Integration of faces and voices, but not faces and names, in person recognition

Recent studies on cross-modal recognition suggest that face and voice information are linked for the purpose of person identification. We tested whether congruent associations between familiarized faces and voices facilitated subsequent person recognition relative to incongruent associations. Furthermore, we investigated whether congruent face and name associations would similarly benefit person identification relative to incongruent face and name associations. Participants were familiarized with a set of talking video-images of actors, their names, and their voices. They were then tested on their recognition of either the face, voice, or name of each actor from bimodal stimuli which were either congruent or novel (incongruent) associations between the familiarized face and voice or face and name. We found that response times to familiarity decisions based on congruent face and voice stimuli were facilitated relative to incongruent associations. In contrast, we failed to find a benefit for congruent face and name pairs. Our findings suggest that faces and voices, but not faces and names, are integrated in memory for the purpose of person recognition. These findings have important implications for current models of face perception and support growing evidence for multisensory effects in face perception areas of the brain for the purpose of person recognition.     

Facilitation and interference in the color-naming task

Two experiments were conducted to evaluate the phonological activation of the name of pictures when participants had to name the color in which these pictures were depicted. In Experiment 1, participants named the color of pictures whose names and color names shared the phonological beginning (phonologically related condition), the color of pictures whose names and color names did not share phonology (phonologically unrelated condition), and the color of abstract forms (neutral condition). A facilitatory effect was obtained, so participants were faster in the related condition than in the unrelated condition. However, naming latencies were similar in the neutral condition and the unrelated condition. In Experiment 2, the unrelated condition was replaced by a phonologically incongruent condition in which the name of the picture was phonologically unrelated to its color name but related to the name of other response color names. The results showed again a facilitatory effect when the related condition was compared with the incongruent condition. Importantly, an interference effect was also observed, so naming latencies were longer in the incongruent condition than in the neutral condition. These results are discussed in terms of language production models.     

Nominal and physical decision criteria insame-different judgments

We propose a model in which the physical and nominal dimensions of letter pairs are compared independently of whether subjects use physical (shape task) or nominal (name task) identity as the decision criterion. We attempt to explain the fast-same effect, the preponderance of false-different errors, and thenominal-physical disparity as results of congruent and incongruent outputs of physical and nominal comparison devices that function in both tasks. Subjects performed both tasks with and without response deadlines. The stimuli were presented foveally or unilaterally to one or the other hemisphere. With foveal presentations, thenominal-physical disparity disappeared when congruent and incongruent cells were compared, the fast-same effect occurred only in the shape task, and there was a preponderance offalse-different errors only in the name task. Response times and error patterns from centrally presented trials conformed to the predictions of the model. Performance patterns from the lateralized trials conformed only partially. The implications of the data are discussed in the context of several theoretical models ofsame/ different judgments.     

About the unidirectionality of interference: Insight from the musical Stroop effect

The asymmetry of interference in a Stroop task usually refers to the well-documented result that incongruent colour words slow colour naming (Stroop effect) but incongruent colours do not slow colour word reading (no reverse Stroop effect). A few other studies have suggested that, more generally, a reverse Stroop effect can be occasionally observed but at the expense of the Stroop effect itself, as if interference was inherently unidirectional, from the stronger to the weaker of the two competing processes. We describe here a situation conducive to a pervasive mutual interference effect. Musicians were exposed to congruent and incongruent note name/note position patterns, and they were asked either to read the word while ignoring the location of the note within the staff, or to name the note while ignoring the note name written inside the note picture. Most of the participants exhibited interference in the two tasks. Overall, this result pattern runs against the still prevalent model of the Stroop phenomenon [Cohen, J. D., Dunbar, K., & McClelland, J. L. (1990). On the control of automatic processes: A parallel distributed processing account of the Stroop effect. Psychological Review, 97(3), 332–361]. However, further analyses lend support to one of the key tenets of the model, namely that the pattern of interference depends on the relative strength of the two competing pathways. The reasons for the impressive differences between the results collected in the present study and in the standard colour–word (or picture–word) paradigms are also examined. We suggest that these differences reveal the importance of stimulus–response contingency in the formation of automatisms.     

