Identity-specific face adaptation effects: evidence for abstractive face representations

The effects of selective adaptation on familiar face perception were examined. After prolonged exposure to photographs of a celebrity, participants saw a series of ambiguous morphs that were varying mixtures between the face of that person and a different celebrity. Participants judged fewer of the morphs to resemble the celebrity to which they had been adapted, implying that they were now less sensitive to that particular face. Similar results were obtained when the adapting faces were highly dissimilar in viewpoint to the test morphs; when they were presented upside-down; or when they were vertically stretched to three times their normal height. These effects rule out explanations of adaptation effects solely in terms of low-level image-based adaptation. Instead they are consistent with the idea that relatively viewpoint-independent, person-specific adaptation occurred, at the level of either the “Face Recognition Units” or “Person Identity Nodes” in Burton, Bruce and Johnston’s (1990) model of face recognition.     

Cognitive demands of error processing

This study used a dual-task methodology to assess attention demands associated with error processing during an anticipation-timing task. A difference was predicted in attention demands during feedback on trials with correct responses and errors. This was addressed by requiring participants to respond to a probe reaction-time stimulus after augmented feedback presentation. 16 participants (8 men, 8 women) completed two phases, the reaction time task only and the anticipation-timing task with the probe RT task. False feedback indicating error and a financial reward manipulation were used to increase relevance of errors. Data supported the hypothesis that error processing is associated with higher cognitive demands than processing feedback denoting a correct response. Individuals responded with quicker probe reaction times during presentation of feedback on correct trials than on error trials. These results are discussed with respect to the cognitive processes which might occur during error processing and their role in motor learning.     

The entry point of face recognition: evidence for face expertise.

Previous studies have shown that experts (e.g., birdwatchers) are as fast to recognize objects at subordinate levels of abstraction (e.g., robin) as they are to recognize the same object at the basic level (e.g., bird). As a test of face expertise, the current study found that adults identify faces more frequently (Experiment 1) and as quickly (Experiment 2) at the subordinate level (e.g., Bill Clinton) as at the basic level (e.g., human). Whereas brief presentation (75 ms) impaired subordinate-level recognition of nonface objects, it did not impair the subordinate level recognition of faces (Experiment 3). Finally, in an identity-matching task, subordinate-level primes facilitated the matching responses of faces but not nonface objects (Experiment 4). Collectively, these results indicate that face expertise, like expert object expertise, promotes a downward shift in recognition to more subordinate levels of abstraction.     

Endogenous visuospatial precuing effects as a function of age and task demands

This experiment examined the effects of age on processing resource capacity using an endogenous visuospatial precuing task and four levels of resource demands. Younger and older adults made speeded two-choice responses to dim and bright targets that required a line-orientation or a lexical decision. An arrow preceding target onset served as an attentional cue to affect the spatial distribution of resources. It provided accurate information about the target’s location on most trials and inaccurate or neutral information on the remaining trials. Although older adults were slower than younger adults under all conditions and were more affected by the resource demand manipulations, they exhibited a pattern of precuing effects across conditions that was similar to that of the younger adults. Results are consistent with the idea that the visuospatial attention system remains relatively unaffected by aging. However, the data speak against the idea that capacity reduction is the primary contributor to age-related slowing.     

Lateralization of visuospatial attention across face regions varies with emotional prosody

It is well-established that linguistic processing is primarily a left-hemisphere activity, while emotional prosody processing is lateralized to the right hemisphere. Does attention, directed at different regions of the talker’s face, reflect this pattern of lateralization? We investigated visuospatial attention across a talker’s face with a dual-task paradigm, using dot detection and language comprehension measures. A static image of a talker was shown while participants listened to speeches spoken in two prosodic formats, emotional or neutral. A single dot was superimposed on the speaker’s face in one of 4 facial regions on half of the trials. Dot detection effects depended on emotion condition—in the neutral condition, discriminability was greater for the right-, than for the left-, side of the face image, and at the mouth, compared to the eye region. The opposite effects occurred in the emotional prosody condition. The results support a model wherein visuospatial attention used during language comprehension is directed by the left hemisphere given neutral emotional prosody, and by the right hemisphere given primarily negative emotional prosodic cues.     

Phonological and motoric demands in handwriting: evidence for discrete transmission of information

In an experiment with handwriting tasks effects of phonological and motoric task factors upon reaction time and movement time were measured to test implications of a discrete information processing account of the task. The model is built up of serially organized stages, each of which monitors one specific type of operation, necessary to generate a message. The serial structure of the model is defined as the limitation that higher levels of the model provide their output to the next lower processor in the hierarchy, and receive their input from the next higher stage. The parallel character of the model is exemplified through the assumption that all processors are active at the same time and concurrently with the real time production of writing movements. The study adds evidence that a serial architecture of processors can be compatible with the parallel processing of a message as long as more abstract operations are prepared more in advance to real-time movements than operations lower in the hierarchy. In the experiment the prediction was tested that the time course of the manifestation of phonological and motoric task demands reflects the discrete and serial structure of the model.     

