The temporal dynamics of familiar face recognition: Event-related brain potentials reveal the efficient activation of facial identity representations.

While it is widely known that humans are typically highly accurate at recognizing familiar faces, it is less clear how efficiently recognition is achieved. In a series of three experiments, we used event-related brain potentials (ERP) in a repetition priming paradigm to examine the efficiency of familiar face recognition. Specifically, we varied the presentation time of the prime stimulus between 500 ms and 33 ms (Experiments 1 and 2), and additionally used backward masks (Experiment 3) to prevent the potential occurrence of visual aftereffects.

How neural representations of newly learnt faces change over time: Event-related brain potential evidence for overnight consolidation.

Previous experiments have shown that a brief encounter with a previously unfamiliar person leads to the establishment of new facial representations, which can be activated by completely novel pictures of the newly learnt face. The present study examined how stable such novel neural representations are over time, and, specifically, how they become consolidated within the first 24 h after learning. Using event-related brain potentials (ERPs) in a between-participants design, we demonstrate that clear face familiarity effects in the occipito-temporal N250 are evident immediately after learning.

Personal familiarity of faces, animals, objects, and scenes: Distinct perceptual and overlapping conceptual representations.

While face, object, and scene recognition are often studied at a basic categorization level (e.g. "a face", "a car", "a kitchen"), we frequently recognise individual items of these categories as unique entities (e.

Developing familiarity during the first eight months of knowing a person: A longitudinal EEG study on face and identity learning.

It is well-established that familiar and unfamiliar faces are processed differently, but surprisingly little is known about how familiarity builds up over time and how novel faces gradually become represented in the brain. Here, we used event-related brain potentials (ERPs) in a pre-registered, longitudinal study to examine the neural processes accompanying face and identity learning during the first eight months of knowing a person. Specifically, we examined how increasing real-life familiarity affects visual recognition (N250 Familiarity Effect) and the integration of person-related knowledge (Sustained Familiarity Effect, SFE).

How quickly do we learn new faces in everyday life? Neurophysiological evidence for face identity learning after a brief real-life encounter.

Faces learnt in a single experimental session elicit a familiarity effect in event-related brain potentials (ERPs), with more negative amplitudes for newly learnt relative to unfamiliar faces in the N250 component. However, no ERP study has examined face learning following a brief real-life encounter, and it is not clear how long it takes to learn new faces in such ecologically more valid conditions. To investigate these questions, the present study examined whether robust image-independent representations, as reflected in the N250 familiarity effect, could be established after a brief unconstrained social interaction by analysing the ERPs elicited by highly variable images of the newly learnt identity and an unfamiliar person.

The time it takes to truly know someone: Neurophysiological correlates of face and identity learning during the first two years.

How long does it take to truly know a person? To answer this question, we investigated how event-related brain potential (ERP) correlates of facial familiarity (N250) and the integration of identity-specific knowledge (Sustained Familiarity Effect, SFE) develop over time. Sixty undergraduate students from three year groups were tested with images of a university friend (with two, 14, and 26 months of familiarity for Year 1, Year 2, and Year 3 students), a highly familiar friend from home, and an unfamiliar identity. While clear ERP familiarity effects for home friends were observed in all groups, university friends yielded a clear N250 effect but only a small SFE in Year 1.