Contextual effects on word production: A lifespan study

The effect of sentence priming on picture naming was investigated across the lifespan, from age 3 to 87 years. Names that are normally acquired before 3 years of age were presented in auditory contexts that were semantically congruent, incongruent, or neutral in relation to each picture and its name. Sentential priming was present at all age levels. Facilitation (neutral vs. congruent) was significantly by 4 years of age and did not vary significantly with age. Interference (incongruent vs. neutral) was significant at all age levels, but changed nonmonotonically with age (largest in the youngest children, stable from young adulthood through age 70, with a small increase in the oldest participants). We conclude that picture naming is a useful tool for the investigation of sentential priming effects across the lifespan and that it can reveal potentially interesting developmental changes in the effects of sentential context on word retrieval.     

Proper-name processing: are proper names pure referencing expressions?

Theoretical models of proper-name processing have been primarily derived from studies of people's names; however, they are thought to generalize to all classes of proper name. Five experiments are reported that use repetition priming to compare different classes of proper names. It was found that for people's names and landmark names, (a) production of a name in response to seeing a picture primed a subsequent familiarity decision to the same item's written name and (b) similarly, making a familiarity decision to an auditory presentation of a name primed a familiarity decision to the same item's written name. No comparable facilitation was found for the country-name stimuli. The presence of this specific facilitation was attributed to the nature of connectivity between conceptual and lexical representations. Theoretical views that proper names are unique, meaningless labels and that they are pure referencing expressions are evaluated.     

Tracing the time course of picture--word processing

A number of independent lines of research have suggested that semantic and articulatory information become available differentially from pictures and words. The first of the experiments reported here sought to clarify the time course by which information about pictures and words becomes available by considering the pattern of interference generated when incongruent pictures and words are presented simultaneously in a Stroop-like situation. Previous investigators report that picture naming is easily disrupted by the presence of a distracting word but that word naming is relatively immune to interference from an incongruent picture. Under the assumption that information available from a completed process may disrupt an ongoing process, these results suggest that words access articulatory information more rapidly than do pictures. Experiment 1 extended this paradigm by requiring subjects to verify the category of the target stimulus. In accordance with the hypothesis that picture access the semantic code more rapidly than words, there was a reversal in the interference pattern: Word categorization suffered considerable disruption, whereas picture categorization was minimally affected by the presence of an incongruent word. Experiment 2 sought to further test the hypothesis that access to semantic and articulatory codes is different for pictures and words by examining memory for those items following naming or categorization. Categorized words were better recognized than named words, whereas the reverse was true for pictures, a result which suggests that picture naming involves more extensive processing than picture categorization. Experiment 3 replicated this result under conditions in which viewing time was held constant. The last experiment extended the investigation of memory differences to a situation in which subjects were required to generate the superordinate category name. Here, memory for categorized pictures was as good as memory for named pictures. Category generation also influenced memory for words, memory performance being superior to that following a yes--no verification of category membership. These experiments suggest a model of information access whereby pictures access semantic information were readily than name information, with the reverse being true for words. Memory for both pictures and words was a function of the amount of processing required to access a particular type of information as well as the extent of response differentiation necessitated by the task.     

Are Arabic numerals processed as pictures in a Stroop interference task?

In a picture-word interference task, picture naming is interfered by an incongruent word, but word naming is hardly hindered by the presence of an incongruent picture. In this study, we investigated whether Arabic digits are processed more like pictures or like words. We report two experiments in which Arabic digits and verbal numerals were confronted in a Stroop task. Arabic digit naming is interfered by the presence of an incongruent verbal numeral, while naming the verbal numeral is not influenced by the presence of an incongruent Arabic digit. In a second experiment, we excluded the hypothesis that the results are due to ignoring the Arabic digits: interferences from an incongruent distracter were similar for both notations in a semantic classification task. It seems that an asemantic conversion for Arabic digits is too slow to influence naming times, and that Arabic digit naming, like picture naming, is semantically mediated.     