Children's face recognition memory: more evidence for the cross-race effect

It is well established that own-race faces are recognized more accurately than cross-race faces. However, there are mixed results regarding the developmental consistency of the cross-race effect White and Black kindergarten children, 3rd graders, and young adults viewed a Black and a White target individual. One day later, recognition memory for each target was tested with a 6-person lineup. The interaction of race of participant by race of target face on Ag scores was significant, demonstrating an overall cross-race effect. The 2nd-order interaction with age did not approach significance; for each age group, own-race identification was more accurate than cross-race identification. The age consistency of the cross-race effect in light of the significant main effect of age suggests quantitative but not qualitative differences in face memory processing at various ages. For children, as well as adults, own-race faces are recognized more accurately than cross-race faces.     

Electrophysiological evidence of central interference in the control of visuospatial attention

Visuospatial attention can be deployed to different locations in space without movement of the eyes. A large body of human electrophysiological studies reveals enhanced sensory-perceptual responses to stimuli that appear at an attended location. However, it is not clear that the mechanisms that underlie visuospatial attention are under the control of attention mechanisms that limit central processing in multiple-task situations. We investigated this question by incorporating a visual task that required the deployment of visuospatial attention as the second task of psychological refractory period (PRP) dual-task paradigms. The N2pc component of the event-related potential was used as an electrophysiological index of the moment-by-moment deployment of visuospatial attention to monitor when and where observers were attending while they performed concurrent central processing known to cause the PRP effect. Electrophysiological evidence shows that central processing interfered with the N2pc, suggesting that visuospatial attention is under the control of capacity-limited central mechanisms.     

Cognitive templates for religious concepts: cross-cultural evidence for recall of counter-intuitive representations

Presents results of free-recall experiments conducted in France, Gabon and Nepal, to test predictions of a cognitive model of religious concepts. The world over, these concepts include violations of conceptual expectations at the level of domain knowledge (e.g., about 'animal' or 'artifact' or 'person') rather than at the basic level. In five studies we used narratives to test the hypothesis that domain-level violations are recalled better than other conceptual associations. These studies used material constructed in the same way as religious concepts, but not used in religions familiar to the subjects. Experiments 1 and 2 confirmed a distinctiveness effect for such material. Experiment 3 shows that recall also depends on the possibility to generate inferences from violations of domain expectations. Replications in Gabon (Exp. 4) and Nepal (Exp. 5) showed that recall for domain-level violations is better than for violations of basic-level expectations. Overall sensitivity to violations is similar in different cultures and produces similar recall effects, despite differences in commitment to religious belief, in the range of local religious concepts or in their mode of transmission. However, differences between Gabon and Nepal results suggest that familiarity with some types of domain-level violations may paradoxically make other types more salient. These results suggest that recall effects may account for the recurrent features found in religious concepts from different cultures.     

Cognitive development following early brain injury: evidence for neural adaptation

Over the past few decades a large body of work from developmental neurobiology has shown that mammalian brain development is the product of dynamic and adaptive processes operating within highly constrained, but continually changing, biological and environmental contexts. The recent study of children with prenatal focal brain injury supports this dynamic view of development for humans. Children's injuries often affect substantial portions of one cerebral hemisphere, resulting in damage that would compromise cognitive ability in adults. However, longitudinal behavioral studies of this population have revealed only mild deficits. It is suggested here that children's capacity for adaptation reflects normal developmental processes operating against a backdrop of serious neural perturbation. Data from three behavioral domains--linguistics, spatial cognition and affective development--illustrate this complex profile of change.     

Movement planning and attentional control of visuospatial working memory: evidence from a grasp-to-place task

In this study, we have investigated the influence of available attentional resources on the dual-task costs of implementing a new action plan and the influence of movement planning on the transfer of information into visuospatial working memory. To approach these two questions, we have used a motor–memory dual-task design in which participants grasped a sphere and planned a placing movement toward a left or right target according to a directional arrow. Subsequently, they encoded a centrally presented memory stimulus (4 × 4 symbol matrix). While maintaining the information in working memory, a visual stay/change cue (presented on the left, center or right) either confirmed or reversed the planned movement direction. That is, participants had to execute either the prepared or the re-planned movement and finally reported the symbols at leisure. The results show that both, shifts of spatial attention required to process the incongruent stay/change cues and movement re-planning, constitute processing bottlenecks as they both reduced visuospatial working memory performance. Importantly, the spatial attention shifts and movement re-planning appeared to be independent of each other. Further, we found that the initial preparation of the placing movement influenced the report pattern of the central working memory stimulus. Preparing a leftward movement resulted in better memory performance for the left stimulus side, while the preparation of a rightward movement resulted in better memory performance for the right stimulus side. Hence, movement planning influenced the transfer of information into the capacity-limited working memory store. Therefore, our results suggest complex interactions in that the processes involved in movement planning, spatial attention and visuospatial working memory are functionally correlated but not linked in a mandatory fashion.     

