I Recognize Your Face, But I Can't Remember Your Name: A Grown up Explanation

Contemporary models of face recognition explain everyday difficulties in name retrieval by proposing that name information can only be accessed after semantic information (e.g. Bruce & Young, 1986) or by proposing an architecture which puts name retrieval at a disadvantage (e.g. Burton& Bruce,1992). Experiments reportedhere examined the time requiredto access name and semantic details by adult and child subjects. In Experiment 1 adult subjects took more time to match familiar faces to names than to other semantic details (e.g. occupation), a finding consistent with all the previous literature on name retrieval. Experiment 2, however, showed that the youngest subjects were significantly faster in matching familiar faces to names than to semantic details. Experiment 3 also showed that children were faster at accessing names than occupations when giving vocal responses to presentations of familiar faces. These findings are not predicted by rigidly sequential models of face recognition and are discussed with specific reference to the ontogenesis of models based on a more flexible connectionist architecture.     

Face processing and name retrieval in an anomic aphasic: names are stored separately from semantic information about familiar people

Recent models of face recognition have proposed that the names of familiar people are accessed from a lexical memory store that is distinct from the semantic memory store that holds information about such things as a familiar person's occupation and personality. Names are nevertheless retrieved via the semantic system. If such models are correct, then it should be possible for a patient to have full access to semantic information about familiar people while being unable to name many of them. We report this pattern in an anomic aphasic patient, EST, whose inability to recall the names of familiar people occurred in the context of a general word-finding problem. EST showed a preserved ability to access semantic information from familiar faces, voices, and spoken and written names and to process facial expressions, but he was unable to name many familiar faces. These findings are compatible with current models of face processing and challenge models which propose that names are stored alongside semantic information in a general-purpose long-term memory store.     

Are Names Difficult to Recall because They Are Unique? A Case Study of a Patient with Anomia

According to Burton and Bruce (1992), names are more difficult to recall than biographical information about people, such as their occupation, because names are unique or highly distinctive. It follows from this that anomic patients who have great difficulty in recalling names should also find it difficult to recall other information that is unique to a particular individual. This paper attempts to evaluate this claim by examining the case of NP, a patient who has severe anomic word-finding difficulties following the rupture and repair of a posterior cerebral artery aneurysm. NP's ability to recall biographical information about people that she cannot name was investigated in a series of experiments. These revealed that she can answer specific questions about the occupations and appearance of well-known people and can recall distinctive meaningful information about them such as the identity of their spouse, even though she is unable to recall their name. It is argued that these results support the view that names are represented in a store separate from that for semantic information about people that we know. The findings are therefore consistent with the sequential stage model of face identification put forward by Bruce and Young (1986) and are explained in terms of the theory of speech production put forward by Levelt (1989).     

I recognize your face, but I can't remember your name: A question of expertise?

In four experiments on the identification of familiar faces we reassessed a robust performance pattern—namely, the temporal advantage for retrieving biographical facts as compared to recalling proper names, which has been interpreted as reflecting a serial ordering of the access to semantic and name information. Evidence for recent parallel accounts had been provided by Scanlan and Johnston (1997) who reported an advantage for name retrieval in children. Here we replicated the findings of Scanlan and Johnston but also showed that the naming advantage disappears, and performance is very similar to that of adults when stimuli and tasks are used that are familiar to children. Conversely, we also demonstrated an advantage for name retrieval in adults when highly unfamiliar semantic facts were associated with the faces. Together these findings suggest that there is no fundamental difference in the cognitive architectures of children and adults. The experiments indicate that the relative speed of naming and semantic fact retrieval depends on the expertise with the semantic facts to be retrieved. Implications for models of face identification and naming are discussed.     

Understanding covert recognition

An implementation of Bruce and Young's (1986) functional model of face recognition is used to examine patterns of covert face recognition previously reported in a prosopagnosic patient, PH. Although PH is unable to recognize overly the faces of people known to him, he shows normal patterns of face processing when tested indirectly. A simple manipulation of one set of connections in the implemented model induces behaviour consistent with patterns of results from PH obtained in semantic priming and interference tasks. We compare this account with previous explanations of covert recognition and demonstrate that the implemented model provides the most natural and parsimonious account available. Two further patients are discussed who show deficits in person perception. The first (MS) is prosopagnosic but shows no covert recognition. The second (ME) is not prosopagnosic, but cannot access semantic information relating to familiar people. The model provides an account of recognition impairments which is sufficiently general also to be useful in describing these patients.     

Is the Right Anterior Temporal Variant of Prosopagnosia a Form of ‘Associative Prosopagnosia’ or a Form of ‘Multimodal Person Recognition Disorder’?

