    This study aims to demonstrate that the left and right anterior temporal lobes (ATLs) perform critical but unique roles in famous face identification, with damage to either leading to differing deficit patterns reflecting decreased access to lexical or semantic concepts but not their degradation. Famous face identification was studied in 22 presurgical and 14 postsurgical temporal lobe epilepsy (TLE) patients and 20 healthy comparison subjects using free recall and multiple choice (MC) paradigms. Right TLE patients exhibited presurgical deficits in famous face recognition, and postsurgical deficits in both famous face recognition and familiarity judgments. However, they did not exhibit any problems with naming before or after surgery. In contrast, left TLE patients demonstrated both pre- and postsurgical deficits in famous face naming but no significant deficits in recognition or familiarity. Double dissociations in performance between groups were alleviated by altering task demands. Postsurgical right TLE patients provided with MC options correctly identified greater than 70% of famous faces they initially rated as unfamiliar. Left TLE patients accurately chose the name for nearly all famous faces they recognized (based on their verbal description) but initially failed to name, although they tended to rapidly lose access to this name. We believe alterations in task demands activate alternative routes to semantic and lexical networks, demonstrating that unique pathways to such stored information exist, and suggesting a different role for each ATL in identifying visually presented famous faces. The right ATL appears to play a fundamental role in accessing semantic information from a visual route, with the left ATL serving to link semantic information to the language system to produce a specific name. These findings challenge several assumptions underlying amodal models of semantic memory, and provide support for the integrated multimodal theories of semantic memory

  3. An Event-Related Potential Study on the Perception and the Recognition of Face, Facial Features, and Objects in Children With Autism Spectrum Disorders.

    PubMed

    Shen, I-Hsuan; Lin, Shih-Chi; Wu, Yu-Yu; Chen, Chia-Ling

    2016-12-07

    The study investigated whether children with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) showed atypical patterns of brain specialization for face processing, whether the response to familiar and unfamiliar faces, facial features, and objects were different from typically developing children. Event-related potentials were recorded in 5- to 8-year-old children (12 children with ASD, 12 typically developing children) using passive viewing paradigm. The fastest P1 latencies to faces and the largest P1 amplitudes to objects were observed in both participant groups. Both groups exhibited larger N170 response to faces and eyes, F(3, 66) = 46.94, p < .0001). However, earlier P1 and N170 latencies were found on left hemisphere in children with ASD, respectively, F(1, 83) = 4.32, p = .04; F(1, 83) = 6.73, p = .01, indicating an atypical face processing pattern. All children showed a significant effect of familiarity for objects and mouths, F(1, 71) = 33.97, p < .0001; F(1, 71 = 15.94, p = .0002. Children with ASD revealed smaller negative central to faces relative to typically developing children. Face processing abnormalities revealed in children with ASD very likely exist. © The Author(s) 2016.

  4. How familiar are clinician teammates in the emergency department?

    PubMed

    Patterson, P Daniel; Pfeiffer, Anthony J; Lave, Judith R; Weaver, Matthew D; Abebe, Kaleab; Krackhardt, David; Arnold, Robert M; Yealy, Donald M

    2015-04-01

    Lack of familiarity between teammates is linked to worsened safety in high risk settings. The emergency department (ED) is a high risk healthcare setting where unfamiliar teams are created by diversity in clinician shift schedules and flexibility in clinician movement across the department. We sought to characterise familiarity between clinician teammates in one urban teaching hospital ED over a 22 week study period. We used a retrospective study design of shift scheduling data to calculate the mean weekly hours of familiarity between teammates at the dyadic level, and the proportion of clinicians with a minimum of 2, 5, 10 and 20 h of familiarity at any given hour during the study period. Mean weekly hours of familiarity between ED clinician dyads was 2 h (SD 1.5). At any given hour over the study period, the proportions of clinicians with a minimum of 2, 5, 10 and 20 h of familiarity were 80%, 51%, 27% and 0.8%, respectively. In our study, few clinicians could be described as having a high level of familiarity with teammates. The limited familiarity between ED clinicians identified in this study may be a natural feature of ED care delivery in academic settings. We provide a template for measurement of ED team familiarity. Published by the BMJ Publishing Group Limited. For permission to use (where not already granted under a licence) please go to http://group.bmj.com/group/rights-licensing/permissions.

  5. For Your Local Eyes Only: Culture-Specific Face Typicality Influences Perceptions of Trustworthiness.

    PubMed

    Sofer, Carmel; Dotsch, Ron; Oikawa, Masanori; Oikawa, Haruka; Wigboldus, Daniel H J; Todorov, Alexander

    2017-08-01

    Recent findings show that typical faces are judged as more trustworthy than atypical faces. However, it is not clear whether employment of typicality cues in trustworthiness judgment happens across cultures and if these cues are culture specific. In two studies, conducted in Japan and Israel, participants judged trustworthiness and attractiveness of faces. In Study 1, faces varied along a cross-cultural dimension ranging from a Japanese to an Israeli typical face. Own-culture typical faces were perceived as more trustworthy than other-culture typical faces, suggesting that people in both cultures employ typicality cues when judging trustworthiness, but that the cues, indicative of typicality, are culture dependent. Because perceivers may be less familiar with other-culture typicality cues, Study 2 tested the extent to which they rely on available facial information other than typicality, when judging other-culture faces. In Study 2, Japanese and Israeli faces varied from either Japanese or Israeli attractive to unattractive with the respective typical face at the midpoint. For own-culture faces, trustworthiness judgments peaked around own-culture typical face. However, when judging other-culture faces, both cultures also employed attractiveness cues, but this effect was more apparent for Japanese participants. Our findings highlight the importance of culture when considering the effect of typicality on trustworthiness judgments.

  6. Neural Correlates of Covert Face Processing: fMRI Evidence from a Prosopagnosic Patient

    PubMed Central

    Liu, Jiangang; Wang, Meiyun; Shi, Xiaohong; Feng, Lu; Li, Ling; Thacker, Justine Marie; Tian, Jie; Shi, Dapeng; Lee, Kang

    2014-01-01

    Brains can perceive or recognize a face even though we are subjectively unaware of the existence of that face. However, the exact neural correlates of such covert face processing remain unknown. Here, we compared the fMRI activities between a prosopagnosic patient and normal controls when they saw famous and unfamiliar faces. When compared with objects, the patient showed greater activation to famous faces in the fusiform face area (FFA) though he could not overtly recognize those faces. In contrast, the controls showed greater activation to both famous and unfamiliar faces in the FFA. Compared with unfamiliar faces, famous faces activated the controls', but not the patient's lateral prefrontal cortex (LPFC) known to be involved in familiar face recognition. In contrast, the patient showed greater activation in the bilateral medial frontal gyrus (MeFG). Functional connectivity analyses revealed that the patient's right middle fusiform gyrus (FG) showed enhanced connectivity to the MeFG, whereas the controls' middle FG showed enhanced connectivity to the LPFC. These findings suggest that the FFA may be involved in both covert and overt face recognition. The patient's impairment in overt face recognition may be due to the absence of the coupling between the right FG and the LPFC. PMID:23448870

  7. Fundamental Vocabulary Selection Based on Word Familiarity

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Sato, Hiroshi; Kasahara, Kaname; Kanasugi, Tomoko; Amano, Shigeaki

    This paper proposes a new method for selecting fundamental vocabulary. We are presently constructing the Fundamental Vocabulary Knowledge-base of Japanese that contains integrated information on syntax, semantics and pragmatics, for the purposes of advanced natural language processing. This database mainly consists of a lexicon and a treebank: Lexeed (a Japanese Semantic Lexicon) and the Hinoki Treebank. Fundamental vocabulary selection is the first step in the construction of Lexeed. The vocabulary should include sufficient words to describe general concepts for self-expandability, and should not be prohibitively large to construct and maintain. There are two conventional methods for selecting fundamental vocabulary. The first is intuition-based selection by experts. This is the traditional method for making dictionaries. A weak point of this method is that the selection strongly depends on personal intuition. The second is corpus-based selection. This method is superior in objectivity to intuition-based selection, however, it is difficult to compile a sufficiently balanced corpora. We propose a psychologically-motivated selection method that adopts word familiarity as the selection criterion. Word familiarity is a rating that represents the familiarity of a word as a real number ranging from 1 (least familiar) to 7 (most familiar). We determined the word familiarity ratings statistically based on psychological experiments over 32 subjects. We selected about 30,000 words as the fundamental vocabulary, based on a minimum word familiarity threshold of 5. We also evaluated the vocabulary by comparing its word coverage with conventional intuition-based and corpus-based selection over dictionary definition sentences and novels, and demonstrated the superior coverage of our lexicon. Based on this, we conclude that the proposed method is superior to conventional methods for fundamental vocabulary selection.

  8. Deep and shallow encoding effects on face recognition: an ERP study.

    PubMed

    Marzi, Tessa; Viggiano, Maria Pia

    2010-12-01

    Event related potentials (ERPs) were employed to investigate whether and when brain activity related to face recognition varies according to the processing level undertaken at encoding. Recognition was assessed when preceded by a "shallow" (orientation judgement) or by a "deep" study task (occupation judgement). Moreover, we included a further manipulation by presenting at encoding faces either in the upright or inverted orientation. As expected, deeply encoded faces were recognized more accurately and more quickly with respect to shallowly encoded faces. The ERP showed three main findings: i) as witnessed by more positive-going potentials for deeply encoded faces, at early and later processing stage, face recognition was influenced by the processing strategy adopted during encoding; ii) structural encoding, indexed by the N170, turned out to be "cognitively penetrable" showing repetition priming effects for deeply encoded faces; iii) face inversion, by disrupting configural processing during encoding, influenced memory related processes for deeply encoded faces and impaired the recognition of faces shallowly processed. The present study adds weight to the concept that the depth of processing during memory encoding affects retrieval. We found that successful retrieval following deep encoding involved both familiarity- and recollection-related processes showing from 500 ms a fronto-parietal distribution, whereas shallow encoding affected only earlier processing stages reflecting perceptual priming. Copyright © 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

  9. Coping with divided attention: the advantage of familiarity.

    PubMed

    Griffiths, S W; Brockmark, S; Höjesjö, J; Johnsson, J I

    2004-04-07

    The ability of an animal to perform a task successfully is limited by the amount of attention being simultaneously focused on other activities. One way in which individuals might reduce the cost of divided attention is by preferentially focusing on the most beneficial tasks. In territorial animals where aggression is lower among familiar individuals, the decision to associate preferentially with familiar conspecifics may therefore confer advantages by allowing attention to be switched from aggression to predator vigilance and feeding. Wild juvenile brown trout were used to test the prediction that familiar fishes respond more quickly than unfamiliar fishes to a simulated predator attack. Our results confirm this prediction by demonstrating that familiar trout respond 14% faster than unfamiliar individuals to a predator attack. The results also show that familiar fishes consume a greater number of food items, foraging at more than twice the rate of unfamiliar conspecifics. To the best of our knowledge, these results provide the first evidence that familiarity-biased association confers advantages through the immediate fitness benefits afforded by faster predator-evasion responses and the long-term benefits provided by increased feeding opportunities.

  10. Mismatched expressions decrease face recognition and corresponding ERP old/new effects in schizophrenia.

    PubMed

    Guillaume, Fabrice; Guillem, François; Tiberghien, Guy; Stip, Emmanuel

    2012-09-01

    The objective was to investigate the electrophysiological (ERP) correlates of mismatched expression on face recognition in schizophrenia. Expression-change effects and associated ERPs were explored in patients with schizophrenia (n = 20) and paired comparison participants (n = 20) on a long-term face-recognition task. A facial-expression change decreased discriminability for patients with schizophrenia than for healthy participants. The patients' recognition deficit was accompanied by the absence of the midfrontal FN400 and late parietal ERP old/new effects in the mismatched-expression condition. By contrast, preserved midfrontal FN400 and late parietal ERP old/new effects were found in both groups in the unchanged-expression condition. Thus, the preserved parietal old/new effect previously observed in schizophrenia was no longer found here in the situation in which expression changes took place between the study and recognition phases. These findings suggest that, when they are not supposed to take the change of expression into account, the recognition deficit observed here in patients with schizophrenia resulted from an impairment in the mechanisms underlying the emergence, assessment, or utilization of familiarity--as indexed by the ERP old/new effects. In these natural conditions, the impact of the expression change on the implementation of retrieval processes offers new insight into schizophrenia-linked deficits in face recognition, with substantial phenomenological differences with respect to the emergence of familiarity.

  11. Memory color effect induced by familiarity of brand logos.

    PubMed

    Kimura, Atsushi; Wada, Yuji; Masuda, Tomohiro; Goto, Sho-Ichi; Tsuzuki, Daisuke; Hibino, Haruo; Cai, Dongsheng; Dan, Ippeita

    2013-01-01

    When people are asked to adjust the color of familiar objects such as fruits until they appear achromatic, the subjective gray points of the objects are shifted away from the physical gray points in a direction opposite to the memory color (memory color effect). It is still unclear whether the discrepancy between memorized and actual colors of objects is dependent on the familiarity of the objects. Here, we conducted two experiments in order to examine the relationship between the degree of a subject's familiarity with objects and the degree of the memory color effect by using logographs of food and beverage companies. In Experiment 1, we measured the memory color effects of logos which varied in terms of their familiarity (high, middle, or low). Results demonstrate that the memory color effect occurs only in the high-familiarity condition, but not in the middle- and low-familiarity conditions. Furthermore, there is a positive correlation between the memory color effect and the actual number of domestic stores of the brand. In Experiment 2, we assessed the semantic association between logos and food/beverage names by using a semantic priming task to elucidate whether the memory color effect of logos relates to consumer brand cognition, and found that the semantic associations between logos and food/beverage names in the high-familiarity brands were stronger than those in the low-familiarity brands only when the logos were colored correctly, but not when they were appropriately or inappropriately colored, or achromatic. The current results provide behavioral evidence of the relationship between the familiarity of objects and the memory color effect and suggest that the memory color effect increases with the familiarity of objects, albeit not constantly.

  12. Memory Color Effect Induced by Familiarity of Brand Logos

    PubMed Central

    Kimura, Atsushi; Wada, Yuji; Masuda, Tomohiro; Goto, Sho-ichi; Tsuzuki, Daisuke; Hibino, Haruo; Cai, Dongsheng; Dan, Ippeita

    2013-01-01

    Background When people are asked to adjust the color of familiar objects such as fruits until they appear achromatic, the subjective gray points of the objects are shifted away from the physical gray points in a direction opposite to the memory color (memory color effect). It is still unclear whether the discrepancy between memorized and actual colors of objects is dependent on the familiarity of the objects. Here, we conducted two experiments in order to examine the relationship between the degree of a subject’s familiarity with objects and the degree of the memory color effect by using logographs of food and beverage companies. Methods and Findings In Experiment 1, we measured the memory color effects of logos which varied in terms of their familiarity (high, middle, or low). Results demonstrate that the memory color effect occurs only in the high-familiarity condition, but not in the middle- and low-familiarity conditions. Furthermore, there is a positive correlation between the memory color effect and the actual number of domestic stores of the brand. In Experiment 2, we assessed the semantic association between logos and food/beverage names by using a semantic priming task to elucidate whether the memory color effect of logos relates to consumer brand cognition, and found that the semantic associations between logos and food/beverage names in the high-familiarity brands were stronger than those in the low-familiarity brands only when the logos were colored correctly, but not when they were appropriately or inappropriately colored, or achromatic. Conclusion The current results provide behavioral evidence of the relationship between the familiarity of objects and the memory color effect and suggest that the memory color effect increases with the familiarity of objects, albeit not constantly. PMID:23874638

  13. The hippocampus supports both recollection and familiarity when memories are strong

    PubMed Central

    Smith, Christine N.; Wixted, John T.; Squire, Larry R.

    2011-01-01

    Recognition memory is thought to consist of two component processes – recollection and familiarity. It has been suggested that the hippocampus supports recollection, while adjacent cortex supports familiarity. However, the qualitative experiences of recollection and familiarity are typically confounded with a quantitative difference in memory strength (recollection > familiarity). Thus, the question remains whether the hippocampus might in fact support familiarity-based memories whenever they are as strong as recollection-based memories. We addressed this problem in a novel way using the Remember/Know procedure where we could explicitly match the confidence and accuracy of Remember and Know decisions. As in earlier studies, recollected items had higher accuracy and confidence than familiar items, and hippocampal activity was higher for recollected items than for familiar items. Furthermore hippocampal activity was similar for familiar items, misses, and correct rejections. When the accuracy and confidence of recollected and familiar items were matched, the findings were dramatically different. Hippocampal activity was now similar for recollected and familiar items. Importantly, hippocampal activity was also greater for familiar items than for misses or correct rejections (as well as for recollected items vs. misses or correct rejections). Our findings suggest that the hippocampus supports both recollection and familiarity when memories are strong. PMID:22049412

  14. Sex-typicality and attractiveness: are supermale and superfemale faces super-attractive?

    PubMed

    Rhodes, G; Hickford, C; Jeffery, L

    2000-02-01

    Many animals find extreme versions of secondary sexual characteristics attractive, and such preferences can enhance reproductive success (Andersson, 1994). We hypothesized, therefore, that extreme versions of sex-typical traits may be attractive in human faces. We created supermale and superfemale faces by exaggerating all spatial differences between an average male and an average female face. In Expt 1 the male average was preferred to a supermale (50% exaggeration of differences from the female average). There was no clear preference for the female average or the superfemale (50% exaggeration). In Expt 2, participants chose the most attractive face from sets of images containing feminized as well as masculinized images for each sex, and spanning a wider range of exaggeration levels than in Expt 1. Chinese sets were also shown, to see whether similar preferences would occur for a less familiar race (participants were Caucasian). The most attractive female image was significantly feminized for faces of both races. However, the most attractive male image for both races was also significantly feminized. These results indicate that feminization, rather than sex exaggeration per se, is attractive in human faces, and they corroborate similar findings by Perrett et al. (1998).

  15. Familiarity expands space and contracts time.

    PubMed

    Jafarpour, Anna; Spiers, Hugo

    2017-01-01

    When humans draw maps, or make judgments about travel-time, their responses are rarely accurate and are often systematically distorted. Distortion effects on estimating time to arrival and the scale of sketch-maps reveal the nature of mental representation of time and space. Inspired by data from rodent entorhinal grid cells, we predicted that familiarity to an environment would distort representations of the space by expanding the size of it. We also hypothesized that travel-time estimation would be distorted in the same direction as space-size, if time and space rely on the same cognitive map. We asked international students, who had lived at a college in London for 9 months, to sketch a south-up map of their college district, estimate travel-time to destinations within the area, and mark their everyday walking routes. We found that while estimates for sketched space were expanded with familiarity, estimates of the time to travel through the space were contracted with familiarity. Thus, we found dissociable responses to familiarity in representations of time and space. © 2016 The Authors Hippocampus Published by Wiley Periodicals, Inc. © 2016 The Authors Hippocampus Published by Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

  16. Intuitive reasoning about abstract and familiar physics problems

    NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

    Kaiser, Mary Kister; Jonides, John; Alexander, Joanne

    1986-01-01

    Previous research has demonstrated that many people have misconceptions about basic properties of motion. Two experiments examined whether people are more likely to produce dynamically correct predictions about basic motion problems involving situations with which they are familiar, and whether solving such problems enhances performance on a subsequent abstract problem. In experiment 1, college students were asked to predict the trajectories of objects exiting a curved tube. Subjects were more accurate on the familiar version of the problem, and there was no evidence of transfer to the abstract problem. In experiment 2, two familiar problems were provided in an attempt to enhance subjects' tendency to extract the general structure of the problems. Once again, they gave more correct responses to the familiar problems but failed to generalize to the abstract problem. Formal physics training was associated with correct predictions for the abstract problem but was unrelated to performance on the familiar problems.

  17. Modality dependency of familiarity ratings of Japanese words.

    PubMed

    Amano, S; Kondo, T; Kakehi, K

    1995-07-01

    Familiarity ratings for a large number of aurally and visually presented Japanese words wer measured for 11 subjects, in order to investigate the modality dependency of familiarity. The correlation coefficient between auditory and visual ratings was .808, which is lower than that observed for English words, suggesting that a substantial portion of the mental lexicon is modality dependent. It was shown that the modality dependency is greater for low-familiarity words than it is for medium- or high-familiarity words. This difference between the low- and the medium- or high-familiarity words has a relationship to orthography. That is, the dependency is larger in words consisting only of kanji, which may have multiple pronunciations and usually represent meaning, than it is in words consisting only of hiragana or katakana, which have a single pronunciation and usually do not represent meaning. These results indicate that the idiosyncratic characteristics of Japanese orthography contribute to the modality dependency.

  18. The Influence of Familiarity on Affective Responses to Natural Scenes

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Sanabria Z., Jorge C.; Cho, Youngil; Yamanaka, Toshimasa

    This kansei study explored how familiarity with image-word combinations influences affective states. Stimuli were obtained from Japanese print advertisements (ads), and consisted of images (e.g., natural-scene backgrounds) and their corresponding headlines (advertising copy). Initially, a group of subjects evaluated their level of familiarity with images and headlines independently, and stimuli were filtered based on the results. In the main experiment, a different group of subjects rated their pleasure and arousal to, and familiarity with, image-headline combinations. The Self-Assessment Manikin (SAM) scale was used to evaluate pleasure and arousal, and a bipolar scale was used to evaluate familiarity. The results showed a high correlation between familiarity and pleasure, but low correlation between familiarity and arousal. The characteristics of the stimuli, and their effect on the variables of pleasure, arousal and familiarity, were explored through ANOVA. It is suggested that, in the case of natural-scene ads, familiarity with image-headline combinations may increase the pleasure response to the ads, and that certain components in the images (e.g., water) may increase arousal levels.

  19. The occipital face area is causally involved in the formation of identity-specific face representations.

    PubMed

    Ambrus, Géza Gergely; Dotzer, Maria; Schweinberger, Stefan R; Kovács, Gyula

    2017-12-01

    Transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) and neuroimaging studies suggest a role of the right occipital face area (rOFA) in early facial feature processing. However, the degree to which rOFA is necessary for the encoding of facial identity has been less clear. Here we used a state-dependent TMS paradigm, where stimulation preferentially facilitates attributes encoded by less active neural populations, to investigate the role of the rOFA in face perception and specifically in image-independent identity processing. Participants performed a familiarity decision task for famous and unknown target faces, preceded by brief (200 ms) or longer (3500 ms) exposures to primes which were either an image of a different identity (DiffID), another image of the same identity (SameID), the same image (SameIMG), or a Fourier-randomized noise pattern (NOISE) while either the rOFA or the vertex as control was stimulated by single-pulse TMS. Strikingly, TMS to the rOFA eliminated the advantage of SameID over DiffID condition, thereby disrupting identity-specific priming, while leaving image-specific priming (better performance for SameIMG vs. SameID) unaffected. Our results suggest that the role of rOFA is not limited to low-level feature processing, and emphasize its role in image-independent facial identity processing and the formation of identity-specific memory traces.

  20. Semantic memory influences episodic retrieval by increased familiarity.

    PubMed

    Wang, Yujuan; Mao, Xinrui; Li, Bingcan; Lu, Baoqing; Guo, Chunyan

    2016-07-06

    The role of familiarity in associative recognition has been investigated in a number of studies, which have indicated that familiarity can facilitate recognition under certain circumstances. The ability of a pre-experimentally existing common representation to boost the contribution of familiarity has rarely been investigated. In addition, although many studies have investigated the interactions between semantic memory and episodic retrieval, the conditions that influence the presence of specific patterns were unclear. This study aimed to address these two questions. We manipulated the degree of overlap between the two representations using synonym and nonsynonym pairs in an associative recognition task. Results indicated that an increased degree of overlap enhanced recognition performance. The analysis of event-related potentials effects in the test phase showed that synonym pairs elicited both types of old/rearranged effects, whereas nonsynonym pairs elicited a late old/rearranged effect. These results confirmed that a common representation, irrespective of source, was necessary for assuring the presence of familiarity, but a common representation could not distinguish associative recognition depending on familiarity alone. Moreover, our expected double dissociation between familiarity and recollection was absent, which indicated that mode selection may be influenced by the degree of distinctness between old and rearranged pairs rather than the degree of overlap between representations.

  1. Familiarity Affects Entrainment of EEG in Music Listening.

    PubMed

    Kumagai, Yuiko; Arvaneh, Mahnaz; Tanaka, Toshihisa

    2017-01-01

    Music perception involves complex brain functions. The relationship between music and brain such as cortical entrainment to periodic tune, periodic beat, and music have been well investigated. It has also been reported that the cerebral cortex responded more strongly to the periodic rhythm of unfamiliar music than to that of familiar music. However, previous works mainly used simple and artificial auditory stimuli like pure tone or beep. It is still unclear how the brain response is influenced by the familiarity of music. To address this issue, we analyzed electroencelphalogram (EEG) to investigate the relationship between cortical response and familiarity of music using melodies produced by piano sounds as simple natural stimuli. The cross-correlation function averaged across trials, channels, and participants showed two pronounced peaks at time lags around 70 and 140 ms. At the two peaks the magnitude of the cross-correlation values were significantly larger when listening to unfamiliar and scrambled music compared to those when listening to familiar music. Our findings suggest that the response to unfamiliar music is stronger than that to familiar music. One potential application of our findings would be the discrimination of listeners' familiarity with music, which provides an important tool for assessment of brain activity.

  2. Face Transplantation: An Update for the United States Trauma System.

    PubMed

    Farber, Scott J; Kantar, Rami S; Diaz-Siso, J Rodrigo; Rodriguez, Eduardo D

    2018-05-15

    Face transplantation has evolved over the last 12 years into a safe and feasible reconstructive solution, with good aesthetic and functional outcomes for patients with severe facial defects who are not amenable to reconstruction through conventional and autologous approaches. Among patients who underwent face transplantation to date, a significant proportion did so following trauma, mostly ballistic and thermal injuries. It is therefore important for trauma surgeons who deal with these injuries regularly to be familiar with the literature on face transplantation following traumatic injuries. In this study, we provide a focused review on this topic, with an emphasis on highlighting the limitations of conventional craniomaxillofacial reconstruction, while emphasizing data available on the risks, benefits, surgical indications, contraindications, as well as aesthetic and functional outcomes of face transplantation. The authors also provide an update on all face transplants performed to date including traumatic mechanisms of injury, and extent of defects. They finally describe 2 cases performed by the senior author for patients presenting with devastating facial ballistic and thermal injuries. The authors hope that this work serves as an update for the trauma surgery community regarding the current role and limitations of face transplantation as a craniomaxillofacial reconstructive option for their patient population. This can potentially expedite the reconstructive process for patients who may benefit from face transplantation.