Time course of frequency effects in spoken-word recognition: evidence from eye movements

In two experiments, eye movements were monitored as participants followed spoken instructions to click on and move pictures with a computer mouse. In Experiment 1, a referent picture (e.g., the picture of a bench) was presented along with three pictures, two of which had names that shared the same initial phonemes as the name of the referent (e.g., bed and bell). Participants were more likely to fixate the picture with the higher frequency name (bed) than the picture with the lower frequency name (bell). In Experiment 2, referent pictures were presented with three unrelated distractors. Fixation latencies to referents with high-frequency names were shorter than those to referents with low-frequency names. The proportion of fixations to the referents and distractors were analyzed in 33-ms time slices to provide fine-grained information about the time course of frequency effects. These analyses established that frequency affects the earliest moments of lexical access and rule out a late-acting, decision-bias locus for frequency. Simulations using models in which frequency operates on resting-activation levels, on connection strengths, and as a postactivation decision bias provided further constraints on the locus of frequency effects.     

A reach-to-touch investigation on the nature of reading in the Stroop task

In a Stroop task, participants can be presented with a color name printed in color and need to classify the print color while ignoring the word. The Stroop effect is typically calculated as the difference in mean response time (RT) between congruent (e.g., the word RED printed in red) and incongruent (GREEN in red) trials. Delta plots compare not just mean performance, but the entire RT distributions of congruent and incongruent conditions. However, both mean RT and delta plots have some limitations. Arm-reaching trajectories allow a more continuous measure for assessing the time course of the Stroop effect. We compared arm movements to congruent and incongruent stimuli in a standard Stroop task and a control task that encourages processing of each and every word. The Stroop effect emerged over time in the control task, but not in the standard Stroop, suggesting words may be processed differently in the two tasks.     

Cognitive representation of negative numbers

To understand negative numbers, must we refer to positive number representations (the phylogenetic hypothesis), or do we acquire a negative mental number line (the ontogenetic hypothesis)? In the experiment reported here, participants made lateralized button responses to indicate the larger of two digits from the range -9 to 9. Digit pairs were displayed spatially congruent or incongruent with either a phylogenetic or an ontogenetic mental number line. The pattern of decision latencies suggests that negative numbers become associated with left space, thus supporting the ontogenetic view.     

The effect of Stroop interference on the categorical perception of color

In two experiments, we examined the effects of Stroop interference on the categorical perception (CP; better cross-category than within-category discrimination) of color. Using a successive two-alternative forced choice recognition paradigm (deciding which of two stimuli was identical to a previously presented target), which combined to-be-remembered colors with congruent and incongruent Stroop words, we found that congruent color words facilitated CP, whereas incongruent color words reduced CP. However, this was the case only when Stroop interference was presented together with the target color, but not when Stroop stimuli were introduced at the test stage. This suggests that target name, but not test name generation, affects CP. Target name generation may be important for CP because it acts as a category prime, which, in turn, facilitates cross-category discrimination.     

Pictorial representations in adults and children

Reaction time to make same-object judgements was measured for pairs of identical pictures, picture synonyms, identical words, word synonyms, and picture-word combinations in adults and children. At all ages, synonym comparisons took longer than identical comparisons. Adults, but not children responded no faster to picture-word pairs than to picture synonym pairs. This is taken as evidence for the use of abstract pictorial information by adults but not by children. Children seem to compare two different exemplars of the same object verbally in the absence of well-integrated abstract pictorial representations.     

Depth of facial expression processing depends on stimulus visibility: Behavioral and electrophysiological evidence of priming effects

Participants performed a priming task during which emotional faces served as prime stimuli and emotional words served as targets. Prime-target pairs were congruent or incongruent, and two levels of prime visibility were obtained by varying the duration of the masked primes. To probe a neural signature of the impact of the masked primes, lateralized readiness potentials (LRPs) were recorded over motor cortex. In the high-visibility condition, responses to word targets were faster when the prime-target pairs were congruent than when they were incongruent, providing evidence of priming effects. In line with the behavioral results, the electrophysiological data showed that high-visibility face primes resulted in LRP differences between congruent and incongruent trials, suggesting that prime stimuli initiated motor preparation. Contrary to the above pattern, no evidence for reaction time or LRP differences was observed in the low-visibility condition, revealing that the depth of facial expression processing is dependent on stimulus visibility.     