The construct of associative prosopagnosia is strongly debated for two main reasons. The first is that, according to some authors, even patients with putative forms of associative visual agnosia necessarily present perceptual defects, that are the cause of their recognition impairment. The second is that in patients with right anterior temporal lobe (ATL) lesions (and sparing of the occipital and fusiform face areas), who can present a defect of familiar people recognition, with normal results on tests of face perception, the disorder is often multimodal, affecting voices (and to a lesser extent names) in addition to faces. The present review was prompted by the claim, recently advanced by some authors, that face recognition disorders observed in patients with right ATL lesions should be considered as an associative or amnestic form of prosopagnosia, because in them both face perception and retrieval of personal semantic knowledge from name are spared. In order to check this claim, we surveyed all the cases of patients who satisfied the criteria of associative prosopagnosia reported in the literature, to see if their defect was circumscribed to the visual modality or also affected other channels of people recognition. The review showed that in most patients the study had been limited to the visual modality, but that, when the other modalities of people recognition had been taken into account, the defect was often multimodal, affecting voice (and to a lesser extent name) in addition to face.     

Semantic priming of familiar faces

A series of experiments to explore the effect of priming by semantically related items in familiarity judgement tasks using faces and names that are analogous to lexical decision tasks is reported. In the first experiment, the semantic priming effect in face recognition reported by Bruce (1983) was explored in more detail by including neutral as well as associated and unrelated primes and by varying the prime-target SOA from 250 to 1,000 msec. Significant facilitation effects, with no inhibition, were found at all three SOAs. To explore the analogy between the processing of faces and verbal materials, a second experiment used names rather than faces. The difference between related and unrelated conditions at 250- and 1,000-msec SOA was similar to that found for faces in Experiment 1, but for names there was some evidence of inhibition. To investigate the locus of the priming effect with faces, in Experiment 3 the effect of degrading face targets was examined. An interaction between stimulus quality and semantic priming was observed, suggesting that the locus of the facilitation might lie at a relatively early stage in face processing. The results of these experiments illustrate further similarities between the processing of faces and verbal materials (cf. Bruce 1979, 1981).     

Children and adults recall the names of highly familiar faces faster than semantic information

Adults find it harder to remember the names of familiar people than other biographical information such as occupation or nationality. It has been suggested that the opposite effect occurs in children ( Scanlan & Johnston, 1997 ). We failed to replicate the effects found by Scanlan and Johnston and instead found that children were slower to match a name than an occupation to a famous face (Experiment 1). In Experiments 2 and 3, however, we show a temporal advantage for names in both adults and children when highly familiar faces are used. This is the case for famous and personally known faces. These results show that the speed of name retrieval is influenced by familiarity in the same way in both children and adults and indicate that children do not represent knowledge for familiar people differently from adults. The implications of these results for current models of name retrieval difficulties are discussed.     

Naming very familiar people: When retrieving names is faster than retrieving semantic biographical information

One of the most reliable findings in the literature on person indentification is that semantic categorization of a face occurs more quickly than naming a face. Here we present two experiments in which participants are shown the faces of their colleagues, i.e., personally familiar people, encountered with high frequency. In each experiment, naming was faster than making a semantic classification, despite the fact that the semantic classifications were highly salient to the participants (Experiment 1: highest degree obtained; Experiment 2: nationality). The finding is consistent with models that allow or parallel access from faces to semantic information and to names, and demonstrates the need for the frequency of exposure to names to be taken into account in models of proper name processing e.g. Burke, Mackay, Worthley and Wade (1991) .     

Strategies for learning proper names: expanding retrieval practice,meaning and imagery

Name learning strategies including retrieval practice, semantic associations and imagery were compared in laboratory‐based and real‐life experiments. Experiments 1 and 2 studied expanding retrieval practice and a semantic association strategy as memory improvement techniques for learning proper names. Participants either retrieved or restudied names on the same, expanding schedule. After a short, filled interval, cued recall of names was about 250% better following retrieval than restudy and 200% better with than without semantic associations. Together, the techniques improved recall by 300–400%. In Experiment 3, retrieval practice was compared with an imagery mnemonic for name learning under real‐life social conditions: Participants sought to learn the names of people they met at a party. Retrieval practice produced 50% higher recall after 24–72 hours but the imagery mnemonic was no more effective than non‐directed instructions to learn names. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

N200, N250r, and N400 event-related brain potentials reveal three loci of repetition priming for familiar names

The authors assessed immediate repetition effects on event-related potentials (ERPs) while participants performed familiarity decisions for written personal names. For immediately repeated familiar names, the authors observed 3 distinct ERP modulations. At 180-220 ms, a posterior N200 effect occurred for names preceded by same-font primes only. In addition, an increased left temporal negativity (N250r, 220-300 ms) and a reduced central-parietal negativity (N400, 300-400 ms) were seen both for same-font and different-font repetitions. In a 2nd experiment, when names were preceded by either their corresponding face or the face of a different celebrity, only the N400 effect was preserved. These findings suggest that the N200, N250r, and N400 effects reflect facilitated processing at font-specific featural, lexical, and semantic levels of processing, respectively.     