  3. Expectations about person identity modulate the face-sensitive N170.

    PubMed

    Johnston, Patrick; Overell, Anne; Kaufman, Jordy; Robinson, Jonathan; Young, Andrew W

    2016-12-01

    Identifying familiar faces is a fundamentally important aspect of social perception that requires the ability to assign very different (ambient) images of a face to a common identity. The current consensus is that the brain processes face identity at approximately 250-300 msec following stimulus onset, as indexed by the N250 event related potential. However, using two experiments we show compelling evidence that where experimental paradigms induce expectations about person identity, changes in famous face identity are in fact detected at an earlier latency corresponding to the face-sensitive N170. In Experiment 1, using a rapid periodic stimulation paradigm presenting highly variable ambient images, we demonstrate robust effects of low frequency, periodic face-identity changes in N170 amplitude. In Experiment 2, we added infrequent aperiodic identity changes to show that the N170 was larger to both infrequent periodic and infrequent aperiodic identity changes than to high frequency identities. Our use of ambient stimulus images makes it unlikely that these effects are due to adaptation of low-level stimulus features. In line with current ideas about predictive coding, we therefore suggest that when expectations about the identity of a face exist, the visual system is capable of detecting identity mismatches at a latency consistent with the N170. Copyright © 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

  4. Recognition memory in tree shrew (Tupaia belangeri) after repeated familiarization sessions.

    PubMed

    Khani, Abbas; Rainer, Gregor

    2012-07-01

    Recognition memories are formed during perceptual experience and allow subsequent recognition of previously encountered objects as well as their distinction from novel objects. As a consequence, novel objects are generally explored longer than familiar objects by many species. This novelty preference has been documented in rodents using the novel object recognition (NOR) test, as well is in primates including humans using preferential looking time paradigms. Here, we examine novelty preference using the NOR task in tree shrew, a small animal species that is considered to be an intermediary between rodents and primates. Our paradigm consisted of three phases: arena familiarization, object familiarization sessions with two identical objects in the arena and finally a test session following a 24-h retention period with a familiar and a novel object in the arena. We employed two different object familiarization durations: one and three sessions on consecutive days. After three object familiarization sessions, tree shrews exhibited robust preference for novel objects on the test day. This was accompanied by significant reduction in familiar object exploration time, occurring largely between the first and second day of object familiarization. By contrast, tree shrews did not show a significant preference for the novel object after a one-session object familiarization. Nonetheless, they spent significantly less time exploring the familiar object on the test day compared to the object familiarization day, indicating that they did maintain a memory trace for the familiar object. Our study revealed different time courses for familiar object habituation and emergence of novelty preference, suggesting that novelty preference is dependent on well-consolidated memory of the competing familiar object. Taken together, our results demonstrate robust novelty preference of tree shrews, in general similarity to previous findings in rodents and primates. Copyright © 2012 Elsevier B

  5. Dog owners show experience-based viewing behaviour in judging dog face approachability.

    PubMed

    Gavin, Carla Jade; Houghton, Sarah; Guo, Kun

    2017-01-01

    Our prior visual experience plays a critical role in face perception. We show superior perceptual performance for differentiating conspecific (vs non-conspecific), own-race (vs other-race) and familiar (vs unfamiliar) faces. However, it remains unclear whether our experience with faces of other species would influence our gaze allocation for extracting salient facial information. In this eye-tracking study, we asked both dog owners and non-owners to judge the approachability of human, monkey and dog faces, and systematically compared their behavioural performance and gaze pattern associated with the task. Compared to non-owners, dog owners assessed dog faces with shorter time and fewer fixations, but gave higher approachability ratings. The gaze allocation within local facial features was also modulated by the ownership. The averaged proportion of the fixations and viewing time directed at the dog mouth region were significantly less for the dog owners, and more experienced dog owners tended to look more at the dog eyes, suggesting the adoption of a prior experience-based viewing behaviour for assessing dog approachability. No differences in behavioural performance and gaze pattern were observed between dog owners and non-owners when judging human and monkey faces, implying that the dog owner's experience-based gaze strategy for viewing dog faces was not transferable across faces of other species.

  6. Better the devil you know? Nonconscious processing of identity and affect of famous faces.

    PubMed

    Stone, Anna; Valentine, Tim

    2004-06-01

    The nonconscious recognition of facial identity was investigated in two experiments featuring brief (17-msec) masked stimulus presentation to prevent conscious recognition. Faces were presented in simultaneous pairs of one famous face and one unfamiliar face, and participants attempted to select the famous face. Subsequently, participants rated the famous persons as "good" or "evil" (Experiment 1) or liked or disliked (Experiment 2). In Experiments 1 and 2, responses were less accurate to faces of persons rated evil/disliked than to faces of persons rated good/liked, and faces of persons rated evil/disliked were selected significantly below chance. Experiment 2 showed the effect in a within-items analysis: A famous face was selected less often by participants who disliked the person than by participants who liked the person, and the former were selected below chance accuracy. The within-items analysis rules out possible confounding factors based on variations in physical characteristics of the stimulus faces and confirms that the effects are due to participants' attitudes toward the famous persons. The results suggest that facial identity is recognized preconsciously, and that responses may be based on affect rather than familiarity.

  7. Music and emotions in the brain: familiarity matters.

    PubMed

    Pereira, Carlos Silva; Teixeira, João; Figueiredo, Patrícia; Xavier, João; Castro, São Luís; Brattico, Elvira

    2011-01-01

    The importance of music in our daily life has given rise to an increased number of studies addressing the brain regions involved in its appreciation. Some of these studies controlled only for the familiarity of the stimuli, while others relied on pleasantness ratings, and others still on musical preferences. With a listening test and a functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) experiment, we wished to clarify the role of familiarity in the brain correlates of music appreciation by controlling, in the same study, for both familiarity and musical preferences. First, we conducted a listening test, in which participants rated the familiarity and liking of song excerpts from the pop/rock repertoire, allowing us to select a personalized set of stimuli per subject. Then, we used a passive listening paradigm in fMRI to study music appreciation in a naturalistic condition with increased ecological value. Brain activation data revealed that broad emotion-related limbic and paralimbic regions as well as the reward circuitry were significantly more active for familiar relative to unfamiliar music. Smaller regions in the cingulate cortex and frontal lobe, including the motor cortex and Broca's area, were found to be more active in response to liked music when compared to disliked one. Hence, familiarity seems to be a crucial factor in making the listeners emotionally engaged with music, as revealed by fMRI data.

  8. Music and Emotions in the Brain: Familiarity Matters

    PubMed Central

    Pereira, Carlos Silva; Teixeira, João; Figueiredo, Patrícia; Xavier, João; Castro, São Luís; Brattico, Elvira

    2011-01-01

    The importance of music in our daily life has given rise to an increased number of studies addressing the brain regions involved in its appreciation. Some of these studies controlled only for the familiarity of the stimuli, while others relied on pleasantness ratings, and others still on musical preferences. With a listening test and a functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) experiment, we wished to clarify the role of familiarity in the brain correlates of music appreciation by controlling, in the same study, for both familiarity and musical preferences. First, we conducted a listening test, in which participants rated the familiarity and liking of song excerpts from the pop/rock repertoire, allowing us to select a personalized set of stimuli per subject. Then, we used a passive listening paradigm in fMRI to study music appreciation in a naturalistic condition with increased ecological value. Brain activation data revealed that broad emotion-related limbic and paralimbic regions as well as the reward circuitry were significantly more active for familiar relative to unfamiliar music. Smaller regions in the cingulate cortex and frontal lobe, including the motor cortex and Broca's area, were found to be more active in response to liked music when compared to disliked one. Hence, familiarity seems to be a crucial factor in making the listeners emotionally engaged with music, as revealed by fMRI data. PMID:22110619

  9. Positive, but Not Negative, Facial Expressions Facilitate 3-Month-Olds' Recognition of an Individual Face

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Brenna, Viola; Proietti, Valentina; Montirosso, Rosario; Turati, Chiara

    2013-01-01

    The current study examined whether and how the presence of a positive or a negative emotional expression may affect the face recognition process at 3 months of age. Using a familiarization procedure, Experiment 1 demonstrated that positive (i.e., happiness), but not negative (i.e., fear and anger) facial expressions facilitate infants' ability to…

  10. The impact of familiarization strategies on the missing-letter effect.

    PubMed

    Plamondon, Andréanne; Roy-Charland, Annie; Chamberland, Justin; Quenneville, Joannie; Laforge, Christian

    2017-08-01

    When reading a text and searching for a target letter, readers make more omissions of the target letter if it is embedded in frequent function words than if it is in rare content words. While word frequency effects are consistently found, few studies have examined the impacts of passage familiarity on the missing-letter effect and studies that have present conflicting evidence. The present study examines the effects of passage familiarity, as well as the impacts of passage familiarization strategy promoting surface or deep encoding, on the missing-letter effect. Participants were familiarized with a passage by retyping a text, replacing all common nouns with synonyms, or generating a text on the same topic as that of the original text, and then completed a letter search task on the familiar passage as well as an unfamiliar passage. In Experiment 1, when both familiar and unfamiliar passages use the same words, results revealed fewer omissions for the retyping and synonyms conditions. However, in Experiment 2, when different words are used in both types of texts, no effect of familiarization strategy was observed. Furthermore, the missing-letter effect is maintained in all conditions, adding support to the robustness of the effect regardless of familiarity with the text.

  11. Facing the Spectator

    PubMed Central

    Koenderink, Jan; van Doorn, Andrea; Pinna, Baingio

    2016-01-01

    We investigated the familiar phenomenon of the uncanny feeling that represented people in frontal pose invariably appear to “face you” from wherever you stand. We deploy two different methods. The stimuli include the conventional one—a flat portrait rocking back and forth about a vertical axis—augmented with two novel variations. In one alternative, the portrait frame rotates whereas the actual portrait stays motionless and fronto-parallel; in the other, we replace the (flat!) portrait with a volumetric object. These variations yield exactly the same optical stimulation in frontal view, but become grossly different in very oblique views. We also let participants sample their momentary awareness through “gauge object” settings in static displays. From our results, we conclude that the psychogenesis of visual awareness maintains a number—at least two, but most likely more—of distinct spatial frameworks simultaneously involving “cue–scission.” Cues may be effective in one of these spatial frameworks but ineffective or functionally different in other ones. PMID:27895885

  12. The neuroscience of face processing and identification in eyewitnesses and offenders.

    PubMed

    Werner, Nicole-Simone; Kühnel, Sina; Markowitsch, Hans J

    2013-12-06

    Humans are experts in face perception. We are better able to distinguish between the differences of faces and their components than between any other kind of objects. Several studies investigating the underlying neural networks provided evidence for deviated face processing in criminal individuals, although results are often confounded by accompanying mental or addiction disorders. On the other hand, face processing in non-criminal healthy persons can be of high juridical interest in cases of witnessing a felony and afterward identifying a culprit. Memory and therefore recognition of a person can be affected by many parameters and thus become distorted. But also face processing itself is modulated by different factors like facial characteristics, degree of familiarity, and emotional relation. These factors make the comparison of different cases, as well as the transfer of laboratory results to real live settings very challenging. Several neuroimaging studies have been published in recent years and some progress was made connecting certain brain activation patterns with the correct recognition of an individual. However, there is still a long way to go before brain imaging can make a reliable contribution to court procedures.

  13. The Neuroscience of Face Processing and Identification in Eyewitnesses and Offenders

    PubMed Central

    Werner, Nicole-Simone; Kühnel, Sina; Markowitsch, Hans J.

    2013-01-01

    Humans are experts in face perception. We are better able to distinguish between the differences of faces and their components than between any other kind of objects. Several studies investigating the underlying neural networks provided evidence for deviated face processing in criminal individuals, although results are often confounded by accompanying mental or addiction disorders. On the other hand, face processing in non-criminal healthy persons can be of high juridical interest in cases of witnessing a felony and afterward identifying a culprit. Memory and therefore recognition of a person can be affected by many parameters and thus become distorted. But also face processing itself is modulated by different factors like facial characteristics, degree of familiarity, and emotional relation. These factors make the comparison of different cases, as well as the transfer of laboratory results to real live settings very challenging. Several neuroimaging studies have been published in recent years and some progress was made connecting certain brain activation patterns with the correct recognition of an individual. However, there is still a long way to go before brain imaging can make a reliable contribution to court procedures. PMID:24367306

  14. Semantic and visual determinants of face recognition in a prosopagnosic patient.

    PubMed

    Dixon, M J; Bub, D N; Arguin, M

    1998-05-01

    Prosopagnosia is the neuropathological inability to recognize familiar people by their faces. It can occur in isolation or can coincide with recognition deficits for other nonface objects. Often, patients whose prosopagnosia is accompanied by object recognition difficulties have more trouble identifying certain categories of objects relative to others. In previous research, we demonstrated that objects that shared multiple visual features and were semantically close posed severe recognition difficulties for a patient with temporal lobe damage. We now demonstrate that this patient's face recognition is constrained by these same parameters. The prosopagnosic patient ELM had difficulties pairing faces to names when the faces shared visual features and the names were semantically related (e.g., Tonya Harding, Nancy Kerrigan, and Josee Chouinard -three ice skaters). He made tenfold fewer errors when the exact same faces were associated with semantically unrelated people (e.g., singer Celine Dion, actress Betty Grable, and First Lady Hillary Clinton). We conclude that prosopagnosia and co-occurring category-specific recognition problems both stem from difficulties disambiguating the stored representations of objects that share multiple visual features and refer to semantically close identities or concepts.

  15. Vehicle familiarity and safety

    DOT National Transportation Integrated Search

    1983-07-01

    A literature review and accident data analyses were conducted to examine the : relationship between vehicle familiarity and safety. The infonmation from these : diverse sources was consistent in suggesting that drivers of passenger cars and . : motor...

  16. Identifying familiar strangers in human encounter networks

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Liang, Di; Li, Xiang; Zhang, Yi-Qing

    2016-10-01

    Familiar strangers, pairs of individuals who encounter repeatedly but never know each other, have been discovered for four decades yet lack an effective method to identify. Here we propose a novel method called familiar stranger classifier (FSC) to identify familiar strangers from three empirical datasets, and classify human relationships into four types, i.e., familiar stranger (FS), in-role (IR), friend (F) and stranger (S). The analyses of the human encounter networks show that the average number of FS one may encounter is finite but larger than the Dunbar Number, and their encounters are structurally more stable and denser than those of S, indicating the encounters of FS are not limited by the social capacity, and more robust than the random scenario. Moreover, the temporal statistics of encounters between FS over the whole time span show strong periodicity, which are diverse from the bursts of encounters within one day, suggesting the significance of longitudinal patterns of human encounters. The proposed method to identify FS in this paper provides a valid framework to understand human encounter patterns and analyse complex human social behaviors.

  17. Culture-specific familiarity equally mediates action representations across cultures.

    PubMed

    Umla-Runge, Katja; Fu, Xiaolan; Wang, Lamei; Zimmer, Hubert D

    2014-01-01

    Previous studies have shown that we need to distinguish between means and end information about actions. It is unclear how these two subtypes of action information relate to each other with theoretical accounts postulating the superiority of end over means information and others linking separate means and end routes of processing to actions of differential meaningfulness. Action meaningfulness or familiarity differs between cultures. In a cross-cultural setting, we investigated how action familiarity influences recognition memory for means and end information. Object directed actions of differential familiarity were presented to Chinese and German participants. Action familiarity modulated the representation of means and end information in both cultures in the same way, although the effects were based on different stimulus sets. Our results suggest that, in the representation of actions in memory, end information is superordinate to means information. This effect is independent of culture whereas action familiarity is not.

  18. The impact of beliefs about face recognition ability on memory retrieval processes in young and older adults.

    PubMed

    Humphries, Joyce E; Flowe, Heather D; Hall, Louise C; Williams, Louise C; Ryder, Hannah L

    2016-01-01

    This study examined whether beliefs about face recognition ability differentially influence memory retrieval in older compared to young adults. Participants evaluated their ability to recognise faces and were also given information about their ability to perceive and recognise faces. The information was ostensibly based on an objective measure of their ability, but in actuality, participants had been randomly assigned the information they received (high ability, low ability or no information control). Following this information, face recognition accuracy for a set of previously studied faces was measured using a remember-know memory paradigm. Older adults rated their ability to recognise faces as poorer compared to young adults. Additionally, negative information about face recognition ability improved only older adults' ability to recognise a previously seen face. Older adults were also found to engage in more familiarity than item-specific processing than young adults, but information about their face recognition ability did not affect face processing style. The role that older adults' memory beliefs have in the meta-cognitive strategies they employ is discussed.

  19. Effect of word familiarity on visually evoked magnetic fields.

    PubMed

    Harada, N; Iwaki, S; Nakagawa, S; Yamaguchi, M; Tonoike, M

    2004-11-30

    This study investigated the effect of word familiarity of visual stimuli on the word recognizing function of the human brain. Word familiarity is an index of the relative ease of word perception, and is characterized by facilitation and accuracy on word recognition. We studied the effect of word familiarity, using "Hiragana" (phonetic characters in Japanese orthography) characters as visual stimuli, on the elicitation of visually evoked magnetic fields with a word-naming task. The words were selected from a database of lexical properties of Japanese. The four "Hiragana" characters used were grouped and presented in 4 classes of degree of familiarity. The three components were observed in averaged waveforms of the root mean square (RMS) value on latencies at about 100 ms, 150 ms and 220 ms. The RMS value of the 220 ms component showed a significant positive correlation (F=(3/36); 5.501; p=0.035) with the value of familiarity. ECDs of the 220 ms component were observed in the intraparietal sulcus (IPS). Increments in the RMS value of the 220 ms component, which might reflect ideographical word recognition, retrieving "as a whole" were enhanced with increments of the value of familiarity. The interaction of characters, which increased with the value of familiarity, might function "as a large symbol"; and enhance a "pop-out" function with an escaping character inhibiting other characters and enhancing the segmentation of the character (as a figure) from the ground.

  20. How familiar characters influence children's judgments about information and products.

    PubMed

    Danovitch, Judith H; Mills, Candice M

    2014-12-01

    Children are exposed to advertisements and products that incorporate familiar characters, such as Dora the Explorer and Bob the Builder, virtually from birth. How does the presence of these characters influence children's judgments about information and products? Three experiments (N=125) explored how 4-year-olds evaluate messages from familiar characters and how their trust in a familiar character's testimony relates to their product preferences. Children endorsed objective and subjective claims made by a familiar character more often than those made by a perceptually similar but unfamiliar character even in situations where they had evidence that the familiar character was unreliable. Children also preferred low-quality products bearing a familiar character's image over high-quality products without a character image up to 74% of the time (whereas control groups preferred the low-quality products less than 6% of the time when they did not include a character image). These findings suggest that young children are powerfully influenced by familiar characters encountered in the media, leaving them vulnerable to advertising messages and clouding their judgments about products. Copyright © 2014 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

  1. The Role of Noncriterial Recollection in Estimating Recollection and Familiarity

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Parks, Colleen M.

    2007-01-01

    Noncriterial recollection (ncR) is recollection of details that are irrelevant to task demands. It has been shown to elevate familiarity estimates and to be functionally equivalent to familiarity in the process dissociation procedure [Yonelinas, A. P., & Jacoby, L. L. (1996). Noncriterial recollection: Familiarity as automatic, irrelevant…

  2. Is the Self Always Better than a Friend? Self-Face Recognition in Christians and Atheists

    PubMed Central

    Ma, Yina; Han, Shihui

    2012-01-01

    Early behavioral studies found that human adults responded faster to their own faces than faces of familiar others or strangers, a finding referred to as self-face advantage. Recent research suggests that the self-face advantage is mediated by implicit positive association with the self and is influenced by sociocultural experience. The current study investigated whether and how Christian belief and practice affect the processing of self-face in a Chinese population. Christian and Atheist participants were recruited for an implicit association test (IAT) in Experiment 1 and a face-owner identification task in Experiment 2. Experiment 1 found that atheists responded faster to self-face when it shared the same response key with positive compared to negative trait adjectives. This IAT effect, however, was significantly reduced in Christians. Experiment 2 found that atheists responded faster to self-face compared to a friend’s face, but this self-face advantage was significantly reduced in Christians. Hierarchical regression analyses further showed that the IAT effect positively predicted self-face advantage in atheists but not in Christians. Our findings suggest that Christian belief and practice may weaken implicit positive association with the self and thus decrease the advantage of the self over a friend during face recognition in the believers. PMID:22662231

  3. Is the self always better than a friend? Self-face recognition in Christians and atheists.

    PubMed

    Ma, Yina; Han, Shihui

    2012-01-01

    Early behavioral studies found that human adults responded faster to their own faces than faces of familiar others or strangers, a finding referred to as self-face advantage. Recent research suggests that the self-face advantage is mediated by implicit positive association with the self and is influenced by sociocultural experience. The current study investigated whether and how Christian belief and practice affect the processing of self-face in a Chinese population. Christian and Atheist participants were recruited for an implicit association test (IAT) in Experiment 1 and a face-owner identification task in Experiment 2. Experiment 1 found that atheists responded faster to self-face when it shared the same response key with positive compared to negative trait adjectives. This IAT effect, however, was significantly reduced in Christians. Experiment 2 found that atheists responded faster to self-face compared to a friend's face, but this self-face advantage was significantly reduced in Christians. Hierarchical regression analyses further showed that the IAT effect positively predicted self-face advantage in atheists but not in Christians. Our findings suggest that Christian belief and practice may weaken implicit positive association with the self and thus decrease the advantage of the self over a friend during face recognition in the believers.

  4. Characterizing episodic memory retrieval: electrophysiological evidence for diminished familiarity following unitization.

    PubMed

    Pilgrim, Lea K; Murray, Jamie G; Donaldson, David I

    2012-08-01

    Episodic memory relies on both recollection and familiarity; why these processes are differentially engaged during retrieval remains unclear. Traditionally, recollection has been considered necessary for tasks requiring associative retrieval, whereas familiarity supports recognition of items. Recently, however, familiarity has been shown to contribute to associative recognition if stimuli are "unitized" at encoding (a single representation is created from multiple elements)-the "benefit" of unitization. Here, we ask if there is also a "cost" of unitization; are the elements of unitized representations less accessible via familiarity? We manipulated unitization during encoding and used ERPs to index familiarity and recollection at retrieval. The data revealed a selective reduction in the neural correlate of familiarity for individual words originally encoded in unitized compared with nonunitized word pairs. This finding reveals a measurable cost of unitization, suggesting that the nature of to-be-remembered stimuli is critical in determining whether familiarity contributes to episodic memory.

  5. Face age modulates gaze following in young adults.

    PubMed

    Ciardo, Francesca; Marino, Barbara F M; Actis-Grosso, Rossana; Rossetti, Angela; Ricciardelli, Paola

    2014-04-22

    Gaze-following behaviour is considered crucial for social interactions which are influenced by social similarity. We investigated whether the degree of similarity, as indicated by the perceived age of another person, can modulate gaze following. Participants of three different age-groups (18-25; 35-45; over 65) performed an eye movement (a saccade) towards an instructed target while ignoring the gaze-shift of distracters of different age-ranges (6-10; 18-25; 35-45; over 70). The results show that gaze following was modulated by the distracter face age only for young adults. Particularly, the over 70 year-old distracters exerted the least interference effect. The distracters of a similar age-range as the young adults (18-25; 35-45) had the most effect, indicating a blurred own-age bias (OAB) only for the young age group. These findings suggest that face age can modulate gaze following, but this modulation could be due to factors other than just OAB (e.g., familiarity).

  6. Face Memory: Implications for theories of binding items to context

    PubMed Central

    Reder, L. M.; Victoria, L. W.; Manelis, A.; Oates, J. M.; Dutcher, J. M.; Bates, J. T.; Cook, S.; Aizenstein, H. A.; Quinlan, J.; Gyulai, F.

    2014-01-01

    Two experiments tested the hypothesis that it is easier to bind a stimulus to context when the stimulus already has a stable (i.e., pre-existing) memory representation by comparing episodic memory of faces of celebrities vs. unknown individuals. Each face was superimposed on a picture of a well-known location (e.g., Eiffel Tower) during encoding and at a later unexpected recognition test but the background could change from encoding to test. Although recognition was to be based on the face, irrespective of background, performance was better when encoding context was reinstated. Further, a given background could be shown with many faces ("high fan") or only a few ("low fan") and this variable modulated the value added of context reinstatement. Importantly, manipulations of context only mattered for famous faces. As predicted, these effects were observed in recollection ("Remember") responses not in familiarity (“Know”) responses. Experiment 2 used the same design except that half of the subjects were administered midazolam, a drug that produces temporary anterograde amnesia, prior to encoding faces and backgrounds. Subjects injected with saline (control condition) showed the same pattern as Experiment 1; however subjects injected with midazolam showed a large decrease in the use of the "Remember" responses for famous faces and neither context reinstatement nor background fan affected performance. These results support the view that it is easier to bind stimuli to context when stimuli have a pre-existing, stable memory representation (e.g., faces of people whose identity we know) than when stimuli do not have pre-existing, stable memory representations. PMID:23395827

  7. 46 CFR 15.405 - Familiarity with vessel characteristics.

    Code of Federal Regulations, 2013 CFR

    2013-10-01

    ... 46 Shipping 1 2013-10-01 2013-10-01 false Familiarity with vessel characteristics. 15.405 Section 15.405 Shipping COAST GUARD, DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND SECURITY MERCHANT MARINE OFFICERS AND SEAMEN MANNING REQUIREMENTS Manning Requirements; All Vessels § 15.405 Familiarity with vessel characteristics...

  8. 46 CFR 15.405 - Familiarity with vessel characteristics.

    Code of Federal Regulations, 2011 CFR

    2011-10-01

    ... 46 Shipping 1 2011-10-01 2011-10-01 false Familiarity with vessel characteristics. 15.405 Section 15.405 Shipping COAST GUARD, DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND SECURITY MERCHANT MARINE OFFICERS AND SEAMEN MANNING REQUIREMENTS Manning Requirements; All Vessels § 15.405 Familiarity with vessel characteristics...

  9. 46 CFR 15.405 - Familiarity with vessel characteristics.

    Code of Federal Regulations, 2012 CFR

    2012-10-01

    ... 46 Shipping 1 2012-10-01 2012-10-01 false Familiarity with vessel characteristics. 15.405 Section 15.405 Shipping COAST GUARD, DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND SECURITY MERCHANT MARINE OFFICERS AND SEAMEN MANNING REQUIREMENTS Manning Requirements; All Vessels § 15.405 Familiarity with vessel characteristics...

  10. 46 CFR 15.405 - Familiarity with vessel characteristics.

    Code of Federal Regulations, 2014 CFR

    2014-10-01

    ... 46 Shipping 1 2014-10-01 2014-10-01 false Familiarity with vessel characteristics. 15.405 Section 15.405 Shipping COAST GUARD, DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND SECURITY MERCHANT MARINE OFFICERS AND SEAMEN MANNING REQUIREMENTS Manning Requirements; All Vessels § 15.405 Familiarity with vessel characteristics...

  11. Brief daily exposures to Asian females reverses perceptual narrowing for Asian faces in Caucasian infants

    PubMed Central

    Anzures, Gizelle; Wheeler, Andrea; Quinn, Paul C.; Pascalis, Olivier; Slater, Alan M.; Heron-Delaney, Michelle; Tanaka, James W.; Lee, Kang

    2012-01-01

    Perceptual narrowing in the visual, auditory, and multisensory domains has its developmental origins in infancy. The present study shows that experimentally induced experience can reverse the effects of perceptual narrowing on infants’ visual recognition memory of other-race faces. Caucasian 8- to 10-month-olds who could not discriminate between novel and familiarized Asian faces at the beginning of testing were given brief daily experience with Asian female faces in the experimental condition and Caucasian female faces in the control condition. At the end of three weeks, only infants who received daily experience with Asian females showed above-chance recognition of novel Asian female and male faces. Further, infants in the experimental condition showed greater efficiency in learning novel Asian females compared to infants in the control condition. Thus, visual experience with a novel stimulus category can reverse the effects of perceptual narrowing in infancy via improved stimulus recognition and encoding. PMID:22625845

  12. How Negative Social Bias Affects Memory for Faces: An Electrical Neuroimaging Study

    PubMed Central

    Proverbio, Alice Mado; La Mastra, Francesca; Zani, Alberto

    2016-01-01

    During social interactions, we make inferences about people’s personal characteristics based on their appearance. These inferences form a potential prejudice that can positively or negatively bias our interaction with them. Not much is known about the effects of negative bias on face perception and the ability to recognize people faces. This ability was investigated by recording event-related potentials (ERPs) from 128 sites in 16 volunteers. In the first session (encoding), they viewed 200 faces associated with a short fictional story that described anecdotal positive or negative characteristics about each person. In the second session (recognition), they underwent an old/new memory test, in which they had to distinguish 100 new faces from the previously shown faces. ERP data relative to the encoding phase showed a larger anterior negativity in response to negatively (vs. positively) biased faces, indicating an additional processing of faces with unpleasant social traits. In the recognition task, ERPs recorded in response to new faces elicited a larger FN400 than to old faces, and to positive than negative faces. Additionally, old faces elicited a larger Old-New parietal response than new faces, in the form of an enlarged late positive (LPC) component. An inverse solution SwLORETA (450–550 ms) indicated that remembering old faces was associated with the activation of right superior frontal gyrus (SFG), left medial temporal gyrus, and right fusiform gyrus. Only negatively connoted faces strongly activated the limbic and parahippocampal areas and the left SFG. A dissociation was found between familiarity (modulated by negative bias) and recollection (distinguishing old from new faces). PMID:27655327

  13. Oscillatory encoding of visual stimulus familiarity.

    PubMed

    Kissinger, Samuel T; Pak, Alexandr; Tang, Yu; Masmanidis, Sotiris C; Chubykin, Alexander A

    2018-06-18

    Familiarity of the environment changes the way we perceive and encode incoming information. However, the neural substrates underlying this phenomenon are poorly understood. Here we describe a new form of experience-dependent low frequency oscillations in the primary visual cortex (V1) of awake adult male mice. The oscillations emerged in visually evoked potentials (VEPs) and single-unit activity following repeated visual stimulation. The oscillations were sensitive to the spatial frequency content of a visual stimulus and required the muscarinic acetylcholine receptors (mAChRs) for their induction and expression. Finally, ongoing visually evoked theta (4-6 Hz) oscillations boost the VEP amplitude of incoming visual stimuli if the stimuli are presented at the high excitability phase of the oscillations. Our results demonstrate that an oscillatory code can be used to encode familiarity and serves as a gate for oncoming sensory inputs. Significance Statement. Previous experience can influence the processing of incoming sensory information by the brain and alter perception. However, the mechanistic understanding of how this process takes place is lacking. We have discovered that persistent low frequency oscillations in the primary visual cortex encode information about familiarity and the spatial frequency of the stimulus. These familiarity evoked oscillations influence neuronal responses to the oncoming stimuli in a way that depends on the oscillation phase. Our work demonstrates a new mechanism of visual stimulus feature detection and learning. Copyright © 2018 the authors.

