58 research outputs found
Generalization across view in face memory and face matching
No full textWhile a change in view is considered to be one of the most damaging manipulations for facial identification, this phenomenon has been measured traditionally with tasks that confound perceptual processes with recognition memory. This study explored facial identification with a pairwise matching task to determine whether view generalization is possible when memory factors are minimized. Experiment 1 showed that the detrimental view effect in recognition memory is attenuated in face matching. Moreover, analysis of individual differences revealed that some observers can identify faces across view with perfect accuracy. This was replicated in Experiment 2, which also showed that view generalization is unaffected when only the internal facial features are shown. These results indicate that the view effect in recognition memory does not arise from data limits, whereby faces contain insufficient visual information to allow identification across views. Instead, these findings point to resource limits, within observers, that hamper such person identification in recognition memory
Facial Memory: The Role of the Pre-Existing Knowledge in Face Processing and Recognition
No full textFaces are visual stimuli full of information. Depending upon the familiarity with a face, the information we can extract will differ, so the more familiarity with a face, the more information that can be extracted from it. The present article reviews the role that pre-existing knowledge of a face has in its processing. Here, we focus on behavioral, electrophysiological and neuroimaging evidence. The influence of familiarity in early stages (attention, perception and working memory) and in later stages (pre-semantic and semantic knowledge) of the processing are discussed. The differences in brain anatomy for familiar and unfamiliar faces are also considered. As it will be shown, experimental data seems to support that familiarity can affect even the earliest stages of the recognition
Exploring the Role of Foveal and Extrafoveal Processing in Emotion Recognition: A Gaze-Contingent Study.
No full textAlthough the eye-tracking technique has been widely used to passively study emotion recognition, no studies have utilised this technique to actively manipulate eye-gaze strategies during the recognition facial emotions. The present study aims to fill this gap by employing a gaze-contingent paradigm. Observers were asked to determine the emotion displayed by centrally presented upright or inverted faces. Under the window condition, only a single fixated facial feature was available at a time, only allowing for foveal processing. Under the mask condition, the fixated facial feature was masked while the rest of the face remained visible, thereby disrupting foveal processing but allowing for extrafoveal processing. These conditions were compared with a full-view condition. The results revealed that while both foveal and extrafoveal information typically contribute to emotion identification, at a standard conversation distance, the latter alone generally suffices for efficient emotion identification
Commentary: My face or yours? Event-related potential correlates of self-face processing
No full textMultisensory and Gaze-Contingent Stimulation of the Own Face
No full textWhen observers’ own face is stroked in synchrony, but not in asynchrony with another face, they tend to perceive that face as more similar to their own and report that it belongs to them. This “enfacement effect” appears to be a compelling illusion and also modulates social cognitive processes. This thesis further examined the effect of such synchronous multisensory stimulation on physical and psychological aspects of the self. Chapter 2 explored whether multisensory facial stimulation can reduce racial prejudice. White observers’ faces were stroked with a cotton bud while they watched a black face being stroked in synchrony. This was compared with a no-touch and an asynchronous stroking condition. Across three experiments, observers consistently reported an enfacement illusion after the synchronous condition. However, this effect did not produce concurrent changes in implicit or explicit racial prejudice.
Chapter 3 explored whether a similar enfacement effect can be elicited with a novel gaze-contingent mirror paradigm. In this paradigm, an onscreen face either mimicked observers’ own eye-gaze behaviour (congruent condition), moved its eyes in different directions to observers’ eyes (incongruent condition), or remains unresponsive to the observers’ gaze (neutral condition). Observers experienced a consistent enfacement illusion after the congruent condition across two of three experiments. However, while the mimicry of the onscreen face affected observers’ phenomenological experience, it did not alter their perceptual self-representations.
A final experiment, in Chapter 4, further investigated the cognitive locus of the enfacement effect by using ERPs. Observers were exposed to blocks of synchronous and asynchronous stimulation. ERPs were then recorded while observers were presented with images of (a) a synchronously stimulated face, (b) an asynchronously stimulated face, (c) their own face, (d) one of two unfamiliar filler faces and (e) an unfamiliar target face. Observers consistently reported an enfacement illusion after the synchronous condition. However, this enfacement effect was not evident in ERP components reflecting early perceptual encoding of the face (i.e., N170) or subsequent identity- and affect-related markers, such as the N250 and the P300.
Altogether the results of this thesis show that it is possible to enface a face, even when it belongs to a different ethnic group to that of the observer. This effect is such that observers report that the enfaced face belongs to them. Interestingly, a similar phenomenological enfacement experience can be obtained with gaze-contingent mirror paradigm. However, this enfacement effect seems to be too short-lived to be reflected in ERP components
Can gaze-contingent mirror-feedback from unfamiliar faces alter self-recognition?
No full textThis study focuses on learning of the self, by examining how human observers update internal representations of their own face. For this purpose, we present a novel gaze-contingent paradigm, in which an onscreen face either mimics observers’ own eye-gaze behaviour (in the congruent condition), moves its eyes in different directions to that of the observers (incongruent condition), or remains static and unresponsive (neutral condition). Across three experiments, the mimicry of the onscreen face did not affect observers’ perceptual self-representations. However, this paradigm influenced observers’ reports of their own face. This effect was such that observers felt the onscreen face to be their own and that, if the onscreen gaze had moved on its own accord, observers expected their own eyes to move too. The theoretical implications of these findings are discussed
Multisensory stimulation of the face affects personal preference but not racial preference
No full text
A multi-sensory system for self-face learning
No full textThe face is the primary visual signpost of our identity, but the process of how we know that a particular face is one’s own has only recently started to receive considerable scientific attention. This interest has been enhanced by multisensory phenomena such as the enfacement illusion. In this illusion, watching another face being stroked in synchrony with one’s own face produces a bias in self-recognition, whereby the other face is perceived as the own. Here, we argue that the enfacement illusion demonstrates that the representation of the own face is highly flexible and can be updated rapidly. This flexibility would allow the incorporation of changes in physical appearance as a consequence of, for example, ambient within-person variability, grooming activities or ageing. We further present evidence to demonstrate that the enfacement illusion not only transcends differences in visual appearance with another face, but also moderates affective and social processing of that face
Covertly instructing participants to focus of diagnostic features reduces the own-ethnicity bias in face recognition
No full textOne theory of own-ethnicity bias in face recognition is that people do not pay attention to the most diagnostically discriminating features of other-ethnicity faces, leading to poorer encoding and subsequent recognition of them. To test this theory, two standard old/new recognition paradigms were employed in which White and Black participants were covertly told to encode features that were diagnostic for discriminating between White or Black faces during the learning phase. These instructions were to rate the size of one of the more diagnostically important features: specifically, the eyes or the nose. The results indicate that this instruction was sufficient to minimise the own-ethnicity bias in face recognition offering further support to the aforementioned theory
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