Evidence for view-invariant face recognition units in unfamiliar face learning.

Many models of face recognition incorporate the idea of a face recognition unit (FRU), an abstracted representation formed from each experience of a face which aids recognition under novel viewing conditions. Some previous studies have failed to find evidence of this FRU representation. Here, we report three experiments which investigated this theoretical construct by modifying the face learning procedure from that in previous work.

Perceptual and memorial contributions to developmental prosopagnosia.

Developmental prosopagnosia (DP) is commonly associated with the failure to properly perceive individuating facial properties, notably those conveying configural or holistic content. While this may indicate that the primary impairment is perceptual, it is conceivable that some cases of DP are instead caused by a memory impairment, with any perceptual complaint merely allied rather than causal. To investigate this possibility, we administered a battery of face perception tasks to 11 individuals who reported that their face recognition difficulties disrupt daily activity and who also performed poorly on two formal tests of face recognition.

Face matching in a long task: enforced rest and desk-switching cannot maintain identification accuracy.

In face matching, observers have to decide whether two photographs depict the same person or different people. This task is not only remarkably difficult but accuracy declines further during prolonged testing. The current study investigated whether this decline in long tasks can be eliminated with regular rest-breaks (Experiment 1) or room-switching (Experiment 2).

Dissemination of well water arsenic results to homeowners in Central Maine: influences on mitigation behavior and continued risks for exposure.

Private wells in the United States are unregulated for drinking water standards and are the homeowner's responsibility to test and treat. Testing for water quality parameters such as arsenic (As) is a crucial first step for homeowners to take protective actions. This study seeks to identify key behavioral factors influencing homeowners' decisions to take action after receiving well As test results.

Discriminability effect on Garner interference: evidence from recognition of facial identity and expression.

Using Garner's speeded classification task existing studies demonstrated an asymmetric interference in the recognition of facial identity and facial expression. It seems that expression is hard to interfere with identity recognition. However, discriminability of identity and expression, a potential confounding variable, had not been carefully examined in existing studies.

British-English norms and naming times for a set of 539 pictures: the role of age of acquisition.

In the present study, we presented picture-naming latencies along with ratings for a set of important characteristics of pictures and picture names: age of acquisition, frequency, picture-name agreement, name agreement, visual complexity, familiarity, and word length. The validity of these data was established by calculating correlations with previous studies. Regression analyses show that our ratings account for a larger amount of variance in RTs than do previous data.

Age of acquisition, word frequency, and picture-word interference.

In two experiments participants named pictures superimposed with unrelated words. The age of acquisition (AoA) of the picture names was manipulated. Additionally, the word frequency (WF, Experiment 1) or AoA (Experiment 2) of the interfering distractor words was manipulated.

Face classification in schizophrenia: evidence for a sensitivity to distinctiveness.

The face-processing skills of people with schizophrenia were compared with those of a group of unimpaired individuals. Participants were asked to make speeded face-classification decisions to faces previously rated as being typical or distinctive. The schizophrenic group responded more slowly than the unimpaired group; however, both groups demonstrated the customary sensitivity to the distinctiveness of the face stimuli.

Familiar and unfamiliar face recognition: a review.

Since the 1970s there has been a continuing interest in how people recognise familiar faces (Bruce, 1979; Ellis, 1975). This work has complemented investigations of how unfamiliar faces are processed and the findings from these two strands of research have given rise to accounts that propose qualitatively different forms of representation for familiar and unfamiliar faces. Evidence to suggest that we process familiar and unfamiliar faces in different ways is available from cognitive neuropsychology, brain scanning, and psychophysics.

The varying effects of age of acquisition.

There are a number of theories that suggest that age of acquisition (AoA) effects are not uniform across different tasks. Catling and Johnston (2006a) found greater AoA effects within an object-naming task than in a semantic classification task. They explained these findings by suggesting that AoA effects might accumulate according to how many levels of representation a task necessitates access to.

Are faces special? A case of pure prosopagnosia.

The ability to recognize individual faces is of crucial social importance for humans and evolutionarily necessary for survival. Consequently, faces may be "special" stimuli, for which we have developed unique modular perceptual and recognition processes. Some of the strongest evidence for face processing being modular comes from cases of prosopagnosia, where patients are unable to recognize faces whilst retaining the ability to recognize other objects.

Age of acquisition and word frequency effects in picture naming: a dual-task investigation.

In 2 experiments, the authors explored age of acquisition (AoA) and word frequency (WF) effects in picture naming using the psychological refractory period paradigm. In Experiment 1, participants named a picture and then, a short time later, categorized 1 of 3 possible auditory tones as high, medium, or low. Both AoA (Experiment 1A) and WF (Experiment 1B) effects propagated onto tone discrimination reaction times (RTs), with the effects of AoA being stronger.

Age of acquisition affects object recognition: evidence from visual duration thresholds.

The impact of age of acquisition (AoA) on object recognition was explored in three experiments measuring visual duration threshold (VDT) for the identification of pictures labelled with early and late acquired names. Participants viewed briefly displayed images preceded and followed by a pattern mask. The minimum display duration required for correct identification was shorter for pictures labelled with early names than for those labelled with late names.

Facial emotion recognition from moving and static point-light images in schizophrenia.

It is well established that schizophrenia is associated with difficulties recognising facial expressions of emotion. It has been suggested that this impairment could be specific to moving faces [Archer, J., Hay, D.

Repetition priming of access to biographical information from faces.

Two experiments examined repetition priming on tasks that require access to semantic (or biographical) information from faces. In the second stage of each experiment, participants made either a nationality or an occupation decision to faces of celebrities, and, in the first stage, they made either the same or a different decision to faces (in Experiment 1) or the same or a different decision to printed names (in Experiment 2). All combinations of priming and test tasks produced clear repetition effects, which occurred irrespective of whether the decisions made were positive or negative.

Age of acquisition effects in the semantic processing of pictures.

In two experiments, we investigated the role of age of acquisition (AoA) in the categorizing of objects in semantic tasks that do not require access to the object names. In both a found inside or outside the house (Experiment 1A) and a smaller or larger than a loaf of bread (Experiment 2A) classification task, objects with earlier-acquired names were categorized more quickly than those with later-acquired names. Experiments 1B and 2B also showed AoA effects on object-naming times for the same pictures.

Demonstrating the acquired familiarity of faces by using a gender-decision task.

We report an experiment in which participants made gender judgments (male or female) to faces. There were three groups of faces: unfamiliar, familiar (celebrities), and a set which had been learned earlier by the participants during the experimental session. The principal purpose of this study was to establish an indirect measure of assessing whether faces have become familiar through learning that does not require overt recognition.

Exploring levels of face familiarity by using an indirect face-matching measure.

An experiment is reported in which participants matched complete images of unfamiliar, moderately familiar, and highly familiar faces with simultaneously presented images of internal and external features. Participants had to decide if the two images depicted same or different individuals. Matches to internal features were made faster to highly familiar faces than both to moderately familiar and to unfamiliar faces, and matches to moderately familiar faces were made faster than to unfamiliar faces.