  14. Social familiarity modulates group living and foraging behaviour of juvenile predatory mites

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Strodl, Markus A.; Schausberger, Peter

    2012-04-01

    Environmental stressors during early life may have persistent consequences for phenotypic development and fitness. In group-living species, an important stressor during juvenile development is the presence and familiarity status of conspecific individuals. To alleviate intraspecific conflicts during juvenile development, many animals evolved the ability to discriminate familiar and unfamiliar individuals based on prior association and use this ability to preferentially associate with familiar individuals. Assuming that familiar neighbours require less attention than unfamiliar ones, as predicted by limited attention theory, assorting with familiar individuals should increase the efficiency in other tasks. We assessed the influence of social familiarity on within-group association behaviour, development and foraging of juvenile life stages of the group-living, plant-inhabiting predatory mite Phytoseiulus persimilis. The observed groups consisted either of mixed-age familiar and unfamiliar juvenile mites or of age-synchronized familiar or unfamiliar juvenile mites or of pairs of familiar or unfamiliar larvae. Overall, familiar mites preferentially grouped together and foraged more efficiently, i.e. needed less prey at similar developmental speed and body size at maturity, than unfamiliar mites. Preferential association of familiar mites was also apparent in the inter-exuviae distances. Social familiarity was established by imprinting in the larval stage, was not cancelled or overridden by later conspecific contacts and persisted into adulthood. Life stage had an effect on grouping with larvae being closer together than nymphal stages. Ultimately, optimized foraging during the developmental phase may relax within-group competition, enhance current and future food supply needed for optimal development and optimize patch exploitation and leaving under limited food.

  15. The Role of Noncriterial Recollection in Estimating Recollection and Familiarity

    PubMed Central

    Parks, Colleen M.

    2007-01-01

    Noncriterial recollection (ncR) is recollection of details that are irrelevant to task demands. It has been shown to elevate familiarity estimates and to be functionally equivalent to familiarity in the process dissociation procedure (Yonelinas & Jacoby, 1996). However, Toth and Parks (2006) found no ncR in older adults, and hypothesized that this absence was related to older adults’ criterial recollection deficit. To test this hypothesis, as well as whether ncR is functionally equivalent to familiarity and increases the subjective experience of familiarity, remember-know and confidence-rating methods were used to estimate recollection and familiarity with young adults, young adults in a divided-attention condition (Experiment 1), and older adults. Supporting Toth and Parks’ hypothesis, ncR was found in all groups, but was consistently larger for groups with higher criterial recollection. Response distributions and receiver-operating characteristics revealed further similarities to criterial recollection and suggested that neither the experience nor usefulness of familiarity was enhanced by ncR. Overall, the results suggest that ncR does not differ fundamentally from criterial recollection. PMID:18591986

  16. Familiarity speeds up visual short-term memory consolidation.

    PubMed

    Xie, Weizhen; Zhang, Weiwei

    2017-06-01

    Existing long-term memory (LTM) can boost the number of retained representations over a short delay in visual short-term memory (VSTM). However, it is unclear whether and how prior LTM affects the initial process of transforming fragile sensory inputs into durable VSTM representations (i.e., VSTM consolidation). The consolidation speed hypothesis predicts faster consolidation for familiar relative to unfamiliar stimuli. Alternatively, the perceptual boost hypothesis predicts that the advantage in perceptual processing of familiar stimuli should add a constant boost for familiar stimuli during VSTM consolidation. To test these competing hypotheses, the present study examined how the large variance in participants' prior multimedia experience with Pokémon affected VSTM for Pokémon. In Experiment 1, the amount of time allowed for VSTM consolidation was manipulated by presenting consolidation masks at different intervals after the onset of to-be-remembered Pokémon characters. First-generation Pokémon characters that participants were more familiar with were consolidated faster into VSTM as compared with recent-generation Pokémon characters that participants were less familiar with. These effects were absent in participants who were unfamiliar with both generations of Pokémon. Although familiarity also increased the number of retained Pokémon characters when consolidation was uninterrupted but still incomplete due to insufficient encoding time in Experiment 1, this capacity effect was absent in Experiment 2 when consolidation was allowed to complete with sufficient encoding time. Together, these results support the consolidation speed hypothesis over the perceptual boost hypothesis and highlight the importance of assessing experimental effects on both processing and representation aspects of VSTM. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2017 APA, all rights reserved).

  17. Recognition errors suggest fast familiarity and slow recollection in rhesus monkeys

    PubMed Central

    Basile, Benjamin M.; Hampton, Robert R.

    2013-01-01

    One influential model of recognition posits two underlying memory processes: recollection, which is detailed but relatively slow, and familiarity, which is quick but lacks detail. Most of the evidence for this dual-process model in nonhumans has come from analyses of receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curves in rats, but whether ROC analyses can demonstrate dual processes has been repeatedly challenged. Here, we present independent converging evidence for the dual-process model from analyses of recognition errors made by rhesus monkeys. Recognition choices were made in three different ways depending on processing duration. Short-latency errors were disproportionately false alarms to familiar lures, suggesting control by familiarity. Medium-latency responses were less likely to be false alarms and were more accurate, suggesting onset of a recollective process that could correctly reject familiar lures. Long-latency responses were guesses. A response deadline increased false alarms, suggesting that limiting processing time weakened the contribution of recollection and strengthened the contribution of familiarity. Together, these findings suggest fast familiarity and slow recollection in monkeys, that monkeys use a “recollect to reject” strategy to countermand false familiarity, and that primate recognition performance is well-characterized by a dual-process model consisting of recollection and familiarity. PMID:23864646

  18. Exploring the functional architecture of person recognition system with event-related potentials in a within- and cross-domain self-priming of faces.

    PubMed

    Jemel, Boutheina; Pisani, Michèle; Rousselle, Laurence; Crommelinck, Marc; Bruyer, Raymond

    2005-01-01

    In this paper, we explored the functional properties of person recognition system by investigating the onset, magnitude, and scalp distribution of within- and cross-domain self-priming effects on event-related potentials (ERPs). Recognition of degraded pictures of famous people was enhanced by a prior exposure to the same person's face (within-domain self-priming) or name (cross-domain self-priming) as compared to those preceded by neutral or unrelated primes. The ERP results showed first that the amplitude of the N170 component to famous face targets was modulated by within- and cross-domain self-priming, suggesting not only that the N170 component can be affected by top-down influences but also that this top-down effect crosses domains. Second, similar to our behavioral data, later ERPs to famous faces showed larger ERP self-priming effects in the within-domain than in the cross-domain condition. In addition, the present data dissociated between two topographically and temporally overlapping priming-sensitive ERP components: the first one, with a strongly posterior distribution arising at an early onset, was modulated more by within-domain priming irrespective whether the repeated face was familiar or not. The second component, with a relatively uniform scalp distribution, was modulated by within- and cross-domain priming of familiar faces. Moreover, there was no evidence for ERP-induced modulations for unfamiliar face targets in the cross-domain condition. Together, our findings suggest that multiple neurocognitive events that are possibly mediated by distinct brain loci contribute to face priming effects.

  19. The Importance of Unitization for Familiarity-Based Learning

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Parks, Colleen M.; Yonelinas, Andrew P.

    2015-01-01

    It is often assumed that recollection is necessary to support memory for novel associations, whereas familiarity supports memory for single items. However, the levels of unitization framework assumes that familiarity can support associative memory under conditions in which the components of an association are unitized (i.e., treated as a single…

  20. Effects of visual familiarity for words on interhemispheric cooperation for lexical processing.

    PubMed

    Yoshizaki, K

    2001-12-01

    The purpose of this study was to examine the effects of visual familiarity of words on interhemispheric lexical processing. Words and pseudowords were tachistoscopically presented in a left, a right, or bilateral visual fields. Two types of words, Katakana-familiar-type and Hiragana-familiar-type, were used as the word stimuli. The former refers to the words which are more frequently written with Katakana script, and the latter refers to the words which are written predominantly in Hiragana script. Two conditions for the words were set up in terms of visual familiarity for a word. In visually familiar condition, words were presented in familiar script form and in visually unfamiliar condition, words were presented in less familiar script form. The 32 right-handed Japanese students were asked to make a lexical decision. Results showed that a bilateral gain, which indicated that the performance in the bilateral visual fields was superior to that in the unilateral visual field, was obtained only in the visually familiar condition, not in the visually unfamiliar condition. These results suggested that the visual familiarity for a word had an influence on the interhemispheric lexical processing.

  1. Familiarity with and advocacy of Healthy People 2010 goals by Mississippi Chiropractic Association members.

    PubMed

    Leach, Robert A; Cossman, Ronald E; Yates, Joyce M

    2011-01-01

    The purpose of this study was to determine the familiarity with and stated advocacy of Healthy People 2010 objectives by member doctors of the Mississippi Chiropractic Association. Peer experts established face validity of a questionnaire regarding the Leading Health Indicators. This survey was distributed to 157 Mississippi Chiropractic Association members in 2009 during a conference and a follow-up by postal mail. Most doctors of chiropractic in the sample (n = 68, or 43% response) consider themselves wellness-oriented health care providers. Forty-two percent had read, 29% had not read, and another 29% were unsure whether they had read the Healthy People 2010 national objectives. Almost half (44%) strongly or somewhat agreed that their office practice reflects support for the Healthy People 2010 objective. In contrast, 27% disagree and 29% were unsure if their practice reflects the Healthy People 2010 objectives. There were differences between support and practice behaviors for some of the objectives. Chiropractors who have read the objectives tend to be more supportive of the national goals. Doctors of chiropractic in this sample are supportive of most Leading Health Indicators, and the majority reports that they incorporate these public health goals into their practices. Familiarity with reading the Health People objectives seems to be related to reported practice behaviors. There is a need to improve the percentage of practicing doctors of chiropractic who are familiar with Healthy People objectives. Future health education initiatives may assist doctors of chiropractic in further incorporating public health objectives into their practice behaviors and improving quality health care. Copyright © 2011 National University of Health Sciences. Published by Mosby, Inc. All rights reserved.

  2. Face recognition in age related macular degeneration: perceived disability, measured disability, and performance with a bioptic device.

    PubMed

    Tejeria, L; Harper, R A; Artes, P H; Dickinson, C M

    2002-09-01

    (1) To explore the relation between performance on tasks of familiar face recognition (FFR) and face expression difference discrimination (FED) with both perceived disability in face recognition and clinical measures of visual function in subjects with age related macular degeneration (AMD). (2) To quantify the gain in performance for face recognition tasks when subjects use a bioptic telescopic low vision device. 30 subjects with AMD (age range 66-90 years; visual acuity 0.4-1.4 logMAR) were recruited for the study. Perceived (self rated) disability in face recognition was assessed by an eight item questionnaire covering a range of issues relating to face recognition. Visual functions measured were distance visual acuity (ETDRS logMAR charts), continuous text reading acuity (MNRead charts), contrast sensitivity (Pelli-Robson chart), and colour vision (large panel D-15). In the FFR task, images of famous people had to be identified. FED was assessed by a forced choice test where subjects had to decide which one of four images showed a different facial expression. These tasks were repeated with subjects using a bioptic device. Overall perceived disability in face recognition did not correlate with performance on either task, although a specific item on difficulty recognising familiar faces did correlate with FFR (r = 0.49, p<0.05). FFR performance was most closely related to distance acuity (r = -0.69, p<0.001), while FED performance was most closely related to continuous text reading acuity (r = -0.79, p<0.001). In multiple regression, neither contrast sensitivity nor colour vision significantly increased the explained variance. When using a bioptic telescope, FFR performance improved in 86% of subjects (median gain = 49%; p<0.001), while FED performance increased in 79% of subjects (median gain = 50%; p<0.01). Distance and reading visual acuity are closely associated with measured task performance in FFR and FED. A bioptic low vision device can offer a significant

  3. Preparing for Novel versus Familiar Events: Shifts in Global and Local Processing

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Forster, Jens; Liberman, Nira; Shapira, Oren

    2009-01-01

    Six experiments examined whether novelty versus familiarity influences global versus local processing styles. Novelty and familiarity were manipulated by either framing a task as new versus familiar or by asking participants to reflect upon novel versus familiar events prior to the task (i.e., procedural priming). In Experiments 1-3, global…

  4. Memory for faces and voices varies as a function of sex and expressed emotion.

    PubMed

    S Cortes, Diana; Laukka, Petri; Lindahl, Christina; Fischer, Håkan

    2017-01-01

    We investigated how memory for faces and voices (presented separately and in combination) varies as a function of sex and emotional expression (anger, disgust, fear, happiness, sadness, and neutral). At encoding, participants judged the expressed emotion of items in forced-choice tasks, followed by incidental Remember/Know recognition tasks. Results from 600 participants showed that accuracy (hits minus false alarms) was consistently higher for neutral compared to emotional items, whereas accuracy for specific emotions varied across the presentation modalities (i.e., faces, voices, and face-voice combinations). For the subjective sense of recollection ("remember" hits), neutral items received the highest hit rates only for faces, whereas for voices and face-voice combinations anger and fear expressions instead received the highest recollection rates. We also observed better accuracy for items by female expressers, and own-sex bias where female participants displayed memory advantage for female faces and face-voice combinations. Results further suggest that own-sex bias can be explained by recollection, rather than familiarity, rates. Overall, results show that memory for faces and voices may be influenced by the expressions that they carry, as well as by the sex of both items and participants. Emotion expressions may also enhance the subjective sense of recollection without enhancing memory accuracy.

  5. Memory for faces and voices varies as a function of sex and expressed emotion

    PubMed Central

    Laukka, Petri; Lindahl, Christina; Fischer, Håkan

    2017-01-01

    We investigated how memory for faces and voices (presented separately and in combination) varies as a function of sex and emotional expression (anger, disgust, fear, happiness, sadness, and neutral). At encoding, participants judged the expressed emotion of items in forced-choice tasks, followed by incidental Remember/Know recognition tasks. Results from 600 participants showed that accuracy (hits minus false alarms) was consistently higher for neutral compared to emotional items, whereas accuracy for specific emotions varied across the presentation modalities (i.e., faces, voices, and face-voice combinations). For the subjective sense of recollection (“remember” hits), neutral items received the highest hit rates only for faces, whereas for voices and face-voice combinations anger and fear expressions instead received the highest recollection rates. We also observed better accuracy for items by female expressers, and own-sex bias where female participants displayed memory advantage for female faces and face-voice combinations. Results further suggest that own-sex bias can be explained by recollection, rather than familiarity, rates. Overall, results show that memory for faces and voices may be influenced by the expressions that they carry, as well as by the sex of both items and participants. Emotion expressions may also enhance the subjective sense of recollection without enhancing memory accuracy. PMID:28570691

  6. In the Beginning Was the Familiar Voice Personally Familiar Voices in the Evolutionary and Contemporary Biology of Communication

    PubMed Central

    Sidtis, Diana; Kreiman, Jody

    2011-01-01

    The human voice is described in dialogic linguistics as an embodiment of self in a social context, contributing to expression, perception and mutual exchange of self, consciousness, inner life, and personhood. While these approaches are subjective and arise from phenomenological perspectives, scientific facts about personal vocal identity, and its role in biological development, support these views. It is our purpose to review studies of the biology of personal vocal identity -- the familiar voice pattern-- as providing an empirical foundation for the view that the human voice is an embodiment of self in the social context. Recent developments in the biology and evolution of communication are concordant with these notions, revealing that familiar voice recognition (also known as vocal identity recognition or individual vocal recognition) or contributed to survival in the earliest vocalizing species. Contemporary ethology documents the crucial role of familiar voices across animal species in signaling and perceiving internal states and personal identities. Neuropsychological studies of voice reveal multimodal cerebral associations arising across brain structures involved in memory, emotion, attention, and arousal in vocal perception and production, such that the voice represents the whole person. Although its roots are in evolutionary biology, human competence for processing layered social and personal meanings in the voice, as well as personal identity in a large repertory of familiar voice patterns, has achieved an immense sophistication. PMID:21710374

  7. Prism adaptation does not alter configural processing of faces

    PubMed Central

    Bultitude, Janet H.; Downing, Paul E.; Rafal, Robert D.

    2013-01-01

    Patients with hemispatial neglect (‘neglect’) following a brain lesion show difficulty responding or orienting to objects and events on the left side of space. Substantial evidence supports the use of a sensorimotor training technique called prism adaptation as a treatment for neglect. Reaching for visual targets viewed through prismatic lenses that induce a rightward shift in the visual image results in a leftward recalibration of reaching movements that is accompanied by a reduction of symptoms in patients with neglect. The understanding of prism adaptation has also been advanced through studies of healthy participants, in whom adaptation to leftward prismatic shifts results in temporary neglect-like performance. Interestingly, prism adaptation can also alter aspects of non-lateralised spatial attention. We previously demonstrated that prism adaptation alters the extent to which neglect patients and healthy participants process local features versus global configurations of visual stimuli. Since deficits in non-lateralised spatial attention are thought to contribute to the severity of neglect symptoms, it is possible that the effect of prism adaptation on these deficits contributes to its efficacy. This study examines the pervasiveness of the effects of prism adaptation on perception by examining the effect of prism adaptation on configural face processing using a composite face task. The composite face task is a persuasive demonstration of the automatic global-level processing of faces: the top and bottom halves of two familiar faces form a seemingly new, unknown face when viewed together. Participants identified the top or bottom halves of composite faces before and after prism adaptation. Sensorimotor adaptation was confirmed by significant pointing aftereffect, however there was no significant change in the extent to which the irrelevant face half interfered with processing. The results support the proposal that the therapeutic effects of prism adaptation

  8. Prism adaptation does not alter configural processing of faces.

    PubMed

    Bultitude, Janet H; Downing, Paul E; Rafal, Robert D

    2013-01-01

    Patients with hemispatial neglect ('neglect') following a brain lesion show difficulty responding or orienting to objects and events on the left side of space. Substantial evidence supports the use of a sensorimotor training technique called prism adaptation as a treatment for neglect. Reaching for visual targets viewed through prismatic lenses that induce a rightward shift in the visual image results in a leftward recalibration of reaching movements that is accompanied by a reduction of symptoms in patients with neglect. The understanding of prism adaptation has also been advanced through studies of healthy participants, in whom adaptation to leftward prismatic shifts results in temporary neglect-like performance. Interestingly, prism adaptation can also alter aspects of non-lateralised spatial attention. We previously demonstrated that prism adaptation alters the extent to which neglect patients and healthy participants process local features versus global configurations of visual stimuli. Since deficits in non-lateralised spatial attention are thought to contribute to the severity of neglect symptoms, it is possible that the effect of prism adaptation on these deficits contributes to its efficacy. This study examines the pervasiveness of the effects of prism adaptation on perception by examining the effect of prism adaptation on configural face processing using a composite face task. The composite face task is a persuasive demonstration of the automatic global-level processing of faces: the top and bottom halves of two familiar faces form a seemingly new, unknown face when viewed together. Participants identified the top or bottom halves of composite faces before and after prism adaptation. Sensorimotor adaptation was confirmed by significant pointing aftereffect, however there was no significant change in the extent to which the irrelevant face half interfered with processing. The results support the proposal that the therapeutic effects of prism adaptation are

  9. Familiarity does indeed promote attraction in live interaction.

    PubMed

    Reis, Harry T; Maniaci, Michael R; Caprariello, Peter A; Eastwick, Paul W; Finkel, Eli J

    2011-09-01

    Does familiarity promote attraction? Prior research has generally suggested that it does, but a recent set of studies by Norton, Frost, and Ariely (2007) challenged that assumption. Instead, they found that more information about another person, when that information was randomly selected from lists of trait adjectives, using a trait evaluation paradigm, promoted perceptions of dissimilarity and, hence, disliking. The present research began with the assumption that natural social interaction involves contexts and processes not present in Norton et al.'s research or in the typical familiarity experiment. We theorized that these processes imply a favorable impact of familiarity on attraction. Two experiments are reported using a live interaction paradigm in which two previously unacquainted same-sex persons interacted with each other for varying amounts of time. Findings strongly supported the "familiarity leads to attraction" hypothesis: The more participants interacted, the more attracted they were to each other. Mediation analyses identified three processes that contribute to this effect: perceived responsiveness, increased comfort and satisfaction during interaction, and perceived knowledge. PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved.

  10. Observation of Simple Intransitive Actions: The Effect of Familiarity

    PubMed Central

    Plata Bello, Julio; Modroño, Cristián; Marcano, Francisco; González–Mora, José Luis

    2013-01-01

    Introduction Humans are more familiar with index – thumb than with any other finger to thumb grasping. The effect of familiarity has been previously tested with complex, specialized and/or transitive movements, but not with simple intransitive ones. The aim of this study is to evaluate brain activity patterns during the observation of simple and intransitive finger movements with differing degrees of familiarity. Methodology A functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) study was performed using a paradigm consisting of the observation of 4 videos showing a finger opposition task between the thumb and the other fingers (index, middle, ring and little) in a repetitive manner with a fixed frequency (1 Hz). This movement is considered as the pantomime of a precision grasping action. Results Significant activity was identified in the bilateral Inferior Parietal Lobule and premotor regions with the selected level of significance (FDR [False Discovery Rate] = 0.01). The extent of the activation in both regions tended to decrease when the finger that performed the action was further from the thumb. More specifically, this effect showed a linear trend (index>middle>ring>little) in the right parietal and premotor regions. Conclusions The observation of less familiar simple intransitive movements produces less activation of parietal and premotor areas than familiar ones. The most important implication of this study is the identification of differences in brain activity during the observation of simple intransitive movements with different degrees of familiarity. PMID:24073213

  11. Choosing Your Informant: Weighing Familiarity and Recent Accuracy

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Corriveau, Kathleen; Harris, Paul L.

    2009-01-01

    In two experiments, children aged 3, 4 and 5 years (N = 61) were given conflicting information about the names and functions of novel objects by two informants, one a familiar teacher, the other an unfamiliar teacher. On pre-test trials, all three age groups invested more trust in the familiar teacher. They preferred to ask for information and to…

  12. Measuring familiarity for natural environments through visual images

    Treesearch

    William E. Hammitt

    1979-01-01

    An on-site visual preference methodology involving a pre-and-post rating of bog landscape photographs is discussed. Photographs were rated for familiarity as well as preference. Preference was shown to be closely related to familiarity, assuming visitors had the opportunity to view the scenes during the on-site hiking engagement. Scenes rated high on preference were...

  13. The Lateral Occipital Complex shows no net response to object familiarity.

    PubMed

    Margalit, Eshed; Shah, Manan P; Tjan, Bosco S; Biederman, Irving; Keller, Brenton; Brenner, Rorry

    2016-09-01

    In 1995, Malach et al. discovered an area whose fMRI BOLD response was greater when viewing intact, familiar objects than when viewing their scrambled versions (resembling texture). Since then hundreds of studies have explored this late visual region termed the Lateral Occipital Complex (LOC), which is now known to be critical for shape perception (James, Culham, Humphrey, Milner, & Goodale, 2003). Malach et al. (1995) discounted a role of familiarity by showing that "abstract" Henry Moore sculptures, unfamiliar to the subjects, also activated this region. This characterization of LOC as a region that responds to shape independently of familiarity has been accepted but never tested with control of the same low-level features. We assessed LOC's response to objects that had identical parts in two different arrangements, one familiar and the other novel. Malach was correct: There is no net effect of familiarity in LOC. However, a multivoxel correlation analysis showed that LOC does distinguish familiar from novel objects.

  14. A circuit-based mechanism underlying familiarity signaling and the preference for novelty

    PubMed Central

    Molas, Susanna; Zhao-Shea, Rubing; Liu, Liwang; DeGroot, Steven R.; Gardner, Paul D.; Tapper, Andrew R.

    2017-01-01

    Novelty preference (NP) is an evolutionarily conserved, essential survival mechanism often dysregulated in neuropsychiatric disorders. NP is mediated by a motivational dopamine signal that increases in response to novel stimuli thereby driving exploration. However, the mechanism by which once novel stimuli transitions to familiar stimuli is unknown. Here we describe a neuroanatomical substrate for familiarity signaling, the interpeduncular nucleus (IPN) of the midbrain, which is activated as novel stimuli become familiar with multiple exposures. Optogenetic silencing of IPN neurons increases salience of and interaction with familiar stimuli without affecting novelty responses; whereas, photo-activation of the same neurons reduces exploration of novel stimuli mimicking familiarity. Bi-directional control of NP by the IPN depends on familiarity- and novelty-signals arising from excitatory habenula and dopaminergic ventral tegmental area inputs, which activate and reduce IPN activity, respectively. These results demonstrate that familiarity signals through unique IPN circuitry that opposes novelty seeking to control NP. PMID:28714952

  15. A circuit-based mechanism underlying familiarity signaling and the preference for novelty.

    PubMed

    Molas, Susanna; Zhao-Shea, Rubing; Liu, Liwang; DeGroot, Steven R; Gardner, Paul D; Tapper, Andrew R

    2017-09-01

    Novelty preference (NP) is an evolutionarily conserved, essential survival mechanism often dysregulated in neuropsychiatric disorders. NP is mediated by a motivational dopamine signal that increases in response to novel stimuli, thereby driving exploration. However, the mechanism by which once-novel stimuli transition to familiar stimuli is unknown. Here we describe a neuroanatomical substrate for familiarity signaling, the interpeduncular nucleus (IPN) of the midbrain, which is activated as novel stimuli become familiar with multiple exposures. In mice, optogenetic silencing of IPN neurons increases salience of and interaction with familiar stimuli without affecting novelty responses, whereas photoactivation of the same neurons reduces exploration of novel stimuli mimicking familiarity. Bidirectional control of NP by the IPN depends on familiarity signals and novelty signals arising from excitatory habenula and dopaminergic ventral tegmentum inputs, which activate and reduce IPN activity, respectively. These results demonstrate that familiarity signals through unique IPN circuitry that opposes novelty seeking to control NP.