An ecological study of professors' memory for student names and faces: A replication and extension

Abstract

This experiment measured university professors' memory for the names and faces of current and former students over a two-semester span. If courses function as contextual retrieval cues for professors to remember their students, the passing of each semester should diminish the distinctiveness of these cues. Based on the Bruce and Young (1986) model of face recognition, we hypothesised that as contextual cues become less distinctive, performance should suffer more on name recall tests than on name or face recognition tests. We found that name free recall and portrait-cued name recall declined very sharply after one semester (6 months), and face recognition declined after two semesters (12 months), whereas name recognition remained perfect These results provide a general replication and extension of Bahrick (1984), and show that difficulties in recalling names cannot be due to any weakening of name representations in memory. We suggest that name recall may be dependent on contextual cues that become less distinctive with succeeding semesters.     

The neural substrates of action retrieval: An examination of semantic and visual routes to action

We report three PET experiments that examine the neural substrates of the conceptual components of action retrieval. In all three experiments, subjects made action or screen-size decisions to familiar objects presented either as pictures or written words (the names ofthe objects). In Experiment 1, a third task was included, requiring a decision on the real-life size of the stimuli. In Experiment 2, a third stimulus type was included, with action and size decisions also performed on pictures of meaningless novel objects. Finally, in Experiment 3, we changed the response mode from a button press to a more explicit movement made with a “manipulandum”. Based on neuropsychological findings, we predicted that when action responses were made to pictures of familiar or novel objects, relative to words, there would be less activation in semantic regions but greater activation in visual, motor, and perhaps parietal cortices. We found that, action relative to screen-size decisions on both pictures and words activated the left hemisphere temporo-frontal semantic system with activation in the left posterior middle temporal cortex specific to action retrieval (Experiment 1). In addition, action retrieval elicited more activation for (1) words than pictures in areas associated with semantics; and (2) novel objects than words or familiar objects in areas associated with pre-semantic object processing. These results are discussed in the context of semantic and visual routes to action retrieval.     

Semantic priming in the name retrieval of objects and famous faces

Researchers interested in face processing have recently debated whether access to the name of a known person occurs in parallel with retrieval of semantic‐biographical codes, rather than in a sequential fashion. Recently, Schweinberger, Burton, and Kelly (2001) took a failure to obtain a semantic context effect in a manual syllable judgment task on names of famous faces as support for this position. In two experiments, we compared the effects of visually presented categorically related prime words with either objects (e.g. prime: animal; target: dog) or faces of celebrities (e.g. prime: actor; target: Bruce Willis) as targets. Targets were either manually categorized with regard to the number of syllables (as in Schweinberger et al.), or they were overtly named. For neither objects nor faces was semantic priming obtained in syllable decisions; crucially, however, priming was obtained when objects and faces were overtly named. These results suggest that both face and object naming are susceptible to semantic context effects.     

Neuropsychological impairments in the recognition of faces, voices, and personal names

In order to determine the dissociability of face, voice, and personal name recognition, we studied the performance of 36 brain-lesioned patients and 20 control subjects. Participants performed familiarity decisions for portraits, voice samples, and written names of celebrities and unfamiliar people. In those patients who displayed significant impairments in any of these tests, the specificity of these impairments was tested using corresponding object recognition tests (with pictures of objects, environmental sounds, or written common words as stimuli). The results showed that 58% of the patients were significantly impaired in at least one test of person recognition. Moreover, 28% of the patients showed impairments that appeared to be specific for people (i.e., performance was preserved in the corresponding object recognition test). Three patients showed a deficit that appeared to be confined to the recognition of familiar voices, a pattern that was not described previously. Results were generally consistent with the assumption that impairments in face, voice, and name recognition are dissociable from one another. In contrast, there was no clear evidence for a dissociability between deficits in face and voice naming. The results further suggest that (a) impairments in person recognition after brain lesions may be more common than was thought previously and (b) the patterns of impairment that were observed can be interpreted using current cognitive models of person recognition (Bruce & Young, 1986; Burton, Bruce, & Johnston, 1990).     