Interhemispheric interaction in word‐ and color‐matching of Kanji color words1

Abstract: The aim of the present study was to investigate the possibility that a shift toward a within‐hemisphere advantage would emerge when two stimulus items receive, respectively, different processing (vs. when they receive similar processing). Using right‐handed participants, we briefly presented two Kanji color‐word items as either within‐field or across‐fields. Viewers had to match the two items in terms of ink color (a color‐matching task) or word meaning (a name‐matching task). Each Kanji color word was presented with the same (congruent) or different (incongruent) ink color relative to the word meaning. Our results were twofold. First, a within‐field advantage appeared in the relatively easier color‐matching task, whereas an across‐field advantage tended to occur in the relatively harder name‐matching task. Second, in the word‐matching task an across‐field advantage appeared when both Kanji color words appeared in similar processing manners (both congruent or both incongruent), whereas a within‐field advantage occurred when processing of two Kanji items differed (one congruent and one incongruent). These results suggested that a shift toward a within‐hemisphere advantage occurs when two items are processed in respectively different ways.     

Effects of word-onset cuing on picture naming in aphasia: a reconsideration.

When an aphasic is unable to name an object, giving the patient the opening sounds of the target name will often trigger the correct response. Eighteen aphasic subjects were tested using a gating paradigm to compare word onset durations necessary to elicit correct names after an initial naming failure with those necessary for recognizing the same words when spoken in isolation with no picture present. Prerecognition errors were also examined. Results suggested that the facilitation of naming found when examiners supply word-onset sound cues may be due in part to a two-stage process consisting of stem-completion followed by matching the picture with the potential name as generated.     

Verbal coding and the elimination of Stroop interference in a matching task

Translational models of the Stroop effect (Virzi & Egeth, 1985) predict that Stroop interference can be eliminated if subjects can be induced to process target colors using a coding system separate from the coding system used to process distractors. This hypothesis was tested in two experiments. In the first experiment, we attempted to eliminate the need for subjects to translate target colors to verbal codes when responding to Stroop stimuli. Before responding to verbal incongruent color word distractors, subjects practiced matching colors to irregular shapes. It was expected that subjects would use nonverbal codes to mediate responding in this task. After practice, subjects continued the matching task in the presence of incongruent color words. Stroop interference persisted, contrary to predictions. Because subjects reported adopting verbal strategies to perform the matching task, Experiment 2 was designed to control the verbal coding strategies that subjects employed. Before responding to Stroop distractor stimuli, subjects in the nonsense name group practiced using nonsense names to mediate the matching of shapes to colors; subjects in the actual name group used actual color names to mediate performance in the matching task. When incongruent color word distractors were introduced, Stroop interference was eliminated for subjects in the nonsense name group, but persisted for subjects in the actual name group. The results are interpreted as consistent with an outcome conflict (Navon & Miller, 1987) or a modified translational model of the Stroop effect.     

Affective priming with pictures of emotional scenes: the role of perceptual similarity and category relatedness

Prime pictures portraying pleasant or unpleasant scenes were briefly presented (150-ms display; SOAs of 300 or 800 ms), followed by probe pictures either congruent or incongruent in emotional valence. In an evaluative decision task, participants responded whether the probe was emotionally positive or negative. Affective priming was reflected in shorter response latencies for congruent than for incongruent prime-probe pairs. Although this effect was enhanced by perceptual similarity between the prime and the probe, it also occurred for probes that were physically different, and the effect generalized across semantic categories (animals vs. people). It is concluded that affective priming is a genuine phenomenon, in that it occurs as a function of stimulus emotional content, in the absence of both perceptual similarity and semantic category relatedness between the prime and the probe.     

The development of memory structure as reflected by semantic-priming effects

This study was designed to investigate the development of knowledge about categorical and associative relationships as reflected by the presence or absence of semantic priming effects. Kindergarteners and second-graders were shown pairs of pictures, one picture at a time, and asked to name each picture as rapidly and accurately as possible. Picture pairs were of four types which reflected the factorial combination of associative relatedness (high and low) with categorial relatedness (high and low). An analysis of naming times revealed a significant main effect of associative relatedness, i.e., second pictures or “target” pictures in high-associative pairs were named faster than those in low-associative pairs. This reduction in naming latency, or priming effect, was independent of developmental level. However, the effects of category relatedness varied with developmental level, i.e., target pictures in high-categorical pairs were named significantly faster than those in low pairs by second-graders, but not by kindergarteners. These findings are discussed in terms of previous estimates of children's semantic competence.