  16. Rehabilitation of face-processing skills in an adolescent with prosopagnosia: Evaluation of an online perceptual training programme.

    PubMed

    Bate, Sarah; Bennetts, Rachel; Mole, Joseph A; Ainge, James A; Gregory, Nicola J; Bobak, Anna K; Bussunt, Amanda

    2015-01-01

    In this paper we describe the case of EM, a female adolescent who acquired prosopagnosia following encephalitis at the age of eight. Initial neuropsychological and eye-movement investigations indicated that EM had profound difficulties in face perception as well as face recognition. EM underwent 14 weeks of perceptual training in an online programme that attempted to improve her ability to make fine-grained discriminations between faces. Following training, EM's face perception skills had improved, and the effect generalised to untrained faces. Eye-movement analyses also indicated that EM spent more time viewing the inner facial features post-training. Examination of EM's face recognition skills revealed an improvement in her recognition of personally-known faces when presented in a laboratory-based test, although the same gains were not noted in her everyday experiences with these faces. In addition, EM did not improve on a test assessing the recognition of newly encoded faces. One month after training, EM had maintained the improvement on the eye-tracking test, and to a lesser extent, her performance on the familiar faces test. This pattern of findings is interpreted as promising evidence that the programme can improve face perception skills, and with some adjustments, may at least partially improve face recognition skills.

  17. Why am I not photogenic? Differences in face memory for the self and others

    PubMed Central

    Wen, Wen; Kawabata, Hideaki

    2014-01-01

    Many people complain that they do not photograph well. In the present study, we hypothesised that the self-face is memorized more beautifully than reality, which may result in reports of being not photogenic. We took photographs of students who were in the same university course and were familiar with one another. We then magnified or shrunk the size of their eyes (Experiment 1; N = 10) and their mouths (Experiment 2; N = 10). We asked the students to select the picture that seemed most like their classmates' real faces or their own real face. The results showed that there were significant differences between memories of their own and others' faces. Participants selected their classmates' real faces to a greater degree than the modified faces. However, participants tended to select pictures of themselves with magnified eyes and shrunken mouths more often than for their classmates. In Experiment 3 (N = 22), more male participants were included and the influence of gender and mirror-reversed images were examined. We found that there were no significant differences across gender, and the mirror reversal did not change the participants' selections. The bias of self-face recognition may reflect different memory processes for the self and others. PMID:25469224

  18. Functional connectivity between face-movement and speech-intelligibility areas during auditory-only speech perception.

    PubMed

    Schall, Sonja; von Kriegstein, Katharina

    2014-01-01

    It has been proposed that internal simulation of the talking face of visually-known speakers facilitates auditory speech recognition. One prediction of this view is that brain areas involved in auditory-only speech comprehension interact with visual face-movement sensitive areas, even under auditory-only listening conditions. Here, we test this hypothesis using connectivity analyses of functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) data. Participants (17 normal participants, 17 developmental prosopagnosics) first learned six speakers via brief voice-face or voice-occupation training (<2 min/speaker). This was followed by an auditory-only speech recognition task and a control task (voice recognition) involving the learned speakers' voices in the MRI scanner. As hypothesized, we found that, during speech recognition, familiarity with the speaker's face increased the functional connectivity between the face-movement sensitive posterior superior temporal sulcus (STS) and an anterior STS region that supports auditory speech intelligibility. There was no difference between normal participants and prosopagnosics. This was expected because previous findings have shown that both groups use the face-movement sensitive STS to optimize auditory-only speech comprehension. Overall, the present findings indicate that learned visual information is integrated into the analysis of auditory-only speech and that this integration results from the interaction of task-relevant face-movement and auditory speech-sensitive areas.

  19. Effect of training and familiarity on responsiveness to human cues in domestic dogs (Canis familiaris).

    PubMed

    Cunningham, Clare L; Ramos, Mari F

    2014-05-01

    Domestic dogs (Canis familiaris) seem to possess an evolved competency to follow human-given cues, often out-performing their wild progenitor the wolf (Canis lupus) on cue-following tasks. However, domestication may not be solely responsible for the socio-cognitive skills of dogs, with ontogenetic experience also playing a role. This research evaluated the effects of intensive training on cue-following behaviour using an unreinforced object-choice paradigm. The responses of dogs that were trained to competitive levels were compared to those of pet dogs with only basic training, and dogs living in an animal shelter that demonstrated no or only rudimentary following of basic commands. Using a cue-following task where three types of cues were presented by familiar and unfamiliar human partners, the number of cues followed by each training group were recorded. All dogs found cues where gesture was combined with a congruent head and eye movement easier to follow than either gesture or eye gaze alone. Whether the cue-giver was familiar or not had a significant effect on number of cues followed in homed dogs, and the performance of shelter dogs was comparable to the other groups when faced with an unfamiliar cue-giver. Contrary to predictions, level of training did not improve performance on the cue-following task. This work does provide support for the presence of an evolved adaptation to exploit social cues provided by humans that can be augmented by familiarity with the cue giver. However, additional joint activity as experienced in an intensive training regime does not seem to increase accuracy in following human-given cues.

  20. 46 CFR 15.1105 - Familiarization and basic safety-training.

    Code of Federal Regulations, 2010 CFR

    2010-10-01

    ... 46 Shipping 1 2010-10-01 2010-10-01 false Familiarization and basic safety-training. 15.1105 Section 15.1105 Shipping COAST GUARD, DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND SECURITY MERCHANT MARINE OFFICERS AND SEAMEN MANNING REQUIREMENTS Vessels Subject to Requirements of STCW § 15.1105 Familiarization and basic safety...

  1. 46 CFR 15.1105 - Familiarization and basic safety-training.

    Code of Federal Regulations, 2013 CFR

    2013-10-01

    ... 46 Shipping 1 2013-10-01 2013-10-01 false Familiarization and basic safety-training. 15.1105 Section 15.1105 Shipping COAST GUARD, DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND SECURITY MERCHANT MARINE OFFICERS AND SEAMEN MANNING REQUIREMENTS Vessels Subject to Requirements of STCW § 15.1105 Familiarization and basic safety...

  2. 46 CFR 15.1105 - Familiarization and basic safety-training.

    Code of Federal Regulations, 2011 CFR

    2011-10-01

    ... 46 Shipping 1 2011-10-01 2011-10-01 false Familiarization and basic safety-training. 15.1105 Section 15.1105 Shipping COAST GUARD, DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND SECURITY MERCHANT MARINE OFFICERS AND SEAMEN MANNING REQUIREMENTS Vessels Subject to Requirements of STCW § 15.1105 Familiarization and basic safety...

  3. 46 CFR 15.1105 - Familiarization and basic safety-training.

    Code of Federal Regulations, 2012 CFR

    2012-10-01

    ... 46 Shipping 1 2012-10-01 2012-10-01 false Familiarization and basic safety-training. 15.1105 Section 15.1105 Shipping COAST GUARD, DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND SECURITY MERCHANT MARINE OFFICERS AND SEAMEN MANNING REQUIREMENTS Vessels Subject to Requirements of STCW § 15.1105 Familiarization and basic safety...

  4. ERP correlates of attention allocation in mothers processing faces of their children

    PubMed Central

    Grasso, Damion J.; Moser, Jason S.; Dozier, Mary; Simons, Robert

    2012-01-01

    This study employed visually evoked event-related potential (ERP) methodology to examine temporal patterns of structural and higher-level face processing in birth and foster/adoptive mothers viewing pictures of their children. Fourteen birth mothers and 14 foster/adoptive mothers engaged in a computerized task in which they viewed facial pictures of their own children, and of familiar and unfamiliar children and adults. All mothers, regardless of type, showed ERP patterns suggestive of increased attention allocation to their own children’s faces compared to other child and adult faces beginning as early as 100–150 ms after stimulus onset and lasting for several hundred milliseconds. These data are in line with a parallel processing model that posits the involvement of several brain regions in simultaneously encoding the structural features of faces as well as their emotional and personal significance. Additionally, late positive ERP patterns associated with greater allocation of attention predicted mothers’ perceptions of the parent–child relationship as positive and influential to their children’s psychological development. These findings suggest the potential utility of using ERP components to index maternal processes. PMID:19428973

  5. Positive and negative emotion enhances the processing of famous faces in a semantic judgment task.

    PubMed

    Bate, Sarah; Haslam, Catherine; Hodgson, Timothy L; Jansari, Ashok; Gregory, Nicola; Kay, Janice

    2010-01-01

    Previous work has consistently reported a facilitatory influence of positive emotion in face recognition (e.g., D'Argembeau, Van der Linden, Comblain, & Etienne, 2003). However, these reports asked participants to make recognition judgments in response to faces, and it is unknown whether emotional valence may influence other stages of processing, such as at the level of semantics. Furthermore, other evidence suggests that negative rather than positive emotion facilitates higher level judgments when processing nonfacial stimuli (e.g., Mickley & Kensinger, 2008), and it is possible that negative emotion also influences latter stages of face processing. The present study addressed this issue, examining the influence of emotional valence while participants made semantic judgments in response to a set of famous faces. Eye movements were monitored while participants performed this task, and analyses revealed a reduction in information extraction for the faces of liked and disliked celebrities compared with those of emotionally neutral celebrities. Thus, in contrast to work using familiarity judgments, both positive and negative emotion facilitated processing in this semantic-based task. This pattern of findings is discussed in relation to current models of face processing. Copyright 2009 APA, all rights reserved.

  6. Proverb comprehension in youth: the role of concreteness and familiarity.

    PubMed

    Nippold, M A; Haq, F S

    1996-02-01

    This study examined factors that were posited to play an important role in the development of proverb comprehension in school-age children and adolescents, namely, the concreteness and the familiarity of the expressions. Normally achieving students enrolled in Grades 5, 8, and 11 (n = 180) were administered a written forced-choice task that contained eight instances of four different types of proverbs: concrete-familiar ("A rolling stone gathers no moss"); concrete-unfamiliar ("A caged bird longs for the clouds"); abstract-familiar ("Two wrongs don't make a right"); and abstract-unfamiliar ("Of idleness comes no goodness"). Performance on the task steadily improved as a function of increasing grade level and, as predicted, the expressions proved to be differentially challenging: Concrete proverbs were easier to understand than abstract proverbs, and familiar proverbs were easier to understand than unfamiliar proverbs. The results concerning concreteness support the "metasemantic" hypothesis, the view that comprehension develops through active analysis of the words contained in proverbs. The results concerning familiarity support the "language experience" hypothesis, the view that comprehension develops through meaningful exposure to proverbs.

  7. Neural Mechanisms of Context Effects on Face Recognition: Automatic Binding and Context Shift Decrements

    PubMed Central

    Hayes, Scott M.; Baena, Elsa; Truong, Trong-Kha; Cabeza, Roberto

    2011-01-01

    Although people do not normally try to remember associations between faces and physical contexts, these associations are established automatically, as indicated by the difficulty of recognizing familiar faces in different contexts (“butcher-on-the-bus” phenomenon). The present functional MRI (fMRI) study investigated the automatic binding of faces and scenes. In the Face-Face (F-F) condition, faces were presented alone during both encoding and retrieval, whereas in the Face/Scene-Face (FS-F) condition, they were presented overlaid on scenes during encoding but alone during retrieval (context change). Although participants were instructed to focus only on the faces during both encoding and retrieval, recognition performance was worse in the FS-F than the F-F condition (“context shift decrement”—CSD), confirming automatic face-scene binding during encoding. This binding was mediated by the hippocampus as indicated by greater subsequent memory effects (remembered > forgotten) in this region for the FS-F than the F-F condition. Scene memory was mediated by the right parahippocampal cortex, which was reactivated during successful retrieval when the faces were associated with a scene during encoding (FS-F condition). Analyses using the CSD as a regressor yielded a clear hemispheric asymmetry in medial temporal lobe activity during encoding: left hippocampal and parahippocampal activity was associated with a smaller CSD, indicating more flexible memory representations immune to context changes, whereas right hippocampal/rhinal activity was associated with a larger CSD, indicating less flexible representations sensitive to context change. Taken together, the results clarify the neural mechanisms of context effects on face recognition. PMID:19925208

  8. Face-to-face: Perceived personal relevance amplifies face processing

    PubMed Central

    Pittig, Andre; Schupp, Harald T.; Alpers, Georg W.

    2017-01-01

    Abstract The human face conveys emotional and social information, but it is not well understood how these two aspects influence face perception. In order to model a group situation, two faces displaying happy, neutral or angry expressions were presented. Importantly, faces were either facing the observer, or they were presented in profile view directed towards, or looking away from each other. In Experiment 1 (n = 64), face pairs were rated regarding perceived relevance, wish-to-interact, and displayed interactivity, as well as valence and arousal. All variables revealed main effects of facial expression (emotional > neutral), face orientation (facing observer > towards > away) and interactions showed that evaluation of emotional faces strongly varies with their orientation. Experiment 2 (n = 33) examined the temporal dynamics of perceptual-attentional processing of these face constellations with event-related potentials. Processing of emotional and neutral faces differed significantly in N170 amplitudes, early posterior negativity (EPN), and sustained positive potentials. Importantly, selective emotional face processing varied as a function of face orientation, indicating early emotion-specific (N170, EPN) and late threat-specific effects (LPP, sustained positivity). Taken together, perceived personal relevance to the observer—conveyed by facial expression and face direction—amplifies emotional face processing within triadic group situations. PMID:28158672

  9. Face-to-face: Perceived personal relevance amplifies face processing.

    PubMed

    Bublatzky, Florian; Pittig, Andre; Schupp, Harald T; Alpers, Georg W

    2017-05-01

    The human face conveys emotional and social information, but it is not well understood how these two aspects influence face perception. In order to model a group situation, two faces displaying happy, neutral or angry expressions were presented. Importantly, faces were either facing the observer, or they were presented in profile view directed towards, or looking away from each other. In Experiment 1 (n = 64), face pairs were rated regarding perceived relevance, wish-to-interact, and displayed interactivity, as well as valence and arousal. All variables revealed main effects of facial expression (emotional > neutral), face orientation (facing observer > towards > away) and interactions showed that evaluation of emotional faces strongly varies with their orientation. Experiment 2 (n = 33) examined the temporal dynamics of perceptual-attentional processing of these face constellations with event-related potentials. Processing of emotional and neutral faces differed significantly in N170 amplitudes, early posterior negativity (EPN), and sustained positive potentials. Importantly, selective emotional face processing varied as a function of face orientation, indicating early emotion-specific (N170, EPN) and late threat-specific effects (LPP, sustained positivity). Taken together, perceived personal relevance to the observer-conveyed by facial expression and face direction-amplifies emotional face processing within triadic group situations. © The Author (2017). Published by Oxford University Press.

  10. Face recognition in age related macular degeneration: perceived disability, measured disability, and performance with a bioptic device

    PubMed Central

    Tejeria, L; Harper, R A; Artes, P H; Dickinson, C M

    2002-01-01

    Aims: (1) To explore the relation between performance on tasks of familiar face recognition (FFR) and face expression difference discrimination (FED) with both perceived disability in face recognition and clinical measures of visual function in subjects with age related macular degeneration (AMD). (2) To quantify the gain in performance for face recognition tasks when subjects use a bioptic telescopic low vision device. Methods: 30 subjects with AMD (age range 66–90 years; visual acuity 0.4–1.4 logMAR) were recruited for the study. Perceived (self rated) disability in face recognition was assessed by an eight item questionnaire covering a range of issues relating to face recognition. Visual functions measured were distance visual acuity (ETDRS logMAR charts), continuous text reading acuity (MNRead charts), contrast sensitivity (Pelli-Robson chart), and colour vision (large panel D-15). In the FFR task, images of famous people had to be identified. FED was assessed by a forced choice test where subjects had to decide which one of four images showed a different facial expression. These tasks were repeated with subjects using a bioptic device. Results: Overall perceived disability in face recognition did not correlate with performance on either task, although a specific item on difficulty recognising familiar faces did correlate with FFR (r = 0.49, p<0.05). FFR performance was most closely related to distance acuity (r = −0.69, p<0.001), while FED performance was most closely related to continuous text reading acuity (r = −0.79, p<0.001). In multiple regression, neither contrast sensitivity nor colour vision significantly increased the explained variance. When using a bioptic telescope, FFR performance improved in 86% of subjects (median gain = 49%; p<0.001), while FED performance increased in 79% of subjects (median gain = 50%; p<0.01). Conclusion: Distance and reading visual acuity are closely associated with measured task performance in FFR and FED. A

  11. Recollective experience in odor recognition: influences of adult age and familiarity.

    PubMed

    Larsson, Maria; Oberg, Christina; Bäckman, Lars

    2006-01-01

    We examined recollective experience in odor memory as a function of age, intention to learn, and familiarity. Young and older adults studied a set of familiar and unfamiliar odors with incidental or intentional encoding instructions. At recognition, participants indicated whether their response was based on explicit recollection (remembering), a feeling of familiarity (knowing), or guessing. The results indicated no age-related differences in the distribution of experiential responses for unfamiliar odors. By contrast, for familiar odors the young demonstrated more explicit recollection than the older adults, who produced more "know" and "guess" responses. Intention to learn was unrelated to recollective experience. In addition, the observed age differences in "remember" responses for familiar odors were eliminated when odor naming was statistically controlled. This suggests that age-related deficits in activating specific odor knowledge (i.e., odor names) play an important role for age differences in recollective experience of olfactory information.

  12. Effects of Individual Health Topic Familiarity on Activity Patterns During Health Information Searches

    PubMed Central

    Moriyama, Koichi; Fukui, Ken–ichi; Numao, Masayuki

    2015-01-01

    Background Non-medical professionals (consumers) are increasingly using the Internet to support their health information needs. However, the cognitive effort required to perform health information searches is affected by the consumer’s familiarity with health topics. Consumers may have different levels of familiarity with individual health topics. This variation in familiarity may cause misunderstandings because the information presented by search engines may not be understood correctly by the consumers. Objective As a first step toward the improvement of the health information search process, we aimed to examine the effects of health topic familiarity on health information search behaviors by identifying the common search activity patterns exhibited by groups of consumers with different levels of familiarity. Methods Each participant completed a health terminology familiarity questionnaire and health information search tasks. The responses to the familiarity questionnaire were used to grade the familiarity of participants with predefined health topics. The search task data were transcribed into a sequence of search activities using a coding scheme. A computational model was constructed from the sequence data using a Markov chain model to identify the common search patterns in each familiarity group. Results Forty participants were classified into L1 (not familiar), L2 (somewhat familiar), and L3 (familiar) groups based on their questionnaire responses. They had different levels of familiarity with four health topics. The video data obtained from all of the participants were transcribed into 4595 search activities (mean 28.7, SD 23.27 per session). The most frequent search activities and transitions in all the familiarity groups were related to evaluations of the relevancy of selected web pages in the retrieval results. However, the next most frequent transitions differed in each group and a chi-squared test confirmed this finding (P<.001). Next, according to the

  13. Visual scanning behavior is related to recognition performance for own- and other-age faces

    PubMed Central

    Proietti, Valentina; Macchi Cassia, Viola; dell’Amore, Francesca; Conte, Stefania; Bricolo, Emanuela

    2015-01-01

    It is well-established that our recognition ability is enhanced for faces belonging to familiar categories, such as own-race faces and own-age faces. Recent evidence suggests that, for race, the recognition bias is also accompanied by different visual scanning strategies for own- compared to other-race faces. Here, we tested the hypothesis that these differences in visual scanning patterns extend also to the comparison between own and other-age faces and contribute to the own-age recognition advantage. Participants (young adults with limited experience with infants) were tested in an old/new recognition memory task where they encoded and subsequently recognized a series of adult and infant faces while their eye movements were recorded. Consistent with findings on the other-race bias, we found evidence of an own-age bias in recognition which was accompanied by differential scanning patterns, and consequently differential encoding strategies, for own-compared to other-age faces. Gaze patterns for own-age faces involved a more dynamic sampling of the internal features and longer viewing time on the eye region compared to the other regions of the face. This latter strategy was extensively employed during learning (vs. recognition) and was positively correlated to discriminability. These results suggest that deeply encoding the eye region is functional for recognition and that the own-age bias is evident not only in differential recognition performance, but also in the employment of different sampling strategies found to be effective for accurate recognition. PMID:26579056

  14. Recollection and familiarity in amnesic mild cognitive impairment.

    PubMed

    Serra, Laura; Bozzali, Marco; Cercignani, Mara; Perri, Roberta; Fadda, Lucia; Caltagirone, Carlo; Carlesimo, Giovanni A

    2010-05-01

    To investigate whether, in patients with amnesic mild cognitive impairment (a-MCI), recognition deficits are mainly due to a selective impairment of recollection rather than familiarity. Nineteen patients with a-MCI and 23 sex-, age-, and education-matched healthy controls underwent two experimental investigations, using the Process Dissociation Procedure (PDP) and the Remember/Know (R/K) procedure, to assess the differential contribution of recollection and familiarity to their recognition performance. Both experimental procedures revealed a selective preservation of familiarity in a-MCI patients. Moreover, the R/K procedure showed a statistically significant impairment of recollection in a-MCI patients for words that were either read or anagrammed during the study phase. A-MCI is known to be commonly associated with a high risk of conversion to Alzheimer's disease (AD). Several previous studies have demonstrated a characteristic impairment of episodic memory in a-MCI, with an early dysfunction of recognition. Our findings are consistent with the knowledge of neurodegeneration occurring in AD, which is characterized, at the earliest disease stages, by a selective involvement of the entorhinal cortex. Moreover, the current study supports the dual process model of recognition, which hypothesizes recollection and familiarity to be independent processes associated with distinct anatomical substrates.

  15. Unconstrained face detection and recognition based on RGB-D camera for the visually impaired

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Zhao, Xiangdong; Wang, Kaiwei; Yang, Kailun; Hu, Weijian

    2017-02-01

    It is highly important for visually impaired people (VIP) to be aware of human beings around themselves, so correctly recognizing people in VIP assisting apparatus provide great convenience. However, in classical face recognition technology, faces used in training and prediction procedures are usually frontal, and the procedures of acquiring face images require subjects to get close to the camera so that frontal face and illumination guaranteed. Meanwhile, labels of faces are defined manually rather than automatically. Most of the time, labels belonging to different classes need to be input one by one. It prevents assisting application for VIP with these constraints in practice. In this article, a face recognition system under unconstrained environment is proposed. Specifically, it doesn't require frontal pose or uniform illumination as required by previous algorithms. The attributes of this work lie in three aspects. First, a real time frontal-face synthesizing enhancement is implemented, and frontal faces help to increase recognition rate, which is proved with experiment results. Secondly, RGB-D camera plays a significant role in our system, from which both color and depth information are utilized to achieve real time face tracking which not only raises the detection rate but also gives an access to label faces automatically. Finally, we propose to use neural networks to train a face recognition system, and Principal Component Analysis (PCA) is applied to pre-refine the input data. This system is expected to provide convenient help for VIP to get familiar with others, and make an access for them to recognize people when the system is trained enough.

  16. Rapid Categorization of Human and Ape Faces in 9-Month-Old Infants Revealed by Fast Periodic Visual Stimulation.

    PubMed

    Peykarjou, Stefanie; Hoehl, Stefanie; Pauen, Sabina; Rossion, Bruno

    2017-10-02

    This study investigates categorization of human and ape faces in 9-month-olds using a Fast Periodic Visual Stimulation (FPVS) paradigm while measuring EEG. Categorization responses are elicited only if infants discriminate between different categories and generalize across exemplars within each category. In study 1, human or ape faces were presented as standard and deviant stimuli in upright and inverted trials. Upright ape faces presented among humans elicited strong categorization responses, whereas responses for upright human faces and for inverted ape faces were smaller. Deviant inverted human faces did not elicit categorization. Data were best explained by a model with main effects of species and orientation. However, variance of low-level image characteristics was higher for the ape than the human category. Variance was matched to replicate this finding in an independent sample (study 2). Both human and ape faces elicited categorization in upright and inverted conditions, but upright ape faces elicited the strongest responses. Again, data were best explained by a model of two main effects. These experiments demonstrate that 9-month-olds rapidly categorize faces, and unfamiliar faces presented among human faces elicit increased categorization responses. This likely reflects habituation for the familiar standard category, and stronger release for the unfamiliar category deviants.

  17. Episodic and Semantic Memory Contribute to Familiar and Novel Episodic Future Thinking.

    PubMed

    Wang, Tong; Yue, Tong; Huang, Xi Ting

    2016-01-01

    Increasing evidence indicates that episodic future thinking (EFT) relies on both episodic and semantic memory; however, event familiarity may importantly affect the extent to which episodic and semantic memory contribute to EFT. To test this possibility, two behavioral experiments were conducted. In Experiment 1, we directly compared the proportion of episodic and semantic memory used in an EFT task. The results indicated that more episodic memory was used when imagining familiar future events compared with novel future events. Conversely, significantly more semantic memory was used when imagining novel events compared with familiar events. Experiment 2 aimed to verify the results of Experiment 1. In Experiment 2, we found that familiarity moderated the effect of priming the episodic memory system on EFT; particularly, it increased the time required to construct a standard familiar episodic future event, but did not significantly affect novel episodic event reaction time. Collectively, these findings support the hypothesis that event familiarity importantly moderates episodic and semantic memory's contribution to EFT.

  18. Viewing loved faces inhibits defense reactions: a health-promotion mechanism?

    PubMed

    Guerra, Pedro; Sánchez-Adam, Alicia; Anllo-Vento, Lourdes; Ramírez, Isabel; Vila, Jaime

    2012-01-01

    We have known for decades that social support is associated with positive health outcomes. And yet, the neurophysiological mechanisms underlying this association remain poorly understood. The link between social support and positive health outcomes is likely to depend on the neurophysiological regulatory mechanisms underlying reward and defensive reactions. The present study examines the hypothesis that emotional social support (love) provides safety cues that activate the appetitive reward system and simultaneously inhibit defense reactions. Using the startle probe paradigm, 54 undergraduate students (24 men) viewed black and white photographs of loved (romantic partner, father, mother, and best friend), neutral (unknown), and unpleasant (mutilated) faces. Eye-blink startle, zygomatic major activity, heart rate, and skin conductance responses to the faces, together with subjective ratings of valence, arousal, and dominance, were obtained. Viewing loved faces induced a marked inhibition of the eye-blink startle response accompanied by a pattern of zygomatic, heart rate, skin conductance, and subjective changes indicative of an intense positive emotional response. Effects were similar for men and women, but the startle inhibition and the zygomatic response were larger in female participants. A comparison between the faces of the romantic partner and the parent who shares the partner's gender further suggests that this effect is not attributable to familiarity or arousal. We conclude that this inhibitory capacity may contribute to the health benefits associated with social support.

  19. The effects of advertisement location and familiarity on selective attention.

    PubMed

    Jessen, Tanja Lund; Rodway, Paul

    2010-06-01

    This study comprised two experiments to examine the distracting effects of advertisement familiarity, location, and onset on the performance of a selective attention task. In Exp. 1, familiar advertisements presented in peripheral vision disrupted selective attention when the attention task was more demanding, suggesting that the distracting effect of advertisements is a product of task demands and advertisement familiarity and location. In Exp. 2, the onset of the advertisement shortly before, or after, the attention task captured attention and disrupted attentional performance. The onset of the advertisement before the attention task reduced target response time without an increase in errors and therefore facilitated performance. Despite being instructed to ignore the advertisements, the participants were able to recall a substantial proportion of the familiar advertisements. Implications for the presentation of advertisements during human-computer interaction were discussed.

  20. Perceived depth between familiar objects.

    DOT National Transportation Integrated Search

    1967-08-01

    In aviation, size cues are frequently used in a pilot's evaluation of depth or distance. In the study, the hypothesis was examined that the essential factor in the size cue to depth from familiar objects is the perceived size S' per unit of retinal s...