Retrieval opportunities while multitasking improve name recall

In two experiments we tested whether providing retrieval opportunities while people were multitasking would improve memory for names. College students (n=195) in Experiment 1 did addition problems and intermittently were “introduced” to 12 face–name pairs to learn. For half the names students were given three within-list retrieval opportunities. Name recall (cued with the faces) was tested either immediately or after 24 hours. Retrieval opportunities improved name recall with both immediate and delayed tests. Experiment 2 more closely resembled the multitasking required in a real-life social situation. College students (n=98) viewed a videotape and were asked to learn the names of 12 dormitory residents who were introduced during an ongoing conversation. Retrieval opportunities were provided for 8 of the 12 residents by having them appear three additional times in the video without repeating their names. Retrieval opportunities improved name recall, but the effect was much smaller than in Experiment 1. The present research demonstrates that distributed retrieval can be effective when people are multitasking including when the multitasking involves a conversation.     

Memory for proper names in old age: A disproportionate impairment?

A common complaint of older adults is that they have trouble remembering names, even the names of people they know well. Two experiments examining this problem are reported in the present article. Experiment 1 tested episodic memory for surnames and occupations; older adults and younger adults under divided attention performed less well than did full attention younger adults, but showed no disproportionate loss of name information. Experiment 2 examined the ability to name photographs of public figures and of uncommon objects; this experiment therefore tested retrieval from semantic memory. In this case adults in their 70s did show an impairment in recall of names of known people, but not of known objects. Further analyses revealed systematic relations between naming, recognition, and rated familiarity of the categories used. Familiarity largely determined the proportions of recognizable items that were named in a prior phase. Overall, little evidence was found for a disproportionate age-related impairment in naming in either episodic or semantic memory.     

From Monroe to Moreau: an analysis of face naming errors.

Functional models of face recognition and speech production have developed separately. However, naming a familiar face is, of course, an act of speech production. In this paper we propose a revision of Bruce and Young's (1986) model of face processing, which incorporates two features of Levelt's (1989) model of speech production. In particular, the proposed model includes two stages of lexical access for names and monitoring of face naming based on a "perceptual loop". Two predictions were derived from the perceptual loop hypothesis of speech monitoring: (1) naming errors in which a (correct) rare surname is erroneously replaced by a common surname should occur more frequently than the reverse substitution (the error asymmetry effect); (2) naming errors in which a common surname is articulated are more likely to be repaired than errors which result in articulation of a rare surname (the error-repairing effect). Both predictions were supported by an analysis of face naming errors in a laboratory face naming task. In a further experiment we considered the possibility that the effects of surname frequency observed in face naming errors could be explained by the frequency sensitivity of lexical access in speech production. However, no effect of the frequency of the surname of the faces used in the previous experiment was found on face naming latencies. Therefore, it is concluded that the perceptual loop hypothesis provides the more parsimonious account of the entire pattern of the results.     

Access to identity-specific semantic codes from familiar faces

Information codes that can specify the surface form of a face are contrasted with semantic codes describing the properties of the person to whom the face belongs. Identity-specific semantic codes that specify characteristics of familiar people based on personal knowledge are in turn contrasted with the visually derived semantic codes and expression codes that can be derived even from unfamiliar faces. The idea that familiarity decisions (i.e., categorizing faces as belonging to known or unknown people) can be based on surface form, whereas certain types of semantic decision demand additional access to identity-specific semantic codes was investigated in four experiments. Experiments 1 and 3 showed that decisions based on identity-specific semantic codes (semantic decisions) usually take longer than decisions that do not demand access to an identity-specific semantic code (familiarity decisions). Experiment 2 showed that the use of familiar faces drawn from consistent or mixed categories affected reaction times for semantic decisions but not for familiarity decisions. Experiment 4 showed that semantic decisions to faces are taken more quickly (primed) when the faces have been recently seen, whereas there is no differential effect on semantic decisions to faces from previous semantic decisions involving the same people's names. These findings are consistent with the view that identity-specific semantic codes are accessed via face recognition units, and that outputs from face recognition units (which respond to the face's surface form) can be used as the basis for familiarity decisions.     

Effects of adult aging on utilization of temporal and semantic associations during free and serial recall

Older adults show poorer performance than young adults at word list recall, especially for order information. In contrast with this temporal association deficit, older adults are generally adept at using preexisting semantic associations, when present, to aid recall. We compared the use of temporal and semantic associations in young and older adults' word list recall following both free recall and serial recall instructions. Decomposition of serial position curves confirmed that older adults showed weakened use of temporal context in recall in relation to young adults, a difference that was amplified in serial recall. Older adults' temporal associations were also less effective than young adults' when correlated with serial recall performance. The differential age decrement for serial versus free recall was accompanied by a persistent influence of latent semantic associations in the older adults, even when maladaptive for serial recall.