  1. Functional Connectivity between Face-Movement and Speech-Intelligibility Areas during Auditory-Only Speech Perception

    PubMed Central

    Schall, Sonja; von Kriegstein, Katharina

    2014-01-01

    It has been proposed that internal simulation of the talking face of visually-known speakers facilitates auditory speech recognition. One prediction of this view is that brain areas involved in auditory-only speech comprehension interact with visual face-movement sensitive areas, even under auditory-only listening conditions. Here, we test this hypothesis using connectivity analyses of functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) data. Participants (17 normal participants, 17 developmental prosopagnosics) first learned six speakers via brief voice-face or voice-occupation training (<2 min/speaker). This was followed by an auditory-only speech recognition task and a control task (voice recognition) involving the learned speakers’ voices in the MRI scanner. As hypothesized, we found that, during speech recognition, familiarity with the speaker’s face increased the functional connectivity between the face-movement sensitive posterior superior temporal sulcus (STS) and an anterior STS region that supports auditory speech intelligibility. There was no difference between normal participants and prosopagnosics. This was expected because previous findings have shown that both groups use the face-movement sensitive STS to optimize auditory-only speech comprehension. Overall, the present findings indicate that learned visual information is integrated into the analysis of auditory-only speech and that this integration results from the interaction of task-relevant face-movement and auditory speech-sensitive areas. PMID:24466026

  2. The Role of the Medial Prefrontal Cortex in Regulating Social Familiarity-Induced Anxiolysis

    PubMed Central

    Lungwitz, Elizabeth A; Stuber, Garret D; Johnson, Philip L; Dietrich, Amy D; Schartz, Nicole; Hanrahan, Brian; Shekhar, Anantha; Truitt, William A

    2014-01-01

    Overcoming specific fears and subsequent anxiety can be greatly enhanced by the presence of familiar social partners, but the neural circuitry that controls this phenomenon remains unclear. To overcome this, the social interaction (SI) habituation test was developed in this lab to systematically investigate the effects of social familiarity on anxiety-like behavior in rats. Here, we show that social familiarity selectively reduced anxiety-like behaviors induced by an ethological anxiogenic stimulus. The anxiolytic effect of social familiarity could be elicited over multiple training sessions and was specific to both the presence of the anxiogenic stimulus and the familiar social partner. In addition, socially familiar conspecifics served as a safety signal, as anxiety-like responses returned in the absence of the familiar partner. The expression of the social familiarity-induced anxiolysis (SFiA) appears dependent on the prefrontal cortex (PFC), an area associated with cortical regulation of fear and anxiety behaviors. Inhibition of the PFC, with bilateral injections of the GABAA agonist muscimol, selectively blocked the expression of SFiA while having no effect on SI with a novel partner. Finally, the effect of D-cycloserine, a cognitive enhancer that clinically enhances behavioral treatments for anxiety, was investigated with SFiA. D-cycloserine, when paired with familiarity training sessions, selectively enhanced the rate at which SFiA was acquired. Collectively, these outcomes suggest that the PFC has a pivotal role in SFiA, a complex behavior involving the integration of social cues of familiarity with contextual and emotional information to regulate anxiety-like behavior. PMID:24157502

  3. Face Preferences for Infant- and Adult-Directed Speakers in Infants of Depressed and Nondepressed Mothers: Association with Infant Cognitive Development.

    PubMed

    Kaplan, Peter S; Asherin, Ryan M; Vogeli, Jo M; Fekri, Shiva M; Scheyer, Kathryn E; Everhart, Kevin D

    2018-01-01

    Face preferences for speakers of infant-directed and adult-directed speech (IDS and ADS) were investigated in 4- to 13.5-month-old infants of depressed and non-depressed mothers. Following 1-min of exposure to an ID or AD speaker (order counterbalanced), infants had an immediate paired-comparison test with a still, silent image of the familiarized versus a novel face. In the test phase, ID face preference ratios were significantly lower in infants of depressed than non-depressed mothers. Infants' ID face preference ratios, but not AD face preference ratios, correlated with their percentile scores on the cognitive ( Cog ) scale of the Bayley Scales of Infant & Toddler Development (3 rd Edition; BSID III), assessed concurrently. Regression analyses revealed that infant ID face preferences significantly predicted infant Cog percentiles even after demographic risk factors and maternal depression had been controlled. Infants may use IDS to select social partners who are likely to support and facilitate cognitive development.

  4. Familiar-Strange: Teaching the Scripture as John Would Teach

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Ha, Tung-Chiew

    2014-01-01

    The Gospel of John teaches through telling the story of Jesus in light of the familiar Hebrew faith stories. It is an interpretive task that presents Jesus to his audience and teaches them adequate faith. John the Teacher skillfully uses narrative skills to create the familiar-strange effect in his storytelling. Each story is followed by a…

  5. Prior Familiarization With Takeover Requests Affects Drivers' Takeover Performance and Automation Trust.

    PubMed

    Hergeth, Sebastian; Lorenz, Lutz; Krems, Josef F

    2017-05-01

    The objective for this study was to investigate the effects of prior familiarization with takeover requests (TORs) during conditional automated driving on drivers' initial takeover performance and automation trust. System-initiated TORs are one of the biggest concerns for conditional automated driving and have been studied extensively in the past. Most, but not all, of these studies have included training sessions to familiarize participants with TORs. This makes them hard to compare and might obscure first-failure-like effects on takeover performance and automation trust formation. A driving simulator study compared drivers' takeover performance in two takeover situations across four prior familiarization groups (no familiarization, description, experience, description and experience) and automation trust before and after experiencing the system. As hypothesized, prior familiarization with TORs had a more positive effect on takeover performance in the first than in a subsequent takeover situation. In all groups, automation trust increased after participants experienced the system. Participants who were given no prior familiarization with TORs reported highest automation trust both before and after experiencing the system. The current results extend earlier findings suggesting that prior familiarization with TORs during conditional automated driving will be most relevant for takeover performance in the first takeover situation and that it lowers drivers' automation trust. Potential applications of this research include different approaches to familiarize users with automated driving systems, better integration of earlier findings, and sophistication of experimental designs.

  6. Recollection and familiarity make independent contributions to memory judgments.

    PubMed

    Evans, Lisa H; Wilding, Edward L

    2012-05-23

    Recognition memory can be supported by the processes of recollection and familiarity. Recollection is recovery of qualitative information about a prior event. Familiarity is a scalar strength signal that permits judgments of prior occurrence. There is vigorous debate about how these processes are conceptualized, how they contribute to memory judgments, and which brain regions support them. One popular method for investigating these questions is the Remember/Know procedure, where subjects give a Remember response to studied stimuli for which they can recover contextual details of the study encounter, and a Know response when details are not recovered but subjects nevertheless believe that a stimulus was studied. According to one model, Remember responses are strong memories that are typically associated with relatively high levels of recollection and familiarity. Know responses are weaker memories and are typically associated with lower levels of both processes. Data inconsistent with this account were obtained in this experiment, where magnetoencephalographic (MEG) measures of neural activity were acquired in the test phase of a verbal memory task where healthy human volunteers made Remember, Know, or New judgments to studied and unstudied words. An MEG index of the process of recollection was larger for Remember than Know judgments, whereas the reverse was true for a MEG index of familiarity. Critically, this result is predicted by a model where recollection and familiarity make independent contributions to Remember and Know judgments, and provides a powerful constraint when mapping memory processes onto their neural substrates.

  7. Knowledge supports memory retrieval through familiarity, not recollection.

    PubMed

    Wang, Wei-Chun; Brashier, Nadia M; Wing, Erik A; Marsh, Elizabeth J; Cabeza, Roberto

    2018-05-01

    Semantic memory, or general knowledge of the world, guides learning and supports the formation and retrieval of new episodic memories. Behavioral evidence suggests that this knowledge effect is supported by recollection-a more controlled form of memory retrieval generally accompanied by contextual details-to a greater degree than familiarity-a more automatic form of memory retrieval generally absent of contextual details. In the current study, we used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to investigate the role that regions associated with recollection and familiarity play in retrieving recent instances of known (e.g., The Summer Olympic Games are held four years apart) and unknown (e.g., A flaky deposit found in port bottles is beeswing) statements. Our results revealed a surprising pattern: Episodic retrieval of known statements recruited regions associated with familiarity, but not recollection. Instead, retrieval of unknown statements recruited regions associated with recollection. These data, in combination with quicker reaction times for the retrieval of known than unknown statements, suggest that known statements can be successfully retrieved on the basis of familiarity, whereas unknown statements were retrieved on the basis of recollection. Our results provide insight into how knowledge influences episodic retrieval and demonstrate the role of neuroimaging in providing insights into cognitive processes in the absence of explicit behavioral responses. Copyright © 2018 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

  8. The Price of Fame: The Impact of Stimulus Familiarity on Proactive Interference Resolution

    PubMed Central

    Prabhakaran, Ranjani; Thompson-Schill, Sharon L.

    2013-01-01

    Interference from previously learned information, known as proactive interference (PI), limits our memory retrieval abilities. Previous studies of PI resolution have focused on the role of short-term familiarity, or recency, in causing PI. In the present study, we investigated the impact of long-term stimulus familiarity on PI resolution processes. In two behavioral experiments and one event-related fMRI experiment, long-term familiarity was manipulated through the use of famous and nonfamous stimuli, and short-term familiarity was manipulated through the use of recent and nonrecent probe items in an item recognition task. The right middle frontal gyrus demonstrated greater sensitivity to famous stimuli, suggesting that long-term stimulus familiarity plays a role in influencing PI resolution processes. Further examination of the effect of long-term stimulus familiarity on PI resolution revealed a larger behavioral interference effect for famous stimuli, but only under speeded response conditions. Thus, models of memory retrieval—and of the cognitive control mechanisms that guide retrieval processes—should consider the impact of and interactions among sources of familiarity on multiple time scales. PMID:20429858

  9. The price of fame: the impact of stimulus familiarity on proactive interference resolution.

    PubMed

    Prabhakaran, Ranjani; Thompson-Schill, Sharon L

    2011-04-01

    Interference from previously learned information, known as proactive interference (PI), limits our memory retrieval abilities. Previous studies of PI resolution have focused on the role of short-term familiarity, or recency, in causing PI. In the present study, we investigated the impact of long-term stimulus familiarity on PI resolution processes. In two behavioral experiments and one event-related fMRI experiment, long-term familiarity was manipulated through the use of famous and nonfamous stimuli, and short-term familiarity was manipulated through the use of recent and nonrecent probe items in an item recognition task. The right middle frontal gyrus demonstrated greater sensitivity to famous stimuli, suggesting that long-term stimulus familiarity plays a role in influencing PI resolution processes. Further examination of the effect of long-term stimulus familiarity on PI resolution revealed a larger behavioral interference effect for famous stimuli, but only under speeded response conditions. Thus, models of memory retrieval--and of the cognitive control mechanisms that guide retrieval processes--should consider the impact of and interactions among sources of familiarity on multiple time scales.

  10. Familiarity for Associations? A Test of the Domain Dichotomy Theory

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Harlow, Iain M.; Mackenzie, Graham; Donaldson, David I.

    2010-01-01

    Episodic recognition memory is mediated by functionally separable retrieval processes, notably familiarity (a general sense of prior exposure) and recollection (the retrieval of contextual details), whose relative engagement depends partly on the nature of the information being retrieved. Currently, the specific contribution of familiarity to…

  11. Cognitive specialization for learning faces is associated with shifts in the brain transcriptome of a social wasp.

    PubMed

    Berens, Ali J; Tibbetts, Elizabeth A; Toth, Amy L

    2017-06-15

    The specialized ability to learn and recall individuals based on distinct facial features is known in only a few, large-brained social taxa. Social paper wasps in the genus Polistes are the only insects known to possess this form of cognitive specialization. We analyzed genome-wide brain gene expression during facial and pattern training for two species of paper wasps ( P. fuscatus , which has face recognition, and P. metricus , which does not) using RNA sequencing. We identified 237 transcripts associated with face specialization in P. fuscatus , including some transcripts involved in neuronal signaling (serotonin receptor and tachykinin). Polistes metricus that learned faces (without specialized learning) and P. fuscatus in social interactions with familiar partners (from a previous study) showed distinct sets of brain differentially expressed transcripts. These data suggest face specialization in P. fuscatus is related to shifts in the brain transcriptome associated with genes distinct from those related to general visual learning and social interactions. © 2017. Published by The Company of Biologists Ltd.

  12. Development and face validity of a cerebral visual impairment motor questionnaire for children with cerebral palsy.

    PubMed

    Salavati, M; Waninge, A; Rameckers, E A A; van der Steen, J; Krijnen, W P; van der Schans, C P; Steenbergen, B

    2017-01-01

    The objectives of this study were (i) to develop two cerebral visual impairment motor questionnaires (CVI-MQ's) for children with cerebral palsy (CP): one for children with Gross Motor Function Classification System (GMFCS) levels I, II and III and one for children with GMFCS levels IV and V; (ii) to describe their face validity and usability; and (iii) to determine their sensitivity and specificity. The initial versions of the two CVI-MQ's were developed based on literature. Subsequently, the Delphi method was used in two groups of experts, one familiar with CVI and one not familiar with CVI, in order to gain consensus about face validity and usability. The sensitivity and specificity of the CVI-MQ's were subsequently assessed in 82 children with CP with (n = 39) and without CVI (n = 43). With the receiver operating curve the cut-off scores were determined to detect possible presence or absence of CVI in children with CP. Both questionnaires showed very good face validity (percentage agreement above 96%) and good usability (percentage agreement 95%) for practical use. The CVI-MQ version for GMFCS levels I, II and III had a sensitivity of 1.00 and specificity of 0.96, with a cut-off score of 12 points or higher, and the version for GMFCS levels IV and V had a sensitivity of 0.97 and a specificity of 0.98, with a cut-off score of eight points or higher. The CVI-MQ is able to identify at-risk children with CP for the probability of having CVI. © 2016 John Wiley & Sons Ltd.

  13. Expertise for upright faces improves the precision but not the capacity of visual working memory.

    PubMed

    Lorenc, Elizabeth S; Pratte, Michael S; Angeloni, Christopher F; Tong, Frank

    2014-10-01

    Considerable research has focused on how basic visual features are maintained in working memory, but little is currently known about the precision or capacity of visual working memory for complex objects. How precisely can an object be remembered, and to what extent might familiarity or perceptual expertise contribute to working memory performance? To address these questions, we developed a set of computer-generated face stimuli that varied continuously along the dimensions of age and gender, and we probed participants' memories using a method-of-adjustment reporting procedure. This paradigm allowed us to separately estimate the precision and capacity of working memory for individual faces, on the basis of the assumptions of a discrete capacity model, and to assess the impact of face inversion on memory performance. We found that observers could maintain up to four to five items on average, with equally good memory capacity for upright and upside-down faces. In contrast, memory precision was significantly impaired by face inversion at every set size tested. Our results demonstrate that the precision of visual working memory for a complex stimulus is not strictly fixed but, instead, can be modified by learning and experience. We find that perceptual expertise for upright faces leads to significant improvements in visual precision, without modifying the capacity of working memory.

  14. Familiarity breeds dissent: Reliability analyses for British-English idioms on measures of familiarity, meaning, literality, and decomposability.

    PubMed

    Nordmann, Emily; Cleland, Alexandra A; Bull, Rebecca

    2014-06-01

    To date, there have been several attempts made to build a database of normative data for English idiomatic expressions (e.g., Libben & Titone, 2008; Titone & Connine, 1994), however, there has been some discussion in the literature as to the validity and reliability of the data obtained, particularly for decomposability ratings. Our work aimed to address these issues by looking at ratings from native and non-native speakers and to extend the deeper investigation and analysis of decomposability to other aspects of idiomatic expressions, namely familiarly, meaning and literality. Poor reliability was observed on all types of ratings, suggesting that rather than decomposability being a special case, individual variability plays a large role in how participants rate idiomatic phrases in general. Ratings from native and non-native speakers were positively correlated and an analysis of covariance found that once familiarity with an idiom was accounted for, most of the differences between native and non-native ratings were not significant. Overall, the results suggest that individual experience with idioms plays an important role in how they are perceived and this should be taken into account when selecting stimuli for experimental studies. Furthermore, the results are suggestive of the inability of speakers to inhibit the figurative meanings for idioms that they are highly familiar with. Copyright © 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

  15. Elementary School Teachers' Familiarity, Conceptual Knowledge, and Interest in Light

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Mumba, Frackson; Mbewe, Simon; Chabalengula, Vivien M.

    2015-01-01

    This study explored elementary school teachers' familiarity, conceptual knowledge, and interest in learning more about light and its related concepts. This study also sought to establish the relationship between elementary school teachers' familiarity, conceptual knowledge, and interest in learning light concepts. Sixty-six lower and upper…

  16. An overall decline both in recollection and familiarity in healthy aging.

    PubMed

    Pitarque, Alfonso; Sales, Alicia; Meléndez, Juan C; Mayordomo, Teresa; Satorres, Encar

    2015-01-01

    In the area of recognition memory, the experimental data have been inconsistent about whether or not familiarity declines in healthy aging. A recent meta-analysis concluded that familiarity is impaired when estimated with the remember-know procedure, but not with the process-dissociation procedure. We present an associative recognition experiment with remember-know judgments that allow us to estimate both recollection and familiarity using both procedures in the same task and with the same participants (a sample of healthy older people and another sample of young people). Moreover, we performed a within-subjects manipulation of the type of materials (pairs of words or pairs of pictures), and the repetition or not of the pairs during the study phase. The results show that familiarity, estimated using both estimation procedures, declines significantly with age, although the effect size obtained with the process-dissociation procedure is significantly smaller than the one obtained with the remember-know procedure. Our results show that aging is associated with significant decreases both in recollection and, to a lesser extent, familiarity.

  17. LAFD: TA-55 General Facility Familiarization Tour, Course #55261

    DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

    Rutherford, Victor Stephen; Miller, Joshua; Mason, Robert Clifford

    Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) will conduct familiarization tours for personnel of the Los Alamos County Fire Department (LAFD) at the TA-55 General Facility. These familiarization tours are official LANL business; the purpose of these tours is to orient LAFD firefighters to the facility so that they can respond efficiently and quickly to a variety of emergency situations. This orientation includes, among other topics, ingress and egress of the area and buildings, layout and organization of the facility, evacuation procedures and assembly points, and areas of concern within the various buildings at the facility. LAFD firefighters have the skills andmore » abilities to perform firefighting operations and other emergency response tasks that cannot be provided by LANL personnel who have the required clearance level. This handout provides details of the information, along with maps and diagrams, to be presented during the familiarization tours. The handout will be distributed to the trainees at the time of the tour. A corresponding checklist will also be used as guidance during the familiarization tours to ensure that all required information is presented to LAFD personnel.« less

  18. Familiarity and Recollection in Heuristic Decision Making

    PubMed Central

    Schwikert, Shane R.; Curran, Tim

    2014-01-01

    Heuristics involve the ability to utilize memory to make quick judgments by exploiting fundamental cognitive abilities. In the current study we investigated the memory processes that contribute to the recognition heuristic and the fluency heuristic, which are both presumed to capitalize on the by-products of memory to make quick decisions. In Experiment 1, we used a city-size comparison task while recording event-related potentials (ERPs) to investigate the potential contributions of familiarity and recollection to the two heuristics. ERPs were markedly different for recognition heuristic-based decisions and fluency heuristic-based decisions, suggesting a role for familiarity in the recognition heuristic and recollection in the fluency heuristic. In Experiment 2, we coupled the same city-size comparison task with measures of subjective pre-experimental memory for each stimulus in the task. Although previous literature suggests the fluency heuristic relies on recognition speed alone, our results suggest differential contributions of recognition speed and recollected knowledge to these decisions, whereas the recognition heuristic relies on familiarity. Based on these results, we created a new theoretical frame work that explains decisions attributed to both heuristics based on the underlying memory associated with the choice options. PMID:25347534

  19. Frontotemporal Dementia Selectively Impairs Transitive Reasoning About Familiar Spatial Environments

    PubMed Central

    Vartanian, Oshin; Goel, Vinod; Tierney, Michael; Huey, Edward D.; Grafman, Jordan

    2010-01-01

    Although patients with frontotemporal dementia (FTD) are known to exhibit a wide range of cognitive and personality difficulties, some evidence suggests that there may be a degree of selectivity in their reasoning impairments. Based on a recent review of the neuroimaging literature on reasoning, the authors hypothesized that the presence or absence of familiar content may have a selective impact on the reasoning abilities of patients with FTD. Specifically, the authors predicted that patients with frontalvariant FTD would be more impaired when reasoning about transitive arguments involving familiar spatial environments than when reasoning about identical logical arguments involving unfamiliar spatial environments. As predicted, patients with FTD were less accurate than normal controls only when the content of arguments involved familiar spatial environments. These results indicate a degree of selectivity in the cognitive deficits of this patient population and suggest that the frontal-temporal lobe system may play a necessary role in reasoning about familiar material. PMID:19702415

  20. Social learning in nest-building birds: a role for familiarity.

    PubMed

    Guillette, Lauren M; Scott, Alice C Y; Healy, Susan D

    2016-03-30

    It is becoming apparent that birds learn from their own experiences of nest building. What is not clear is whether birds can learn from watching conspecifics build. As social learning allows an animal to gain information without engaging in costly trial-and-error learning, first-time builders should exploit the successful habits of experienced builders. We presented first-time nest-building male zebra finches with either a familiar or an unfamiliar conspecific male building with material of a colour the observer did not like. When given the opportunity to build, males that had watched a familiar male build switched their material preference to that used by the familiar male. Males that observed unfamiliar birds did not. Thus, first-time nest builders use social information and copy the nest material choices when demonstrators are familiar but not when they are strangers. The relationships between individuals therefore influence how nest-building expertise is socially transmitted in zebra finches. © 2016 The Author(s).

  1. Social learning in nest-building birds: a role for familiarity

    PubMed Central

    Guillette, Lauren M.; Scott, Alice C. Y.; Healy, Susan D.

    2016-01-01

    It is becoming apparent that birds learn from their own experiences of nest building. What is not clear is whether birds can learn from watching conspecifics build. As social learning allows an animal to gain information without engaging in costly trial-and-error learning, first-time builders should exploit the successful habits of experienced builders. We presented first-time nest-building male zebra finches with either a familiar or an unfamiliar conspecific male building with material of a colour the observer did not like. When given the opportunity to build, males that had watched a familiar male build switched their material preference to that used by the familiar male. Males that observed unfamiliar birds did not. Thus, first-time nest builders use social information and copy the nest material choices when demonstrators are familiar but not when they are strangers. The relationships between individuals therefore influence how nest-building expertise is socially transmitted in zebra finches. PMID:27009230

  2. Scent of the familiar: an fMRI study of canine brain responses to familiar and unfamiliar human and dog odors.

    PubMed

    Berns, Gregory S; Brooks, Andrew M; Spivak, Mark

    2015-01-01

    Understanding dogs' perceptual experience of both conspecifics and humans is important to understand how dogs evolved and the nature of their relationships with humans and other dogs. Olfaction is believed to be dogs' most powerful and perhaps important sense and an obvious place to begin for the study of social cognition of conspecifics and humans. We used fMRI in a cohort of dogs (N=12) that had been trained to remain motionless while unsedated and unrestrained in the MRI. By presenting scents from humans and conspecifics, we aimed to identify the dimensions of dogs' responses to salient biological odors - whether they are based on species (dog or human), familiarity, or a specific combination of factors. We focused our analysis on the dog's caudate nucleus because of its well-known association with positive expectations and because of its clearly defined anatomical location. We hypothesized that if dogs' primary association to reward, whether it is based on food or social bonds, is to humans, then the human scents would activate the caudate more than the conspecific scents. Conversely, if the smell of conspecifics activated the caudate more than the smell of humans, dogs' association to reward would be stronger to their fellow canines. Five scents were presented (self, familiar human, strange human, familiar dog, strange dog). While the olfactory bulb/peduncle was activated to a similar degree by all the scents, the caudate was activated maximally to the familiar human. Importantly, the scent of the familiar human was not the handler, meaning that the caudate response differentiated the scent in the absence of the person being present. The caudate activation suggested that not only did the dogs discriminate that scent from the others, they had a positive association with it. This speaks to the power of the dog's sense of smell, and it provides important clues about the importance of humans in dogs' lives. This article is part of a Special Issue entitled: Canine

  3. Differential Attention to Faces in Infant Siblings of Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder and Associations with Later Social and Language Ability

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Wagner, Jennifer; Luyster, Rhiannon J.; Moustapha, Hana; Tager-Flusberg, Helen; Nelson, Charles Alexander

    2018-01-01

    A growing body of literature has begun to explore social attention in infant siblings of children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) with hopes of identifying early differences that are associated with later ASD or other aspects of development. The present study used eye-tracking to familiar (mother) and unfamiliar (stranger) faces in two groups…

  4. Word learning in adults with second-language experience: effects of phonological and referent familiarity.

    PubMed

    Kaushanskaya, Margarita; Yoo, Jeewon; Van Hecke, Stephanie

    2013-04-01

    The goal of this research was to examine whether phonological familiarity exerts different effects on novel word learning for familiar versus unfamiliar referents and whether successful word learning is associated with increased second-language experience. Eighty-one adult native English speakers with various levels of Spanish knowledge learned phonologically familiar novel words (constructed using English sounds) or phonologically unfamiliar novel words (constructed using non-English and non-Spanish sounds) in association with either familiar or unfamiliar referents. Retention was tested via a forced-choice recognition task. A median-split procedure identified high-ability and low-ability word learners in each condition, and the two groups were compared on measures of second-language experience. Findings suggest that the ability to accurately match newly learned novel names to their appropriate referents is facilitated by phonological familiarity only for familiar referents but not for unfamiliar referents. Moreover, more extensive second-language learning experience characterized superior learners primarily in one word-learning condition: in which phonologically unfamiliar novel words were paired with familiar referents. Together, these findings indicate that phonological familiarity facilitates novel word learning only for familiar referents and that experience with learning a second language may have a specific impact on novel vocabulary learning in adults.

  5. Word learning in adults with second language experience: Effects of phonological and referent familiarity

    PubMed Central

    Kaushanskaya, Margarita; Yoo, Jeewon; Van Hecke, Stephanie

    2014-01-01

    Purpose The goal of this research was to examine whether phonological familiarity exerts different effects on novel word learning for familiar vs. unfamiliar referents, and whether successful word-learning is associated with increased second-language experience. Method Eighty-one adult native English speakers with various levels of Spanish knowledge learned phonologically-familiar novel words (constructed using English sounds) or phonologically-unfamiliar novel words (constructed using non-English and non-Spanish sounds) in association with either familiar or unfamiliar referents. Retention was tested via a forced-choice recognition-task. A median-split procedure identified high-ability and low-ability word-learners in each condition, and the two groups were compared on measures of second-language experience. Results Findings suggest that the ability to accurately match newly-learned novel names to their appropriate referents is facilitated by phonological familiarity only for familiar referents but not for unfamiliar referents. Moreover, more extensive second-language learning experience characterized superior learners primarily in one word-learning condition: Where phonologically-unfamiliar novel words were paired with familiar referents. Conclusions Together, these findings indicate that phonological familiarity facilitates novel word learning only for familiar referents, and that experience with learning a second language may have a specific impact on novel vocabulary learning in adults. PMID:22992709

  6. Revisiting the Novelty Effect: When Familiarity, Not Novelty, Enhances Memory

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Poppenk, J.; Kohler, S.; Moscovitch, M.

    2010-01-01

    Reports of superior memory for novel relative to familiar material have figured prominently in recent theories of memory. However, such "novelty effects" are incongruous with long-standing observations that familiar items are remembered better. In 2 experiments, we explored whether this discrepancy was explained by differences in the…

  7. FAMILIARITY TRANSFER AS AN EXPLANATION OF THE DÉJÀ VU EFFECT.

    PubMed

    Małecki, M

    2015-06-01

    Déjà vu is often explained in terms of an unconscious transfer of familiarity between a familiar object or objects and accompanying new objects. However, empirical research tests more the priming effectiveness than such a transfer. This paper reviews the main explanations of déjà vu, proposes a cognitive model of the phenomenon, and tests its six major assumptions. The model states that a sense of familiarity can be felt toward an objectively new stimulus (point 1) and that it can be transferred from a known stimulus to a novel one (point 2) in a situation where the person is unaware of such a transfer (point 3). The criteria for déjà vu are that the known and the novel stimuli may have graphical or semantic similarity, but differences exclude priming explanations (point 4); the familiarity measure should be of an non-rational nature (sense of familiarity rather than recognition; point 5); and that the feeling of familiarity toward a novel stimuli produces a conflict, which could be measured by means of increased reaction (point 6). 119 participants were tested in three experiments. The participants were to assess the novel stimuli in terms of their sense of familiarity. The novel stimuli were primed or were not primed by the known stimulus (Exp. 1) or primed by the known vs a novel stimulus (Exp. 2 and 3). The priming was subliminal in all the experiments. Reaction times were measured in Exps. 2 and 3. The participants assessed the novel stimuli as more familiar when they were preceded by a known stimulus than when they were not (Exp. 1) or when they were preceded by a novel stimulus (Exps. 2 and 3). Reaction times were longer for assessments preceded by known stimulus than for assessments preceded by a novel stimulus, which contradicts the priming explanations. The results seem to support all six points of the proposed model of the mechanisms underlying the déjà vu experience.

  8. The role of familiarity in daily well-being: developmental and cultural variation.

    PubMed

    Oishi, Shigehiro; Kurtz, Jaime L; Miao, Felicity F; Park, Jina; Whitchurch, Erin

    2011-11-01

    The present study examined life stage and cultural differences in the degree to which familiarity of one's physical location and interaction partner is associated with daily well-being. Participants reported all the activities they engaged in and how they felt during these activities on a previous day using the Day Reconstruction Method (Kahneman, Krueger, Schkade, Schwarz, & Stone, 2004). Both Korean and American retirees were happier when in a familiar place than in an unfamiliar place, whereas the reverse was true for both Korean and American working adults. In addition, we found cultural differences in the role of familiarity of the interaction partner. Specifically, Koreans (both retirees and working adults) were substantially happier when they interacted with a familiar person than when they interacted with an unfamiliar person. In contrast, Americans (both retirees and working adults) were no happier with a familiar person than with an unfamiliar person.

  9. Recollection and Familiarity in Recognition Memory: Evidence from ROC Curves

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Heathcote, Andrew; Raymond, Frances; Dunn, John

    2006-01-01

    Does recognition memory rely on discrete recollection, continuous evidence, or both? Is continuous evidence sensitive to only the recency and duration of study (familiarity), or is it also sensitive to details of the study episode? Dual process theories assume recognition is based on recollection and familiarity, with only recollection providing…

  10. Availability of Semantic Knowledge in Familiar-Only Experiences for Names

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Bowles, Ben; Köhler, Stefan

    2014-01-01

    Situations in which the name of a person is perceived as familiar but does not trigger recall of pertinent semantic knowledge are common in daily life. In current connectionist models of person recognition, such "familiar-only" experiences reflect supra-threshold activation at person-identity nodes but subthreshold activation at nodes…

  11. Using more different and more familiar targets improves the detection of concealed information.

    PubMed

    Suchotzki, Kristina; De Houwer, Jan; Kleinberg, Bennett; Verschuere, Bruno

    2018-04-01

    When embedded among a number of plausible irrelevant options, the presentation of critical (e.g., crime-related or autobiographical) information is associated with a marked increase in response time (RT). This RT effect crucially depends on the inclusion of a target/non-target discrimination task with targets being a dedicated set of items that require a unique response (press YES; for all other items press NO). Targets may be essential because they share a feature - familiarity - with the critical items. Whereas irrelevant items have not been encountered before, critical items are known from the event or the facts of the investigation. Target items are usually learned before the test, and thereby made familiar to the participants. Hence, familiarity-based responding needs to be inhibited on the critical items and may therefore explain the RT increase on the critical items. This leads to the hypothesis that the more participants rely on familiarity, the more pronounced the RT increase on critical items may be. We explored two ways to increase familiarity-based responding: (1) Increasing the number of different target items, and (2) using familiar targets. In two web-based studies (n = 357 and n = 499), both the number of different targets and the use of familiar targets facilitated concealed information detection. The effect of the number of different targets was small yet consistent across both studies, the effect of target familiarity was large in both studies. Our results support the role of familiarity-based responding in the Concealed Information Test and point to ways on how to improve validity of the Concealed Information Test. Copyright © 2018 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

  12. Self-reported familiarity with acute respiratory infection guidelines and antibiotic prescribing in primary care.

    PubMed

    Linder, Jeffrey A; Schnipper, Jeffrey L; Tsurikova, Ruslana; Volk, Lynn A; Middleton, Blackford

    2010-12-01

    Familiarity with guidelines is generally thought to be associated with guideline implementation, adherence and improved quality of care. We sought to determine if self-reported familiarity with acute respiratory infection (ARI) antibiotic treatment guidelines was associated with reduced or more appropriate antibiotic prescribing for ARIs in primary care. and We surveyed primary care clinicians about their familiarity with ARI antibiotic treatment guidelines and linked responses to administrative diagnostic and prescribing data for non-pneumonia ARI visits. Sixty-five percent of clinicians responded to the survey question about guideline familiarity. There were 208 survey respondents who had ARI patient visits during the study period. Respondents reported being 'not at all' (7%), 'somewhat' (30%), 'moderately' (45%) or 'extremely' (18%) familiar with the guidelines. After dichotomizing responses, compared with clinicians who reported being less familiar with the guidelines, clinicians who reported being more familiar with the guidelines had higher rates of antibiotic prescribing for all ARIs combined (46% versus 38%; n = 11 164; P < 0.0001), for antibiotic-appropriate diagnoses (69% versus 59%; n = 3213; P < 0.0001) and for non-antibiotic appropriate diagnoses (38% versus 28%; n = 7951; P < 0.0001). After adjusting for potential confounders, self-reported guideline familiarity was an independent predictor of increased antibiotic prescribing (odds ratio, 1.36; 95% confidence interval, 1.25-1.48). Self-reported familiarity with an ARI antibiotic treatment guideline was, seemingly paradoxically, associated with increased antibiotic prescribing. Self-reported familiarity with guidelines should not be assumed to be associated with consistent guideline adherence or higher quality of care.

  13. Face repetition detection and social interest: An ERP study in adults with and without Williams syndrome.

    PubMed

    Key, Alexandra P; Dykens, Elisabeth M

    2016-12-01

    The present study examined possible neural mechanisms underlying increased social interest in persons with Williams syndrome (WS). Visual event-related potentials (ERPs) during passive viewing were used to compare incidental memory traces for repeated vs. single presentations of previously unfamiliar social (faces) and nonsocial (houses) images in 26 adults with WS and 26 typical adults. Results indicated that participants with WS developed familiarity with the repeated faces and houses (frontal N400 response), but only typical adults evidenced the parietal old/new effect (previously associated with stimulus recollection) for the repeated faces. There was also no evidence of exceptional salience of social information in WS, as ERP markers of memory for repeated faces vs. houses were not significantly different. Thus, while persons with WS exhibit behavioral evidence of increased social interest, their processing of social information in the absence of specific instructions may be relatively superficial. The ERP evidence of face repetition detection in WS was independent of IQ and the earlier perceptual differentiation of social vs. nonsocial stimuli. Large individual differences in ERPs of participants with WS may provide valuable information for understanding the WS phenotype and have relevance for educational and treatment purposes.

  14. You look familiar, but I don’t care: Lure rejection in hybrid visual and memory search is not based on familiarity

    PubMed Central

    Wolfe, Jeremy M.; Boettcher, Sage E. P.; Josephs, Emilie L.; Cunningham, Corbin A.; Drew, Trafton

    2015-01-01

    In “hybrid” search tasks, observers hold multiple possible targets in memory while searching for those targets amongst distractor items in visual displays. Wolfe (2012) found that, if the target set is held constant over a block of trials, RTs in such tasks were a linear function of the number of items in the visual display and a linear function of the log of the number of items held in memory. However, in such tasks, the targets can become far more familiar than the distractors. Does this “familiarity” – operationalized here as the frequency and recency with which an item has appeared – influence performance in hybrid tasks In Experiment 1, we compared searches where distractors appeared with the same frequency as the targets to searches where all distractors were novel. Distractor familiarity did not have any reliable effect on search. In Experiment 2, most distractors were novel but some critical distractors were as common as the targets while others were 4× more common. Familiar distractors did not produce false alarm errors, though they did slightly increase response times (RTs). In Experiment 3, observers successfully searched for the new, unfamiliar item among distractors that, in many cases, had been seen only once before. We conclude that when the memory set is held constant for many trials, item familiarity alone does not cause observers to mistakenly confuse target with distractors. PMID:26191615

  15. Recollection can be Weak and Familiarity can be Strong

    PubMed Central

    Ingram, Katherine M.; Mickes, Laura; Wixted, John T.

    2012-01-01

    The Remember/Know procedure is widely used to investigate recollection and familiarity in recognition memory, but almost all of the results obtained using that procedure can be readily accommodated by a unidimensional model based on signal-detection theory. The unidimensional model holds that Remember judgments reflect strong memories (associated with high confidence, high accuracy, and fast reaction times), whereas Know judgments reflect weaker memories (associated with lower confidence, lower accuracy, and slower reaction times). Although this is invariably true on average, a new two-dimensional account (the Continuous Dual-Process model) suggests that Remember judgments made with low confidence should be associated with lower old/new accuracy, but higher source accuracy, than Know judgments made with high confidence. We tested this prediction – and found evidence to support it – using a modified Remember/Know procedure in which participants were first asked to indicate a degree of recollection-based or familiarity-based confidence for each word presented on a recognition test and were then asked to recollect the color (red or blue) and screen location (top or bottom) associated with the word at study. For familiarity-based decisions, old/new accuracy increased with old/new confidence, but source accuracy did not (suggesting that stronger old/new memory was supported by higher degrees of familiarity). For recollection-based decisions, both old/new accuracy and source accuracy increased with old/new confidence (suggesting that stronger old/new memory was supported by higher degrees of recollection). These findings suggest that recollection and familiarity are continuous processes and that participants can indicate which process mainly contributed to their recognition decisions. PMID:21967320

  16. Mate familiarity and social learning in a monogamous lizard.

    PubMed

    Munch, Kirke L; Noble, Daniel W A; Wapstra, Erik; While, Geoffrey M

    2018-05-08

    Social learning is thought to be advantageous as it allows an animal to gather information quickly without engaging in costly trial-and-error learning. However, animals should be selective about when and whom they learn from. Familiarity is predicted to positively influence an animal's reliance on social learning; yet, few studies have empirically tested this theory. We used a lizard (Liopholis whitii) that forms long-term monogamous pair bonds to examine the effects of partner familiarity on social learning in two novel foraging tasks, an association and a reversal task. We allowed female lizards to observe trained conspecifics that were either familiar (social mate) or unfamiliar execute these tasks and compared these two groups with control females that did not receive social information. Lizards preferentially relied on trial-and-error learning in the association task. In the reversal task, lizards that were demonstrated by familiar partners learnt in fewer trials compared to control lizards and made more correct choices. Our results provide some evidence for context-dependent learning with lizards differentiating between when they utilize social learning, and, to a limited degree, whom they learnt from. Understanding the role of the social context in which learning occurs provides important insights into the benefits of social learning and sociality more generally.

  17. Familiarity and Sex Based Stereotypes on Instant Impressions of Male and Female Faculty

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Nadler, Joel T.; Berry, Seth A.; Stockdale, Margaret S.

    2013-01-01

    To address the stranger-to-stranger critique of stereotyping research, psychology students (n = 139) and law students (n = 58) rated photographs of familiar or unfamiliar male or female professors on competence. Results from Study 1 indicated that familiar male psychology faculty were rated as more competent than were familiar female faculty,…

  18. Familiarity and recollection in heuristic decision making.

    PubMed

    Schwikert, Shane R; Curran, Tim

    2014-12-01

    Heuristics involve the ability to utilize memory to make quick judgments by exploiting fundamental cognitive abilities. In the current study we investigated the memory processes that contribute to the recognition heuristic and the fluency heuristic, which are both presumed to capitalize on the byproducts of memory to make quick decisions. In Experiment 1, we used a city-size comparison task while recording event-related potentials (ERPs) to investigate the potential contributions of familiarity and recollection to the 2 heuristics. ERPs were markedly different for recognition heuristic-based decisions and fluency heuristic-based decisions, suggesting a role for familiarity in the recognition heuristic and recollection in the fluency heuristic. In Experiment 2, we coupled the same city-size comparison task with measures of subjective preexperimental memory for each stimulus in the task. Although previous literature suggests the fluency heuristic relies on recognition speed alone, our results suggest differential contributions of recognition speed and recollected knowledge to these decisions, whereas the recognition heuristic relies on familiarity. Based on these results, we created a new theoretical framework that explains decisions attributed to both heuristics based on the underlying memory associated with the choice options. PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2014 APA, all rights reserved.

  19. Problems in depth perception : perceived size and distance of familiar objects.

    DOT National Transportation Integrated Search

    1966-06-01

    Judgments of the distance of familiar objects, especially other aircraft, are critical aspects of flight safety. In this study, the perception of distance as a function of the retinal size of a familiar object was investigated by simulating a station...

  20. Oxytocin enhances brain reward system responses in men viewing the face of their female partner.

    PubMed

    Scheele, Dirk; Wille, Andrea; Kendrick, Keith M; Stoffel-Wagner, Birgit; Becker, Benjamin; Güntürkün, Onur; Maier, Wolfgang; Hurlemann, René

    2013-12-10

    The biological mechanisms underlying long-term partner bonds in humans are unclear. The evolutionarily conserved neuropeptide oxytocin (OXT) is associated with the formation of partner bonds in some species via interactions with brain dopamine reward systems. However, whether it plays a similar role in humans has as yet not been established. Here, we report the results of a discovery and a replication study, each involving a double-blind, placebo-controlled, within-subject, pharmaco-functional MRI experiment with 20 heterosexual pair-bonded male volunteers. In both experiments, intranasal OXT treatment (24 IU) made subjects perceive their female partner's face as more attractive compared with unfamiliar women but had no effect on the attractiveness of other familiar women. This enhanced positive partner bias was paralleled by an increased response to partner stimuli compared with unfamiliar women in brain reward regions including the ventral tegmental area and the nucleus accumbens (NAcc). In the left NAcc, OXT even augmented the neural response to the partner compared with a familiar woman, indicating that this finding is partner-bond specific rather than due to familiarity. Taken together, our results suggest that OXT could contribute to romantic bonds in men by enhancing their partner's attractiveness and reward value compared with other women.

  1. Oxytocin enhances brain reward system responses in men viewing the face of their female partner

    PubMed Central

    Scheele, Dirk; Wille, Andrea; Kendrick, Keith M.; Stoffel-Wagner, Birgit; Becker, Benjamin; Güntürkün, Onur; Maier, Wolfgang; Hurlemann, René

    2013-01-01

    The biological mechanisms underlying long-term partner bonds in humans are unclear. The evolutionarily conserved neuropeptide oxytocin (OXT) is associated with the formation of partner bonds in some species via interactions with brain dopamine reward systems. However, whether it plays a similar role in humans has as yet not been established. Here, we report the results of a discovery and a replication study, each involving a double-blind, placebo-controlled, within-subject, pharmaco-functional MRI experiment with 20 heterosexual pair-bonded male volunteers. In both experiments, intranasal OXT treatment (24 IU) made subjects perceive their female partner's face as more attractive compared with unfamiliar women but had no effect on the attractiveness of other familiar women. This enhanced positive partner bias was paralleled by an increased response to partner stimuli compared with unfamiliar women in brain reward regions including the ventral tegmental area and the nucleus accumbens (NAcc). In the left NAcc, OXT even augmented the neural response to the partner compared with a familiar woman, indicating that this finding is partner-bond specific rather than due to familiarity. Taken together, our results suggest that OXT could contribute to romantic bonds in men by enhancing their partner's attractiveness and reward value compared with other women. PMID:24277856

  2. Social familiarity relaxes the constraints of limited attention and enhances reproduction of group-living predatory mites

    PubMed Central

    Strodl, Markus A; Schausberger, Peter

    2013-01-01

    In many group-living animals, within-group associations are determined by familiarity, i.e. familiar individuals, independent of genetic relatedness, preferentially associate with each other. The ultimate causes of this behaviour are poorly understood and rigorous documentation of its adaptive significance is scarce. Limited attention theory states that focusing on a given task has interrelated cognitive, behavioural and physiological costs with respect to the attention paid to other tasks. In multiple signal environments attention has thus to be shared among signals. Assuming that familiar neighbours require less attention than unfamiliar ones, associating with familiar individuals should increase the efficiency in other tasks and ultimately increase fitness. We tested this prediction in adult females of the group-living, plant-inhabiting predatory mite Phytoseiulus persimilis. We evaluated the influence of social familiarity on within-group association behaviour, activity, predation and reproduction. In mixed groups (familiar and unfamiliar), familiar predator females preferentially associated with each other. In pure groups (either familiar or unfamiliar), familiar predator females produced more eggs than unfamiliar females at similar predation rates. Higher egg production was correlated with lower activity levels, indicating decreased restlessness. In light of limited attention theory, we argue that the ability to discriminate between familiar and unfamiliar individuals and preferential association with familiar individuals confers a selective advantage because familiar social environments are cognitively and physiologically less taxing than unfamiliar social environments. PMID:24273345

  3. Effects of Familiarity and Feeding on Newborn Speech-Voice Recognition

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Valiante, A. Grace; Barr, Ronald G.; Zelazo, Philip R.; Brant, Rollin; Young, Simon N.

    2013-01-01

    Newborn infants preferentially orient to familiar over unfamiliar speech sounds. They are also better at remembering unfamiliar speech sounds for short periods of time if learning and retention occur after a feed than before. It is unknown whether short-term memory for speech is enhanced when the sound is familiar (versus unfamiliar) and, if so,…

  4. You can't drink a word: lexical and individual emotionality affect subjective familiarity judgments.

    PubMed

    Westbury, Chris

    2014-10-01

    For almost 30 years, subjective familiarity has been used in psycholinguistics as an explanatory variable, allegedly able to explain many phenomena that have no other obvious explanation (Gernsbacher in J Exp Psychol General 113:256-281, 1984). In this paper, the hypothesis tested is that the subjective familiarity of words is reflecting personal familiarity with or importance of the referents of words. Using an empirically-grounded model of affective force derived from Wundt (Grundriss der Psychologie [Outlines of Psychology]. Engelmann, Leibzig, 1896) and based in a co-occurrence model of semantics (which involves no human judgment), it is shown that affective force can account for the same variance in a large set of human subjective familiarity judgments as other human subjective familiarity judgments, can predict whether people will rate new words of the same objective frequency as more or less familiar, can predict lexical access as well as human subjective familiarity judgments do, and has a predicted relationship to age of acquisition norms. Individuals who have highly affective reactivity [as measured by Carver and White's (J Pers Soc Psychol 67(2):319-333, 1994) Behavioral Inhibition Scale and Behavioral Activation Scales] rate words as significantly more familiar than individuals who have low affective reactivity.

  5. The pupillary response discriminates between subjective and objective familiarity and novelty.

    PubMed

    Kafkas, Alexandros; Montaldi, Daniela

    2015-10-01

    The pupil response discriminates between old and new stimuli, with old stimuli characterized by larger pupil dilation patterns than new stimuli. We sought to explore the cause of the pupil old/new effect and discount the effect of targetness, effort, recollection retrieval, and complexity of the recognition decision. Two experiments are reported in which the pupil response and the eye fixation patterns were measured, while participants identified novel and familiar object stimuli, in two separate tasks, emphasizing either novelty or familiarity detection. In Experiment 1, familiarity and novelty decisions were taken using a rating scale, while in Experiment 2 a simpler yes/no decision was used. In both experiments, we found that detection of target familiar stimuli resulted in greater pupil dilation than the detection of target novel stimuli, while the duration of the first fixation discriminated between familiar and novel stimuli as early as within 320 ms after stimulus onset. Importantly, the pupil response distinguished between the objective (during an earlier temporal component) and the subjective (during a later temporal component) status of the stimulus for misses and false alarms. In the light of previous findings, we suggest that the pupil and fixation old/new effects reflect the distinct neural and cognitive mechanisms involved in the familiarity and novelty decisions. The findings also have important implications for the use of pupil dilation and eye movement patterns to explore explicit and implicit memory processes. © 2015 The Authors. Psychophysiology published by Wiley Periodicals, Inc. on behalf of Society for Psychophysiological Research.

  6. LAFD: TA-15 DARHT Firefighter Facility Familiarization Tour, OJT 53044, Revision 0.2

    DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

    Rutherford, Victor Stephen; Priestley, Terry B.; Maestas, Marvin Manuel

    The Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL or the Lab) will conduct familiarization tours for the Los Alamos County Fire Department (LAFD) at the Dual-Axis Radiographic Hydrodynamic Test (DARHT) Facility, TA-15-0312. The purpose of these tours is to orient LAFD firefighters to the DARHT facility layout and hazards. This document provides information and figures to supplement the familiarization tours. The document will be distributed to the trainees at the time of the familiarization tour. A checklist (Attachment A) has also been developed to ensure that all required information is consistently presented to LAFD personnel during the familiarization tours.

  7. Effects of cross-language voice training on speech perception: Whose familiar voices are more intelligible?

    PubMed Central

    Levi, Susannah V.; Winters, Stephen J.; Pisoni, David B.

    2011-01-01

    Previous research has shown that familiarity with a talker’s voice can improve linguistic processing (herein, “Familiar Talker Advantage”), but this benefit is constrained by the context in which the talker’s voice is familiar. The current study examined how familiarity affects intelligibility by manipulating the type of talker information available to listeners. One group of listeners learned to identify bilingual talkers’ voices from English words, where they learned language-specific talker information. A second group of listeners learned the same talkers from German words, and thus only learned language-independent talker information. After voice training, both groups of listeners completed a word recognition task with English words produced by both familiar and unfamiliar talkers. Results revealed that English-trained listeners perceived more phonemes correct for familiar than unfamiliar talkers, while German-trained listeners did not show improved intelligibility for familiar talkers. The absence of a processing advantage in speech intelligibility for the German-trained listeners demonstrates limitations on the Familiar Talker Advantage, which crucially depends on the language context in which the talkers’ voices were learned; knowledge of how a talker produces linguistically relevant contrasts in a particular language is necessary to increase speech intelligibility for words produced by familiar talkers. PMID:22225059

  8. Two-Year-Olds Interpret Novel Phonological Neighbors as Familiar Words

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Swingley, Daniel

    2016-01-01

    When children hear a novel word in a context presenting a novel object and a familiar one, they usually assume that the novel word refers to the novel object. In a series of experiments, we tested whether this behavior would be found when 2-year-olds interpreted novel words that differed phonologically from familiar words in only 1 sound, either a…

  9. Fast, but not slow, familiarity is preserved in patients with amnestic mild cognitive impairment.

    PubMed

    Besson, Gabriel; Ceccaldi, Mathieu; Tramoni, Eve; Felician, Olivier; Didic, Mira; Barbeau, Emmanuel J

    2015-04-01

    Recognition memory--affected early in the course of Alzheimer Disease (AD)--is supposed to rely on two processes: recollection (i.e., retrieval of details from the encoding episode) and familiarity (i.e., acontextual sense of prior exposure). Recollection has repeatedly been shown to be impaired in patients with amnestic Mild Cognitive Impairment (aMCI)--known to be at high risk for AD. However, studies that evaluated familiarity in these patients have reported conflicting results. Here, we assessed familiarity in single-domain aMCI patients (n = 19) and healthy matched controls (n = 22). All participants underwent a classic yes/no recognition memory paradigm with confidence judgements, allowing an estimation of familiarity and recollection similar to the approach used in previous studies. In addition, they underwent a novel speeded recognition memory task, the Speed and Accuracy Boosting procedure, based on the idea that familiarity is fast and hence that fast answers rely on familiarity. On the classic yes/no task, aMCI patients were found to have impaired performance, reaction times, recollection and familiarity. However, performance and reaction times of aMCI patients did not differ from that of controls in the speeded task. This is noteworthy since this task was comparatively difficult for control subjects. This dissociation within familiarity suggests that a very basic component of declarative memory, probably at the interface between implicit and explicit memory, may be preserved, or possibly released, in patients with aMCI. It is suggested that early subprocesses (e.g., fluency based familiarity) could be preserved in aMCI patients, while delayed ones (e.g., conceptual fluency, post-retrieval monitoring, confidence assessment, or even access to awareness) may be impaired. These findings may provide support for recent suggestions that familiarity may result from the combination of a set of subprocesses, each with its specific temporal signature. Copyright

  10. Familiar units prevail over statistical cues in word segmentation.

    PubMed

    Poulin-Charronnat, Bénédicte; Perruchet, Pierre; Tillmann, Barbara; Peereman, Ronald

    2017-09-01

    In language acquisition research, the prevailing position is that listeners exploit statistical cues, in particular transitional probabilities between syllables, to discover words of a language. However, other cues are also involved in word discovery. Assessing the weight learners give to these different cues leads to a better understanding of the processes underlying speech segmentation. The present study evaluated whether adult learners preferentially used known units or statistical cues for segmenting continuous speech. Before the exposure phase, participants were familiarized with part-words of a three-word artificial language. This design allowed the dissociation of the influence of statistical cues and familiar units, with statistical cues favoring word segmentation and familiar units favoring (nonoptimal) part-word segmentation. In Experiment 1, performance in a two-alternative forced choice (2AFC) task between words and part-words revealed part-word segmentation (even though part-words were less cohesive in terms of transitional probabilities and less frequent than words). By contrast, an unfamiliarized group exhibited word segmentation, as usually observed in standard conditions. Experiment 2 used a syllable-detection task to remove the likely contamination of performance by memory and strategy effects in the 2AFC task. Overall, the results suggest that familiar units overrode statistical cues, ultimately questioning the need for computation mechanisms of transitional probabilities (TPs) in natural language speech segmentation.

  11. Recognition Memory: Adding a Response Deadline Eliminates Recollection but Spares Familiarity

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Sauvage, Magdalena M.; Beer, Zachery; Eichenbaum, Howard

    2010-01-01

    A current controversy in memory research concerns whether recognition is supported by distinct processes of familiarity and recollection, or instead by a single process wherein familiarity and recollection reflect weak and strong memories, respectively. Recent studies using receiver operating characteristic (ROC) analyses in an animal model have…

  12. Neurophysiological evidence for a recollection impairment in amnesia patients that leaves familiarity intact

    PubMed Central

    Addante, Richard J.; Ranganath, Charan; Olichney, John; Yonelinas, Andrew P.

    2012-01-01

    In several previous behavioral studies, we have identified a group of amnestic patients that, behaviorally, appear to exhibit severe deficits in recollection with relative preservation of familiarity-based recognition. However, these studies have relied exclusively on behavioral measures, rather than direct measures of physiology. Event-related potentials (ERPs) have been used to identify putative neural correlates of familiarity- and recollection-based recognition memory, but little work has been done to determine the extent to which these ERP correlates are spared in patients with relatively specific memory disorders. ERP studies of recognition in healthy subjects have indicated that recollection and familiarity are related to a parietal old-new effect characterized as a late positive component (LPC) and an earlier mid-frontal old-new effect referred to as an ‘FN400’, respectively. Here, we sought to determine the extent to which the putative ERP correlates of recollection and familiarity are intact or impaired in these patients. We recorded ERPs in three amnestic patients and six age matched controls while they made item recognition and source recognition judgments. The current patients were able to discriminate between old and new items fairly well, but showed nearly chance-level performance at source recognition. Moreover, whereas control subjects exhibited ERP correlates of memory that have been linked to recollection and familiarity, the patients only exhibited the mid-frontal FN400 ERP effect related to familiarity-based recognition. The results show that recollection can be severely impaired in amnesia even when familiarity-related processing is relatively spared, and they also provide further evidence that ERPs can be used to distinguish between neural correlates of familiarity and recollection. PMID:22898646

  13. Neural synchronization during face-to-face communication.

    PubMed

    Jiang, Jing; Dai, Bohan; Peng, Danling; Zhu, Chaozhe; Liu, Li; Lu, Chunming

    2012-11-07

    Although the human brain may have evolutionarily adapted to face-to-face communication, other modes of communication, e.g., telephone and e-mail, increasingly dominate our modern daily life. This study examined the neural difference between face-to-face communication and other types of communication by simultaneously measuring two brains using a hyperscanning approach. The results showed a significant increase in the neural synchronization in the left inferior frontal cortex during a face-to-face dialog between partners but none during a back-to-back dialog, a face-to-face monologue, or a back-to-back monologue. Moreover, the neural synchronization between partners during the face-to-face dialog resulted primarily from the direct interactions between the partners, including multimodal sensory information integration and turn-taking behavior. The communicating behavior during the face-to-face dialog could be predicted accurately based on the neural synchronization level. These results suggest that face-to-face communication, particularly dialog, has special neural features that other types of communication do not have and that the neural synchronization between partners may underlie successful face-to-face communication.

  14. High, low, or familiar? Nest site preferences of experienced laying hens.

    PubMed

    Krause, E T; Schrader, L

    2018-05-22

    1. The aim of this study was to investigate which nest heights are preferred by laying hens in the absence of familiar nest locations and whether preferred nest heights are more attractive than a familiar location. In two experiments, a total of 108 hens of four different layer breeds, which were at least 50 weeks of age, were studied. 2. In the first experiment, hens were given individual free choice between nests for 1-week at four different heights (0 cm, 39 cm, 78 cm, and 117 cm above ground). Hens of the four breeds differed in their nest height preferences (P = 0.0013). However, hens of three breeds preferred ground level nests (P < 0.007) and the fourth line showed an equal preference for the ground level and level three, the latter level corresponding to the height of the nests in their home compartments. 4. In the second experiment, hens from the four breeds were given a choice between ground level nests and nests at a familiar location, i.e. at the same location as in their home compartment. Hens of all strains preferred the familiar nest location (P = 0.002) and preferences did not differ between strains (P = 0.77). 5. Laying hens seem to prefer nests at ground level in the absence of a familiar nest. However, if possible, experienced 50 week old hens continue to use a familiar nest location instead of a ground nest location. The results are discussed with respect to a potential primary preference that may be modifiable by experience and with respect to possible relevance in commercial housing.

  15. What makes a face photo a 'good likeness'?

    PubMed

    Ritchie, Kay L; Kramer, Robin S S; Burton, A Mike

    2018-01-01

    Photographs of people are commonly said to be 'good likenesses' or 'poor likenesses', and this is a concept that we readily understand. Despite this, there has been no systematic investigation of what makes an image a good likeness, or of which cognitive processes are involved in making such a judgement. In three experiments, we investigate likeness judgements for different types of images: natural images of film stars (Experiment 1), images of film stars from specific films (Experiment 2), and iconic images and face averages (Experiment 3). In all three experiments, participants rated images for likeness and completed speeded name verification tasks. We consistently show that participants are faster to identify images which they have previously rated asa good likeness compared to a poor likeness. We also consistently show that the more familiar we are with someone, the higher likeness rating we give to all images of them. A key finding is that our perception of likeness is idiosyncratic (Experiments 1 and 2), and can be tied to our specific experience of each individual (Experiment 2). We argue that likeness judgements require a comparison between the stimulus and our own representation of the person, and that this representation differs according to our prior experience with that individual. This has theoretical implications for our understanding of how we represent familiar people, and practical implications for how we go about selecting images for identity purposes such as photo-ID. Copyright © 2017 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

  16. Increased N250 amplitudes for other-race faces reflect more effortful processing at the individual level.

    PubMed

    Herzmann, Grit

    2016-07-01

    The N250 and N250r (r for repetition, signaling a difference measure of priming) has been proposed to reflect the activation of perceptual memory representations for individual faces. Increased N250r and N250 amplitudes have been associated with higher levels of familiarity and expertise, respectively. In contrast to these observations, the N250 amplitude has been found to be larger for other-race than own-race faces in recognition memory tasks. This study investigated if these findings were due to increased identity-specific processing demands for other-race relative to own-race faces and whether or not similar results would be obtained for the N250 in a repetition priming paradigm. Only Caucasian participants were available for testing and completed two tasks with Caucasian, African-American, and Chinese faces. In a repetition priming task, participants decided whether or not sequentially presented faces were of the same identity (individuation task) or same race (categorization task). Increased N250 amplitudes were found for African-American and Chinese faces relative to Caucasian faces, replicating previous results in recognition memory tasks. Contrary to the expectation that increased N250 amplitudes for other-race face would be confined to the individuation task, both tasks showed similar results. This could be due to the fact that face identity information needed to be maintained across the sequential presentation of prime and target in both tasks. Increased N250 amplitudes for other-race faces are taken to represent increased neural demands on the identity-specific processing of other-race faces, which are typically processed less holistically and less on the level of the individual. Copyright © 2016 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

  17. Metropolitan French: Familiarization & Short-Term Training.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Iszkowski, Marie-Charlotte

    The U.S. Department of State's Foreign Service Institute French Familiarization and Short-Term (FAST) course for personnel working and living in France consists of 10 weeks of French language instruction combined with practical and cultural information. An introductory section outlines FAST course objectives and sample teaching techniques in…

  18. Know versus Familiar: Differentiating states of awareness in others' subjective reports of recognition.

    PubMed

    Williams, Helen L; Moulin, Chris J A

    2015-01-01

    In the Remember-Know paradigm whether a Know response is defined as a high-confidence state of certainty or a low-confidence state based on familiarity varies across researchers and can influence participants' responses. The current experiment was designed to explore differences between the states of Know and Familiar. Participants studied others' justification statements to "Know" recognition decisions and separated them into two types. Crucially, participants were not provided definitions of Know and Familiar on which to sort the items--their judgements were based solely on the phenomenology described in the justifications. Participants' sorting decisions were shown to reliably map onto expert classification of Know and Familiar. Post-task questionnaire responses demonstrated that both the level of memory detail and confidence expressed in the justifications were central to how participants categorised the items. In sum, given no instructions to do so, participants classify Familiar and Know according to two dimensions: confidence and amount of information retrieved.

  19. How a Hat May Affect 3-Month-Olds' Recognition of a Face: An Eye-Tracking Study

    PubMed Central

    Bulf, Hermann; Valenza, Eloisa; Turati, Chiara

    2013-01-01

    Recent studies have shown that infants’ face recognition rests on a robust face representation that is resilient to a variety of facial transformations such as rotations in depth, motion, occlusion or deprivation of inner/outer features. Here, we investigated whether 3-month-old infants’ ability to represent the invariant aspects of a face is affected by the presence of an external add-on element, i.e. a hat. Using a visual habituation task, three experiments were carried out in which face recognition was investigated by manipulating the presence/absence of a hat during face encoding (i.e. habituation phase) and face recognition (i.e. test phase). An eye-tracker system was used to record the time infants spent looking at face-relevant information compared to the hat. The results showed that infants’ face recognition was not affected by the presence of the external element when the type of the hat did not vary between the habituation and test phases, and when both the novel and the familiar face wore the same hat during the test phase (Experiment 1). Infants’ ability to recognize the invariant aspects of a face was preserved also when the hat was absent in the habituation phase and the same hat was shown only during the test phase (Experiment 2). Conversely, when the novel face identity competed with a novel hat, the hat triggered the infants’ attention, interfering with the recognition process and preventing the infants’ preference for the novel face during the test phase (Experiment 3). Findings from the current study shed light on how faces and objects are processed when they are simultaneously presented in the same visual scene, contributing to an understanding of how infants respond to the multiple and composite information available in their surrounding environment. PMID:24349378

  20. How a hat may affect 3-month-olds' recognition of a face: an eye-tracking study.

    PubMed

    Bulf, Hermann; Valenza, Eloisa; Turati, Chiara

    2013-01-01

    Recent studies have shown that infants' face recognition rests on a robust face representation that is resilient to a variety of facial transformations such as rotations in depth, motion, occlusion or deprivation of inner/outer features. Here, we investigated whether 3-month-old infants' ability to represent the invariant aspects of a face is affected by the presence of an external add-on element, i.e. a hat. Using a visual habituation task, three experiments were carried out in which face recognition was investigated by manipulating the presence/absence of a hat during face encoding (i.e. habituation phase) and face recognition (i.e. test phase). An eye-tracker system was used to record the time infants spent looking at face-relevant information compared to the hat. The results showed that infants' face recognition was not affected by the presence of the external element when the type of the hat did not vary between the habituation and test phases, and when both the novel and the familiar face wore the same hat during the test phase (Experiment 1). Infants' ability to recognize the invariant aspects of a face was preserved also when the hat was absent in the habituation phase and the same hat was shown only during the test phase (Experiment 2). Conversely, when the novel face identity competed with a novel hat, the hat triggered the infants' attention, interfering with the recognition process and preventing the infants' preference for the novel face during the test phase (Experiment 3). Findings from the current study shed light on how faces and objects are processed when they are simultaneously presented in the same visual scene, contributing to an understanding of how infants respond to the multiple and composite information available in their surrounding environment.

  1. ERP correlates of source memory: unitized source information increases familiarity-based retrieval.

    PubMed

    Diana, Rachel A; Van den Boom, Wijnand; Yonelinas, Andrew P; Ranganath, Charan

    2011-01-07

    Source memory tests typically require subjects to make decisions about the context in which an item was encoded and are thought to depend on recollection of details from the study episode. Although it is generally believed that familiarity does not contribute to source memory, recent behavioral studies have suggested that familiarity may also support source recognition when item and source information are integrated, or "unitized," during study (Diana, Yonelinas, and Ranganath, 2008). However, an alternative explanation of these behavioral findings is that unitization affects the manner in which recollection contributes to performance, rather than increasing familiarity-based source memory. To discriminate between these possibilities, we conducted an event-related potential (ERP) study testing the hypothesis that unitization increases the contribution of familiarity to source recognition. Participants studied associations between words and background colors using tasks that either encouraged or discouraged unitization. ERPs were recorded during a source memory test for background color. The results revealed two distinct neural correlates of source recognition: a frontally distributed positivity that was associated with familiarity-based source memory in the high-unitization condition only and a parietally distributed positivity that was associated with recollection-based source memory in both the high- and low-unitization conditions. The ERP and behavioral findings provide converging evidence for the idea that familiarity can contribute to source recognition, particularly when source information is encoded as an item detail. Copyright © 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

  2. Musical Expertise Increases Top–Down Modulation Over Hippocampal Activation during Familiarity Decisions

    PubMed Central

    Gagnepain, Pierre; Fauvel, Baptiste; Desgranges, Béatrice; Gaubert, Malo; Viader, Fausto; Eustache, Francis; Groussard, Mathilde; Platel, Hervé

    2017-01-01

    The hippocampus has classically been associated with episodic memory, but is sometimes also recruited during semantic memory tasks, especially for the skilled exploration of familiar information. Cognitive control mechanisms guiding semantic memory search may benefit from the set of cognitive processes at stake during musical training. Here, we examined using functional magnetic resonance imaging, whether musical expertise would promote the top–down control of the left inferior frontal gyrus (LIFG) over the generation of hippocampally based goal-directed thoughts mediating the familiarity judgment of proverbs and musical items. Analyses of behavioral data confirmed that musical experts more efficiently access familiar melodies than non-musicians although such increased ability did not transfer to verbal semantic memory. At the brain level, musical expertise specifically enhanced the recruitment of the hippocampus during semantic access to melodies, but not proverbs. Additionally, hippocampal activation contributed to speed of access to familiar melodies, but only in musicians. Critically, causal modeling of neural dynamics between LIFG and the hippocampus further showed that top–down excitatory regulation over the hippocampus during familiarity decision specifically increases with musical expertise – an effect that generalized across melodies and proverbs. At the local level, our data show that musical expertise modulates the online recruitment of hippocampal response to serve semantic memory retrieval of familiar melodies. The reconfiguration of memory network dynamics following musical training could constitute a promising framework to understand its ability to preserve brain functions. PMID:29033805

  3. Boys Affiliate More than Girls with a Familiar Same-Sex Peer

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Benenson, Joyce F.; Quinn, Amanda; Stella, Sandra

    2012-01-01

    Evidence from ethnographic, observational, and experimental studies with humans converges to suggest that males affiliate more than females with unrelated, familiar same-sex peers, but this has never been examined directly. With this aim, we compared frequency of affiliation with a single, randomly chosen, familiar same-sex peer for the two sexes…

  4. Investigating Faculty Familiarity with Assessment Terminology by Applying Cluster Analysis to Interpret Survey Data

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Raker, Jeffrey R.; Holme, Thomas A.

    2014-01-01

    A cluster analysis was conducted with a set of survey data on chemistry faculty familiarity with 13 assessment terms. Cluster groupings suggest a high, middle, and low overall familiarity with the terminology and an independent high and low familiarity with terms related to fundamental statistics. The six resultant clusters were found to be…

  5. Do Tetranychus urticae males avoid mating with familiar females?

    PubMed

    Yoshioka, T; Yano, S

    2014-07-01

    The two-spotted spider mite, Tetranychus urticae, usually lives in kin groups under common webs. Because only the first mating results in fertilisation in female T. urticae, adult males guard quiescent deutonymph females, those at the stage immediately before maturation, to ensure paternity. Therefore, the cost of precopulatory guarding time seems considerable for males. Moreover, the fitness indices of daughters from intra-population crosses were significantly lower than those of daughters from inter-population crosses, indicating that inbreeding depression exists in T. urticae. Therefore, we hypothesised that T. urticae males should be choosy in guarding familiar females to avoid inbreeding depression. Furthermore, webs should be a key element of the environment shared by familiar individuals. In this study, we demonstrated the inbreeding avoidance mechanism of T. urticae males in relation to webs produced by familiar females (known webs) or unfamiliar females (unknown webs). Regardless of surrounding webs (known or unknown), males preferred unfamiliar to familiar females. We further examined whether males detect unfamiliar females by their webs. When males had experienced a female's web without encountering that female, they subsequently preferred females that did not produce the surrounding webs in which the choice experiment was conducted. Results suggest that putative kin recognition for inbreeding avoidance in T. urticae males is based on the relationship between webs and females, and not on the discrimination of webs in shared environments. © 2014. Published by The Company of Biologists Ltd.

  6. Recollection, not familiarity, decreases in healthy aging: Converging evidence from four estimation methods

    PubMed Central

    Koen, Joshua D.; Yonelinas, Andrew P.

    2014-01-01

    Although it is generally accepted that aging is associated with recollection impairments, there is considerable disagreement surrounding how healthy aging influences familiarity-based recognition. One factor that might contribute to the mixed findings regarding age differences in familiarity is the estimation method used to quantify the two mnemonic processes. Here, this issue is examined by having a group of older adults (N = 39) between 40 and 81 years of age complete Remember/Know (RK), receiver operating characteristic (ROC), and process dissociation (PD) recognition tests. Estimates of recollection, but not familiarity, showed a significant negative correlation with chronological age. Inconsistent with previous findings, the estimation method did not moderate the relationship between age and estimations of recollection and familiarity. In a final analysis, recollection and familiarity were estimated as latent factors in a confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) that modeled the covariance between measures of free recall and recognition, and the results converged with the results from the RK, PD, and ROC tasks. These results are consistent with the hypothesis that episodic memory declines in older adults are primary driven by recollection deficits, and also suggest that the estimation method plays little to no role in age-related decreases in familiarity. PMID:25485974

  7. Evaluation of appearance transfer and persistence in central face transplantation: a computer simulation analysis.

    PubMed

    Pomahac, Bohdan; Aflaki, Pejman; Nelson, Charles; Balas, Benjamin

    2010-05-01

    Partial facial allotransplantation is an emerging option in reconstruction of central facial defects, providing function and aesthetic appearance. Ethical debate partly stems from uncertainty surrounding identity aspects of the procedure. There is no objective evidence regarding the effect of donors' transplanted facial structures on appearance change of the recipients and its influence on facial recognition of donors and recipients. Full-face frontal view color photographs of 100 volunteers were taken at a distance of 150 cm with a digital camera (Nikon/DX80). Photographs were taken in front of a blue background, and with a neutral facial expression. Using image-editing software (Adobe-Photoshop-CS3), central facial transplantation was performed between participants. Twenty observers performed a familiar 'facial recognition task', to identify 40 post-transplant composite faces presented individually on the screen at a viewing distance of 60 cm, with an exposure time of 5s. Each composite face comprised of a familiar and an unfamiliar face to the observers. Trials were done with and without external facial features (head contour, hair and ears). Two variables were defined: 'Appearance Transfer' refers to transfer of donor's appearance to the recipient. 'Appearance Persistence' deals with the extent of recipient's appearance change post-transplantation. A t-test was run to determine if the rates of Appearance Transfer differed from Appearance Persistence. Average Appearance Transfer rate (2.6%) was significantly lower than Appearance Persistence rate (66%) (P<0.001), indicating that donor's appearance transfer to the recipient is negligible, whereas recipients will be identified the majority of the time. External facial features were important in facial recognition of recipients, evidenced by a significant rise in Appearance Persistence from 19% in the absence of external features to 66% when those features were present (P<0.01). This study may be helpful in the

  8. Contextual Variation, Familiarity, Academic Literacy, and Rural Adolescents' Idiom Knowledge.

    PubMed

    Qualls, Constance Dean; O'Brien, Rose M; Blood, Gordon W; Hammer, Carol Scheffner

    2003-01-01

    The paucity of data on idiom development in adolescents, particularly rural adolescents, limits the ability of speech-language pathologists and educators to test and teach idioms appropriately in this population. This study was designed to delineate the interrelationships between context, familiarity, and academic literacy relative to rural adolescents' idiom knowledge. Ninety-five rural eighth graders (M age=13.4 years) were quasi-randomly assigned to complete the Idiom Comprehension Test (Qualls & Harris, 1999) in one of three contexts: idioms in a short story (n=25), idioms in isolation (n=32), and idioms in a verification task (n=38). For all conditions, the identical 24 idioms-8 each of high, moderate, and low familiarity (Nippold & Rudzinski, 1993)-were presented. For a subset (N=54) of the students, reading and language arts scores from the California Achievement Tests (5th ed., 1993), a standardized achievement test, were correlated with performance on the idiom test. Performance in the story condition and on high-familiarity idioms showed the greatest accuracy. For the isolation and verification conditions, context interacted with familiarity. Associations existed between idiom performance and reading ability and idiom performance and language literacy, but only for the story and verification conditions. High-proficiency readers showed the greatest idiom accuracy. The results support the notion that context facilitates idiom comprehension for rural adolescents, and that idiom testing should consider not only context, but idiom familiarity as well. Thus, local norms should be established. Findings also confirm that good readers are better at comprehending idioms, likely resulting from enriched vocabulary obtained through reading. These normative data indicate what might be expected when testing idiom knowledge in adolescents with language impairments.

  9. Affective significance enhances covert attention: roles of anxiety and word familiarity.

    PubMed

    Calvo, Manuel G; Eysenck, Michael W

    2008-11-01

    To investigate the processing of emotional words by covert attention, threat-related, positive, and neutral word primes were presented parafoveally (2.2 degrees away from fixation) for 150 ms, under gaze-contingent foveal masking, to prevent eye fixations. The primes were followed by a probe word in a lexical-decision task. In Experiment 1, results showed a parafoveal threat-anxiety superiority: Parafoveal prime threat words facilitated responses to probe threat words for high-anxiety individuals, in comparison with neutral and positive words, and relative to low-anxiety individuals. This reveals an advantage in threat processing by covert attention, without differences in overt attention. However, anxiety was also associated with greater familiarity with threat words, and the parafoveal priming effects were significantly reduced when familiarity was covaried out. To further examine the role of word knowledge, in Experiment 2, vocabulary and word familiarity were equated for low- and high-anxiety groups. In these conditions, the parafoveal threat-anxiety advantage disappeared. This suggests that the enhanced covert-attention effect depends on familiarity with words.

  10. Color preference and familiarity in performance on brand logo recall.

    PubMed

    Huang, Kuo-Chen; Lin, Chin-Chiuan; Chiang, Shu-Ying

    2008-10-01

    Two experiments assessed effects of color preference and brand-logo familiarity on recall performance. Exp. 1 explored the color preferences, using a forced-choice technique, of 189 women and 63 men, Taiwanese college students ages 18 to 20 years (M = 19.4, SD = 1.5). The sequence of the three most preferred colors was white, light blue, and black and of the three least preferred colors was light orange, dark violet, and dark brown. Exp. 2 investigated the effects of color preference based on the results of Exp. 1 and brand-logo familiarity on recall. A total of 27 women and 21 men, Taiwanese college students ages 18 to 20 years (M = 19.2, SD = 1.2) participated. They memorized a list of 24 logos (four logos shown in six colors) and then performed sequential recall. Analyses showed color preference significantly affected recall accuracy. Accuracy for high color preference was significantly greater than that for low preferences. Results showed no significant effects of brand-logo familiarity or sex on accuracy. In addition, the interactive effect of color preference and brand-logo familiarity on accuracy was significant. These results have implications for the design of brand logos to create and sustain memory of brand images.

  11. LAFD: TA-55 RLUOB/CUB Facility Familiarization Tour, OJT #55265

    DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

    Rutherford, Victor Stephen

    2017-09-14

    Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) conducts familiarization tours for personnel of the Los Alamos County Fire Department (LAFD) at the RLUOB/CUB, technical area (TA)-55, 400/440, facility, Radiological Laboratory Utility Office Building (RLUOB)/Central Utility Building (CUB). These familiarization tours are official LANL business; the purpose of these tours is to orient LAFD firefighters to the facility so that they can respond efficiently and quickly to a variety of emergency situations. This orientation includes, among other topics, the ingress and egress of the area and buildings, layout and organization of the facility, evacuation procedures and assembly points, and areas of concern withinmore » the various buildings at the facility. LAFD firefighters have the skills and abilities to perform firefighting operations and other emergency response tasks that cannot be provided by other LANL personnel who have the required clearance level. This handout provides details of the information, along with maps and diagrams, to be presented during the familiarization tours. The handout is distributed to the trainees at the time of the tour; a corresponding checklist is also used as guidance during the familiarization tours to ensure that all required information is presented to LAFD personnel.« less

  12. Famous face recognition, face matching, and extraversion.

    PubMed

    Lander, Karen; Poyarekar, Siddhi

    2015-01-01

    It has been previously established that extraverts who are skilled at interpersonal interaction perform significantly better than introverts on a face-specific recognition memory task. In our experiment we further investigate the relationship between extraversion and face recognition, focusing on famous face recognition and face matching. Results indicate that more extraverted individuals perform significantly better on an upright famous face recognition task and show significantly larger face inversion effects. However, our results did not find an effect of extraversion on face matching or inverted famous face recognition.

  13. Familiarity-based memory as an early cognitive marker of preclinical and prodromal AD

    PubMed Central

    Wolk, David A.; Mancuso, Lauren; Kliot, Daria; Arnold, Steven E.; Dickerson, Bradford C.

    2013-01-01

    There is great interest in the development of cognitive markers that differentiate “normal” age-associated cognitive change from that of Alzheimer's disease (AD) in its prodromal (i.e., mild cognitive impairment; MCI) or even preclinical stages. Dual process models posit that recognition memory is supported by the dissociable processes of recollection and familiarity. Familiarity-based memory has generally been considered to be spared during normal aging, but it remains controversial whether this type of memory is impaired in early AD. Here, we describe findings of estimates of recollection and familiarity in young adults (YA), cognitively normal older adults (CN), and patients with amnestic-MCI (a-MCI). These measures in the CN and a-MCI patients were then related to a structural imaging biomarker of AD that has previously been demonstrated to be sensitive to preclinical and prodromal AD, the Cortical Signature of AD (ADsig). Consistent with much work in the literature, recollection, but not familiarity, was impaired in CN versus YA. Replicating our prior findings, a-MCI patients displayed impairment in both familiarity and recollection. Finally, the familiarity measure was correlated with the ADsig biomarker across the CN and a-MCI group, as well as within the CN adults alone. No other standard psychometric measure was as highly associated with the ADsig, suggesting that familiarity may be a sensitive biomarker of AD-specific brain changes in preclinical and prodromal AD and that it may offer a qualitatively distinct measure of early AD memory impairment relative to normal age-associated change. PMID:23474075

  14. Physical therapists familiarity and beliefs about health services utilization and health seeking behaviour.

    PubMed

    Clewley, Derek; Rhon, Dan; Flynn, Tim; Koppenhaver, Shane; Cook, Chad

    2018-02-21

    Physical therapists' familiarity, perceptions, and beliefs about health services utilization and health seeking behaviour have not been previously assessed. The purposes of this study were to identify physical therapists' characteristics related to familiarity of health services utilization and health seeking behaviour, and to assess what health seeking behaviour factors providers felt were related to health services utilization. We administered a survey based on the Andersen behavioural model of health services utilization to physical therapists using social media campaigns and email between March and June of 2017. In addition to descriptive statistics, we performed binomial logistic regression analysis. We asked respondents to rate familiarity with health services utilization and health seeking behaviour and collected additional characteristic variables. Physical therapists are more familiar with health services utilization than health seeking behaviour. Those who are familiar with either construct tend to be those who assess for health services utilization, use health services utilization for a prognosis, and believe that health seeking behaviour is measurable. Physical therapists rated need and enabling factors as having more influence on health services utilization than predisposing and health belief factors. Physical therapists are generally familiar with health services utilization and health seeking behaviour; however, there appears to be a disconnect between what is familiar, what is perceived to be important, and what can be assessed for both health services utilization and health seeking behaviour. Copyright © 2018 Associação Brasileira de Pesquisa e Pós-Graduação em Fisioterapia. All rights reserved.

  15. Familiarity Speeds Up Visual Short-term Memory Consolidation: Electrophysiological Evidence from Contralateral Delay Activities.

    PubMed

    Xie, Weizhen; Zhang, Weiwei

    2018-01-01

    To test how preexisting long-term memory influences visual STM, this study takes advantage of individual differences in participants' prior familiarity with Pokémon characters and uses an ERP component, the contralateral delay activity (CDA), to assess whether observers' prior stimulus familiarity affects STM consolidation and storage capacity. In two change detection experiments, consolidation speed, as indexed by CDA fractional area latency and/or early-window (500-800 msec) amplitude, was significantly associated with individual differences in Pokémon familiarity. In contrast, the number of remembered Pokémon stimuli, as indexed by Cowan's K and late-window (1500-2000 msec) CDA amplitude, was significantly associated with individual differences in Pokémon familiarity when STM consolidation was incomplete because of a short presentation of Pokémon stimuli (500 msec, Experiment 2), but not when STM consolidation was allowed to complete given sufficient encoding time (1000 msec, Experiment 1). Similar findings were obtained in between-group analyses when participants were separated into high-familiarity and low-familiarity groups based on their Pokémon familiarity ratings. Together, these results suggest that stimulus familiarity, as a proxy for the strength of preexisting long-term memory, primarily speeds up STM consolidation, which may subsequently lead to an increase in the number of remembered stimuli if consolidation is incomplete. These findings thus highlight the importance of research assessing how effects on representations (e.g., STM capacity) are in general related to (or even caused by) effects on processes (e.g., STM consolidation) in cognition.

  16. Predicting Intentions of a Familiar Significant Other Beyond the Mirror Neuron System

    PubMed Central

    Cacioppo, Stephanie; Juan, Elsa; Monteleone, George

    2017-01-01

    Inferring intentions of others is one of the most intriguing issues in interpersonal interaction. Theories of embodied cognition and simulation suggest that this mechanism takes place through a direct and automatic matching process that occurs between an observed action and past actions. This process occurs via the reactivation of past self-related sensorimotor experiences within the inferior frontoparietal network (including the mirror neuron system, MNS). The working model is that the anticipatory representations of others' behaviors require internal predictive models of actions formed from pre-established, shared representations between the observer and the actor. This model suggests that observers should be better at predicting intentions performed by a familiar actor, rather than a stranger. However, little is known about the modulations of the intention brain network as a function of the familiarity between the observer and the actor. Here, we combined functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) with a behavioral intention inference task, in which participants were asked to predict intentions from three types of actors: A familiar actor (their significant other), themselves (another familiar actor), and a non-familiar actor (a stranger). Our results showed that the participants were better at inferring intentions performed by familiar actors than non-familiar actors and that this better performance was associated with greater activation within and beyond the inferior frontoparietal network i.e., in brain areas related to familiarity (e.g., precuneus). In addition, and in line with Hebbian principles of neural modulations, the more the participants reported being cognitively close to their partner, the less the brain areas associated with action self-other comparison (e.g., inferior parietal lobule), attention (e.g., superior parietal lobule), recollection (hippocampus), and pair bond (ventral tegmental area, VTA) were recruited, suggesting that the more a

  17. Listen to your mother! The role of talker familiarity in infant streaming.

    PubMed

    Barker, Brittan A; Newman, Rochelle S

    2004-12-01

    Little is known about the acoustic cues infants might use to selectively attend to one talker in the presence of background noise. This study examined the role of talker familiarity as a possible cue. Infants either heard their own mothers (maternal-voice condition) or a different infant's mother (novel-voice condition) repeating isolated words while a female distracter voice spoke fluently in the background. Subsequently, infants heard passages produced by the target voice containing either the familiarized, target words or novel words. Infants in the maternal-voice condition listened significantly longer to the passages containing familiar words; infants in the novel-voice condition showed no preference. These results suggest that infants are able to separate the simultaneous speech of two women when one of the voices is highly familiar to them. However, infants seem to find separating the simultaneous speech of two unfamiliar women extremely difficult.

  18. Emotion-modulated startle in psychopathy: Clarifying familiar effects

    PubMed Central

    Baskin-Sommers, Arielle R.; Curtin, John J.; Newman, Joseph P.

    2012-01-01

    The behavior of psychopathic individuals is thought to reflect a core fear deficit that prevents these individuals from appreciating the consequences of their choices and actions. However, growing evidence suggests that psychopathy-related emotion deficits are moderated by attention and, thus, may not reflect a reduced capacity for emotion responding. The present study attempts to reconcile this attention perspective with one of the most cited findings in psychopathy, which reports emotion-modulated startle deficits among psychopathic individuals during picture viewing. In this study, we evaluate the potential effects of a putative attention bottleneck on the emotion processing of psychopathic offenders during picture viewing by manipulating picture familiarity and examining emotion-modulated startle and late positive potential (LPP). As predicted, psychopathic individuals displayed the classic deficit in emotion-modulated startle during novel pictures, but they showed no deficit in emotion-modulated startle during familiar pictures. Conversely, results for LPP responses revealed psychopathy-related differences during familiar pictures and no psychopathy-related differences during novel pictures. Important differences related to the two Factors of psychopathy are also discussed. Overall, the results of this study not only highlight the differential importance of perceptual load on emotion processing in psychopathy, but also raise interesting questions about the varied effects of attention on psychopathy-related emotion deficits. PMID:23356218

  19. Familiarity, but not Recollection, Supports the Between-Subject Production Effect in Recognition Memory

    PubMed Central

    2016-01-01

    Five experiments explored the basis of the between-subjects production effect in recognition memory as represented by differences in the recollection and familiarity of produced (read aloud) and nonproduced (read silently) words. Using remember-know judgments (Experiment 1b) and a dual-process signal-detection approach applied to confidence ratings (Experiments 2b and 3), we observed that production influences familiarity but not recollection when manipulated between-subjects. This is in contrast to within-subject designs, which reveal a clear effect of production on both recollection and familiarity (Experiments 1a and 2a). Our findings resolve contention concerning apparent design effects: Whereas the within-subject production effect is subserved by separable recollective- and familiarity-based components, the between-subjects production effect is subserved by the familiarity-based component alone. Our findings support a role for the relative distinctiveness of production as a means of guiding recognition judgments (at least when manipulated within-subjects), but we also propose that production influences the strength of produced items, explaining the persistence of the effect in between-subjects designs. PMID:27244352

  20. Dogs’ attention towards humans depends on their relationship, not only on social familiarity

    PubMed Central

    Horn, Lisa; Range, Friederike; Huber, Ludwig

    2014-01-01

    Both in humans and non-human animals it has been shown that individuals attend more to those they have previously interacted with and/or that they are more closely associated with than to unfamiliar individuals. Whether this preference is mediated by mere social familiarity based on exposure or by the specific relationship between the two individuals, however, remains unclear. The domestic dog is an interesting subject in this line of research as it lives in the human environment and regularly interacts with numerous humans, yet it often has a particularly close relationship with its owner. Therefore, we investigated how long dogs (Canis familiaris) would attend to the actions of two familiar humans and one unfamiliar experimenter, while varying whether dogs had a close relationship with only one or both familiar humans. Our data provide evidence that social familiarity by itself cannot account for dogs’ increased attention towards their owners since they only attended more to those familiar humans with whom they also had a close relationship. PMID:23224364

  1. The use of cue familiarity during retrieval failure is affected by past versus future orientation.

    PubMed

    Cleary, Anne M

    2015-01-01

    Cue familiarity that is brought on by cue resemblance to memory representations is useful for judging the likelihood of a past occurrence with an item that fails to actually be retrieved from memory. The present study examined the extent to which this type of resemblance-based cue familiarity is used in future-oriented judgments made during retrieval failure. Cue familiarity was manipulated using a previously-established method of creating differing degrees of feature overlap between the cue and studied items in memory, and the primary interest was in how these varying degrees of cue familiarity would influence future-oriented feeling-of-knowing (FOK) judgments given in instances of cued recall failure. The present results suggest that participants do use increases in resemblance-based cue familiarity to infer an increased likelihood of future recognition of an unretrieved target, but not to the extent that they use it to infer an increased likelihood of past experience with an unretrieved target. During retrieval failure, the increase in future-oriented FOK judgments with increasing cue familiarity was significantly less than the increase in past-oriented recognition judgments with increasing cue familiarity.

  2. Investigating grounded conceptualization: motor system state-dependence facilitates familiarity judgments of novel tools.

    PubMed

    Matheson, Heath E; Familiar, Ariana M; Thompson-Schill, Sharon L

    2018-03-02

    Theories of embodied cognition propose that we recognize tools in part by reactivating sensorimotor representations of tool use in a process of simulation. If motor simulations play a causal role in tool recognition then performing a concurrent motor task should differentially modulate recognition of experienced vs. non-experienced tools. We sought to test the hypothesis that an incompatible concurrent motor task modulates conceptual processing of learned vs. non-learned objects by directly manipulating the embodied experience of participants. We trained one group to use a set of novel, 3-D printed tools under the pretense that they were preparing for an archeological expedition to Mars (manipulation group); we trained a second group to report declarative information about how the tools are stored (storage group). With this design, familiarity and visual attention to different object parts was similar for both groups, though their qualitative interactions differed. After learning, participants made familiarity judgments of auditorily presented tool names while performing a concurrent motor task or simply sitting at rest. We showed that familiarity judgments were facilitated by motor state-dependence; specifically, in the manipulation group, familiarity was facilitated by a concurrent motor task, whereas in the spatial group familiarity was facilitated while sitting at rest. These results are the first to directly show that manipulation experience differentially modulates conceptual processing of familiar vs. unfamiliar objects, suggesting that embodied representations contribute to recognizing tools.

  3. Children do not exhibit ambiguity aversion despite intact familiarity bias.

    PubMed

    Li, Rosa; Brannon, Elizabeth M; Huettel, Scott A

    2014-01-01

    The phenomenon of ambiguity aversion, in which risky gambles with known probabilities are preferred over ambiguous gambles with unknown probabilities, has been thoroughly documented in adults but never measured in children. Here, we use two distinct tasks to investigate ambiguity preferences of children (8- to 9-year-olds) and a comparison group of adults (19- to 27-year-olds). Across three separate measures, we found evidence for significant ambiguity aversion in adults but not in children and for greater ambiguity aversion in adults compared to children. As ambiguity aversion in adults has been theorized to result from a preference to bet on the known and avoid the unfamiliar, we separately measured familiarity bias and found that children, like adults, are biased towards the familiar. Our findings indicate that ambiguity aversion emerges across the course of development between childhood and adolescence, while a familiarity bias is already present in childhood.

  4. Children do not exhibit ambiguity aversion despite intact familiarity bias

    PubMed Central

    Li, Rosa; Brannon, Elizabeth M.; Huettel, Scott A.

    2015-01-01

    The phenomenon of ambiguity aversion, in which risky gambles with known probabilities are preferred over ambiguous gambles with unknown probabilities, has been thoroughly documented in adults but never measured in children. Here, we use two distinct tasks to investigate ambiguity preferences of children (8- to 9-year-olds) and a comparison group of adults (19- to 27-year-olds). Across three separate measures, we found evidence for significant ambiguity aversion in adults but not in children and for greater ambiguity aversion in adults compared to children. As ambiguity aversion in adults has been theorized to result from a preference to bet on the known and avoid the unfamiliar, we separately measured familiarity bias and found that children, like adults, are biased towards the familiar. Our findings indicate that ambiguity aversion emerges across the course of development between childhood and adolescence, while a familiarity bias is already present in childhood. PMID:25601848

  5. Dogs and their human companions: the effect of familiarity on dog-human interactions.

    PubMed

    Kerepesi, Andrea; Dóka, Antal; Miklósi, Ádám

    2015-01-01

    There are few quantitative examinations of the extent to which dogs discriminate between familiar and unfamiliar persons. In our study we have investigated whether dogs show differential behaviour towards humans of different degrees of familiarity (owner, familiar person, unfamiliar person). Dogs and humans were observed in eight test situations: (1) Three-way strange situation test, (2) Calling in from food, (3) Obedience test, (4) Walking away, (5) Threatening approach, (6) Playful interaction, (7) Food inhibition test and (8) Manipulation of the dog's body. Dogs distinguished between the owner and the two other test partners in those tests which involved separation from the owner (Test 1, 4), were aversive for the dog (Test 5) or involved playing interaction (Test 6). Our results revealed that the owner cannot be replaced by a familiar person in situations provoking elevated anxiety and fear. In contrasts, dogs did not discriminate between the owner and the familiar person in those tests that were based on obedient behaviour or behaviour towards an assertive person (Tests 2, 3, 7 and 8). Dogs' former training experience reduced the difference between their behaviour towards the owner and the familiar person in situations requiring obedience but it did not mask it totally. The dogs' behaviour towards each of the humans participating in the tests was consistent all over the test series. In summary, dogs discriminated between their owner and the unfamiliar person and always preferred the owner to the unfamiliar person. However, the discrimination between the owner and the familiar person is context-specific. This article is part of a Special Issue entitled: Canine Behavior. Copyright © 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

  6. Smells familiar: group-joining decisions of predatory mites are mediated by olfactory cues of social familiarity☆

    PubMed Central

    Muleta, Muluken G.; Schausberger, Peter

    2013-01-01

    Group-living animals frequently have to trade off the costs and benefits of leaving an established group and joining another group. Owing to their high fitness relevance, group-joining decisions are commonly nonrandom and may be based on traits of both individual members and the group such as life stage, body size, social status and group density or size, respectively. Many group-living animals are able to recognize and to associate preferentially with familiar individuals, i.e. those encountered before. Hence, after dispersing from established groups, animals commonly have to decide whether to join a new familiar or unfamiliar group. Using binary choice situations we assessed the effects of social familiarity on group-joining behaviour of the plant-inhabiting predatory mite Phytoseiulus persimilis. Group living in P. persimilis is brought about by the patchy distribution of its spider mite prey and mutual conspecific attraction. In the first experiment, gravid predator females given a choice between spider mite patches occupied by unfamiliar and familiar groups of females strongly preferred to join familiar groups and to deposit their eggs in these patches. Preference for socially familiar groups was robust across biases of spider mite prey densities between choice options. The second experiment revealed that the predatory mite females can smell social familiarity from a distance. Females subjected to odour choice situations in artificial cages were more strongly attracted to the odour of familiar than unfamiliar groups. We argue that P. persimilis females preferentially join socially familiar groups because a familiar social environment relaxes competition and optimizes foraging and reproduction. PMID:24027341

  7. Visual laterality in dolphins: importance of the familiarity of stimuli

    PubMed Central

    2012-01-01

    Background Many studies of cerebral asymmetries in different species lead, on the one hand, to a better understanding of the functions of each cerebral hemisphere and, on the other hand, to develop an evolutionary history of hemispheric laterality. Our animal model is particularly interesting because of its original evolutionary path, i.e. return to aquatic life after a terrestrial phase. The rare reports concerning visual laterality of marine mammals investigated mainly discrimination processes. As dolphins are migrant species they are confronted to a changing environment. Being able to categorize new versus familiar objects would allow dolphins a rapid adaptation to novel environments. Visual laterality could be a prerequisite to this adaptability. To date, no study, to our knowledge, has analyzed the environmental factors that could influence their visual laterality. Results We investigated visual laterality expressed spontaneously at the water surface by a group of five common bottlenose dolphins (Tursiops truncatus) in response to various stimuli. The stimuli presented ranged from very familiar objects (known and manipulated previously) to familiar objects (known but never manipulated) to unfamiliar objects (unknown, never seen previously). At the group level, dolphins used their left eye to observe very familiar objects and their right eye to observe unfamiliar objects. However, eyes are used indifferently to observe familiar objects with intermediate valence. Conclusion Our results suggest different visual cerebral processes based either on the global shape of well-known objects or on local details of unknown objects. Moreover, the manipulation of an object appears necessary for these dolphins to construct a global representation of an object enabling its immediate categorization for subsequent use. Our experimental results pointed out some cognitive capacities of dolphins which might be crucial for their wild life given their fission-fusion social system

  8. Visual laterality in dolphins: importance of the familiarity of stimuli.

    PubMed

    Blois-Heulin, Catherine; Crével, Mélodie; Böye, Martin; Lemasson, Alban

    2012-01-12

    Many studies of cerebral asymmetries in different species lead, on the one hand, to a better understanding of the functions of each cerebral hemisphere and, on the other hand, to develop an evolutionary history of hemispheric laterality. Our animal model is particularly interesting because of its original evolutionary path, i.e. return to aquatic life after a terrestrial phase. The rare reports concerning visual laterality of marine mammals investigated mainly discrimination processes. As dolphins are migrant species they are confronted to a changing environment. Being able to categorize new versus familiar objects would allow dolphins a rapid adaptation to novel environments. Visual laterality could be a prerequisite to this adaptability. To date, no study, to our knowledge, has analyzed the environmental factors that could influence their visual laterality. We investigated visual laterality expressed spontaneously at the water surface by a group of five common bottlenose dolphins (Tursiops truncatus) in response to various stimuli. The stimuli presented ranged from very familiar objects (known and manipulated previously) to familiar objects (known but never manipulated) to unfamiliar objects (unknown, never seen previously). At the group level, dolphins used their left eye to observe very familiar objects and their right eye to observe unfamiliar objects. However, eyes are used indifferently to observe familiar objects with intermediate valence. Our results suggest different visual cerebral processes based either on the global shape of well-known objects or on local details of unknown objects. Moreover, the manipulation of an object appears necessary for these dolphins to construct a global representation of an object enabling its immediate categorization for subsequent use. Our experimental results pointed out some cognitive capacities of dolphins which might be crucial for their wild life given their fission-fusion social system and migratory behaviour.

  9. Familiarity with and social distance from people who have serious mental illness.

    PubMed

    Corrigan, P W; Green, A; Lundin, R; Kubiak, M A; Penn, D L

    2001-07-01

    This study examined the effects of familiarity with and social distance from persons who have serious mental illness on stigmatizing attitudes about mental illness. A total of 208 community college students completed three written measures about familiarity, perception of dangerousness, fear, and social distance. Path analysis with manifest-variable structural modeling techniques was used to test a version of a model in which familiarity influences the perception of dangerousness, which in turn influences fear, which influences social distance from persons with serious mental illness. Most of the participants reported experience with mental illness. Scores on the three written measures largely supported the path model. Correlations between the perception of dangerousness and fear as well as between fear and social distance were particularly strong. Approaches to social change that increase the public's familiarity with serious mental illness will decrease stigma. Further studies are warranted that focus on how contact between members of the general public and persons who have serious mental illness may be facilitated.

  10. Face recognition system and method using face pattern words and face pattern bytes

    DOEpatents

    Zheng, Yufeng

    2014-12-23

    The present invention provides a novel system and method for identifying individuals and for face recognition utilizing facial features for face identification. The system and method of the invention comprise creating facial features or face patterns called face pattern words and face pattern bytes for face identification. The invention also provides for pattern recognitions for identification other than face recognition. The invention further provides a means for identifying individuals based on visible and/or thermal images of those individuals by utilizing computer software implemented by instructions on a computer or computer system and a computer readable medium containing instructions on a computer system for face recognition and identification.

  11. The effect of product characteristic familiarity on product recognition

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Yang, Cheng; An, Fang; Chen, Chen; Zhu, Bin

    2017-09-01

    In order to explore the effect of product appearance characteristic familiarity on product recognition, both EEG experiment and questionnaire evaluation are used in this research. The objective feedback of user is obtained through the EEG experiment and the subjective opinions are collected through the questionnaires. The EEG experiment is combined with the classical learning-recognition paradigm, and the old-new effect of recognition experiment is used as a metric of recognition degree. Experimental results show that the difference of characteristic familiarity does have a significant effect on product recognition. The conclusion can be used in innovation design.

  12. Mirror self-face perception in individuals with schizophrenia: Feelings of strangeness associated with one's own image.

    PubMed

    Bortolon, Catherine; Capdevielle, Delphine; Altman, Rosalie; Macgregor, Alexandra; Attal, Jérôme; Raffard, Stéphane

    2017-07-01

    Self-face recognition is crucial for sense of identity and for maintaining a coherent sense of self. Most of our daily life experiences with the image of our own face happen when we look at ourselves in the mirror. However, to date, mirror self-perception in schizophrenia has received little attention despite evidence that face recognition deficits and self abnormalities have been described in schizophrenia. Thus, this study aims to investigate mirror self-face perception in schizophrenia patients and its correlation with clinical symptoms. Twenty-four schizophrenia patients and twenty-five healthy controls were explicitly requested to describe their image in detail during 2min whilst looking at themselves in a mirror. Then, they were asked to report whether they experienced any self-face recognition difficulties. Results showed that schizophrenia patients reported more feelings of strangeness towards their face compared to healthy controls (U=209.5, p=0.048, r=0.28), but no statistically significant differences were found regarding misidentification (p=0.111) and failures in recognition (p=0.081). Symptoms such as hallucinations, somatic concerns and depression were also associated with self-face perception abnormalities (all p-values>0.05). Feelings of strangeness toward one's own face in schizophrenia might be part of a familiar face perception deficit or a more global self-disturbance, which is characterized by a loss of self-other boundaries and has been associated with abnormal body experiences and first rank symptoms. Regarding this last hypothesis, multisensorial integration might have an impact on the way patients perceive themselves since it has an important role in mirror self-perception. Copyright © 2017. Published by Elsevier B.V.

  13. A different pattern of lateralised brain activity during processing of loved faces in men and women: a MEG study.

    PubMed

    Tiedt, Hannes O; Beier, Klaus M; Lueschow, Andreas; Pauls, Alfred; Weber, Joachim E

    2014-12-01

    Viewing personally familiar and loved faces evokes a distinct pattern of brain activity as demonstrated by research employing imaging and electrophysiological methods. The aim of the current investigation was to study the perception of loved faces combined with recalling past emotional experiences using whole-head magnetoencephalograpy (MEG). Twenty-eight participants (fourteen female) viewed photographs of their romantic partner as well as of two long-term friends while imagining a positive emotional encounter with the respective person. Face-stimuli evoked a slow and sustained shift of magnetic activity from 300ms post-stimulus onwards which differentiated loved from friends' faces in female participants and left-sided sensors only. This late-latency evoked magnetic field resembled (as its magnetic counterpart) ERP-modulations by affective content and memory, most notably the late positive potential (LPP). We discuss our findings in the light of studies suggesting greater responsiveness to affective cues in women as well as sex differences in autobiographical and emotional memory. Copyright © 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

  14. Affect and Cognition in Attitude Formation toward Familiar and Unfamiliar Attitude Objects.

    PubMed

    van Giesen, Roxanne I; Fischer, Arnout R H; van Dijk, Heleen; van Trijp, Hans C M

    2015-01-01

    At large attitudes are built on earlier experience with the attitude object. If earlier experiences are not available, as is the case for unfamiliar attitude objects such as new technologies, no stored evaluations exist. Yet, people are still somehow able to construct attitudes on the spot. Depending on the familiarity of the attitude object, attitudes may find their basis more in affect or cognition. The current paper investigates differences in reliance on affect or cognition in attitude formation toward familiar and unfamiliar realistic attitude objects. In addition, individual differences in reliance on affect (high faith in intuition) or cognition (high need for cognition) are taken into account. In an experimental survey among Dutch consumers (N = 1870), we show that, for unfamiliar realistic attitude objects, people rely more on affect than cognition. For familiar attitude objects where both affective and cognitive evaluations are available, high need for cognition leads to more reliance on cognition, and high faith in intuition leads to more reliance on affect, reflecting the influence of individually preferred thinking style. For people with high need for cognition, cognition has a higher influence on overall attitude for both familiar and unfamiliar realistic attitude objects. On the other hand, affect is important for people with high faith in intuition for both familiar and unfamiliar attitude objects and for people with low faith in intuition for unfamiliar attitude objects; this shows that preferred thinking style is less influential for unfamiliar objects. By comparing attitude formation for familiar and unfamiliar realistic attitude objects, this research contributes to understanding situations in which affect or cognition is the better predictor of overall attitudes.

  15. Affect and Cognition in Attitude Formation toward Familiar and Unfamiliar Attitude Objects

    PubMed Central

    van Giesen, Roxanne I.

    2015-01-01

    At large attitudes are built on earlier experience with the attitude object. If earlier experiences are not available, as is the case for unfamiliar attitude objects such as new technologies, no stored evaluations exist. Yet, people are still somehow able to construct attitudes on the spot. Depending on the familiarity of the attitude object, attitudes may find their basis more in affect or cognition. The current paper investigates differences in reliance on affect or cognition in attitude formation toward familiar and unfamiliar realistic attitude objects. In addition, individual differences in reliance on affect (high faith in intuition) or cognition (high need for cognition) are taken into account. In an experimental survey among Dutch consumers (N = 1870), we show that, for unfamiliar realistic attitude objects, people rely more on affect than cognition. For familiar attitude objects where both affective and cognitive evaluations are available, high need for cognition leads to more reliance on cognition, and high faith in intuition leads to more reliance on affect, reflecting the influence of individually preferred thinking style. For people with high need for cognition, cognition has a higher influence on overall attitude for both familiar and unfamiliar realistic attitude objects. On the other hand, affect is important for people with high faith in intuition for both familiar and unfamiliar attitude objects and for people with low faith in intuition for unfamiliar attitude objects; this shows that preferred thinking style is less influential for unfamiliar objects. By comparing attitude formation for familiar and unfamiliar realistic attitude objects, this research contributes to understanding situations in which affect or cognition is the better predictor of overall attitudes. PMID:26517876

  16. Recognition of familiar food activates feeding via an endocrine serotonin signal in Caenorhabditis elegans

    PubMed Central

    Song, Bo-mi; Faumont, Serge; Lockery, Shawn; Avery, Leon

    2013-01-01

    Familiarity discrimination has a significant impact on the pattern of food intake across species. However, the mechanism by which the recognition memory controls feeding is unclear. Here, we show that the nematode Caenorhabditis elegans forms a memory of particular foods after experience and displays behavioral plasticity, increasing the feeding response when they subsequently recognize the familiar food. We found that recognition of familiar food activates the pair of ADF chemosensory neurons, which subsequently increase serotonin release. The released serotonin activates the feeding response mainly by acting humorally and directly activates SER-7, a type 7 serotonin receptor, in MC motor neurons in the feeding organ. Our data suggest that worms sense the taste and/or smell of novel bacteria, which overrides the stimulatory effect of familiar bacteria on feeding by suppressing the activity of ADF or its upstream neurons. Our study provides insight into the mechanism by which familiarity discrimination alters behavior. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.7554/eLife.00329.001 PMID:23390589

  17. Recognition of familiar food activates feeding via an endocrine serotonin signal in Caenorhabditis elegans.

    PubMed

    Song, Bo-Mi; Faumont, Serge; Lockery, Shawn; Avery, Leon

    2013-02-05

    Familiarity discrimination has a significant impact on the pattern of food intake across species. However, the mechanism by which the recognition memory controls feeding is unclear. Here, we show that the nematode Caenorhabditis elegans forms a memory of particular foods after experience and displays behavioral plasticity, increasing the feeding response when they subsequently recognize the familiar food. We found that recognition of familiar food activates the pair of ADF chemosensory neurons, which subsequently increase serotonin release. The released serotonin activates the feeding response mainly by acting humorally and directly activates SER-7, a type 7 serotonin receptor, in MC motor neurons in the feeding organ. Our data suggest that worms sense the taste and/or smell of novel bacteria, which overrides the stimulatory effect of familiar bacteria on feeding by suppressing the activity of ADF or its upstream neurons. Our study provides insight into the mechanism by which familiarity discrimination alters behavior.DOI:http://dx.doi.org/10.7554/eLife.00329.001.

  18. Linguistic Familiarity in Short-Term Memory: A Role for (Co-)Articulatory Fluency?

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Woodward, Amelia J.; Macken, William J.; Jones, Dylan M.

    2008-01-01

    Enhanced serial recall for linguistically familiar material is usually attributed to a process of item redintegration. The possibility tested here is that familiarity influences memory at the sequence level by enhancing the fluency with which items may be assembled into sequences. Experiment 1 showed that with practice, serial recall of nonwords…

  19. Influence of text type, topic familiarity, and stuttering frequency on listener recall, comprehension, and mental effort.

    PubMed

    Panico, James; Healey, E Charles

    2009-04-01

    To determine how text type, topic familiarity, and stuttering frequency influence listener recall, comprehension, and perceived mental effort. Sixty adults listened to familiar and unfamiliar narrative and expository texts produced with 0%, 5%, 10%, and 15% stuttering. Participants listened to 4 experimental text samples at only 1 stuttering frequency. After hearing the text samples, each listener performed a free recall task, answered cued recall questions, answered story comprehension questions, and rated their perceived mental effort. Free and cued recall as well as story comprehension scores were higher for narrative than for expository texts. Free and cued recall scores were better for familiar than for unfamiliar stories, although topic familiarity did not affect story comprehension scores. Samples with all levels of stuttering resulted in higher mental effort ratings for both text types and topic familiarities. Stuttering has a greater influence on listener recall and comprehension for narrative than for expository texts. Topic familiarity affects free and cued recall but has no influence on story comprehension. Regardless of the amount of stuttering, mental effort was high for both text types and levels of familiarity.

  20. Virtual & Real Face to Face Teaching

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Teneqexhi, Romeo; Kuneshka, Loreta

    2016-01-01

    In traditional "face to face" lessons, during the time the teacher writes on a black or white board, the students are always behind the teacher. Sometimes, this happens even in the recorded lesson in videos. Most of the time during the lesson, the teacher shows to the students his back not his face. We do not think the term "face to…