Cognitive efficiency modes in old age: performance on sequential and coordinative verbal and visuospatial tasks

In an experiment using a large set of verbal and spatial tasks requiring low or high degrees of executive control, 3 distinct age-related effects were found. The smallest effect (no slowing) was tied to lexical tasks with low executive involvement, the largest deficit (age-related slowing factor of 2.2) was tied to visuospatial tasks with high executive involvement, an intermediate level of deficit (slowing factor of 1.7) was found for visuospatial tasks with low executive load and verbal tasks with high executive load. These age-related dissociations were incompatible with any "common cause" formulation. The mechanism responsible for the dissociation between verbal and visual tasks, and between low and high executive load remains to be determined. The latter may reflect capacity limits.     

Postidentification feedback effects on face recognition confidence: evidence for metacognitive influences

Information given to witnesses after an identification decision greatly alters their impressions of the original event and importantly, their identification confidence. Two experiments investigated the possibility that the effect of feedback on confidence may be altered according to the strength of the witness's cues to accuracy. Experiment 1 used a manipulation of exposure duration to alter recognition accuracy prior to the delivery of confirming, disconfirming or no feedback. While the feedback effect was not different across exposure duration conditions, decisions that were made more quickly were less likely to show large changes in confidence due to feedback. Experiment 2 manipulated the distinctiveness of faces and showed that the effects of feedback on confidence, and on the resolution of the confidence judgement, were more pronounced when disconfirming feedback was given for distinctive faces and when confirming feedback was given for typical faces. These studies showed that the impressions that participants formed of their likely accuracy might moderate the effects of feedback on decision confidence. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Cognitive overload and orthographic errors: When cognitive overload enhances subject-verb agreement errors. A study in French written language

Three experiments were carried out to test the hypothesis that cognitive overload enhances the occurrence of subject-verb agreement errors in French. Highly educated adults were presented orally with sentences they were required to write down. The sentences were of the types “N1 de N2 V” (Noun 1 of Noun 2 Verb: Le chien des voisins arrive/The neighbours' dog is arriving) versus “Prl Pr2 V” (Pronoun 1 Pronoun 2 Verb: Il les aime/He likes them). In these sentences, N1 (Pr1) and N2 (Pr2) matched or mismatched in number. In the three experiments, the sentences had to be recalled either in an isolated condition (i.e. every presented sentence had to be immediately recalled) or with a concurrent task: click counting (Experiment 2) or serial recall of series of five words presented immediately after the sentences (Experiments 1 and 3). Participants showed errors when performing two concurrent tasks and almost no error when recalling isolated sentences. As expected, errors occurred when N1 (Pr1) and N1 (Pr2) mismatched in number. The results are consistent with our hypothesis and with a functional approach of written composition.     

Effect of musical expertise on visuospatial abilities: evidence from reaction times and mental imagery

Recently, the relationship between music and nonmusical cognitive abilities has been highly debated. It has been documented that formal music training would improve verbal, mathematical or visuospatial performance in children. In the experiments described here, we tested if visual perception and imagery abilities were enhanced in adult musicians compared with nonmusicians. In our main experiment, we measured reaction times of subjects who had to detect on which side of a horizontal or a vertical line a target dot was flashed. In the "imagery" condition the reference line disappeared before the target dot was presented. In order to accomplish the task, subjects had to keep a mental image of the position of the line until the dot appeared. In the "perception" condition, the procedure and stimuli were the same except that the line remained on the screen until the dot was displayed. In both groups, reaction times were shorter for horizontal compared to vertical discrimination, but reaction times were significantly shorter in musicians in all conditions. Moreover, discrimination on the vertical dimension, especially in imaging condition, seemed to be greatly improved on the long term by musical expertise. Simple and choice visual reaction times indicate that this advantage could only be partly explained by better sensorimotor integration in adult musicians.     

Inferring social attributes from different face regions: evidence for holistic processing

Two experiments investigated the role that different face regions play in a variety of social judgements that are commonly made from facial appearance (sex, age, distinctiveness, attractiveness, approachability, trustworthiness, and intelligence). These judgements lie along a continuum from those with a clear physical basis and high consequent accuracy (sex, age) to judgements that can achieve a degree of consensus between observers despite having little known validity (intelligence, trustworthiness). Results from Experiment 1 indicated that the face's internal features (eyes, nose, and mouth) provide information that is more useful for social inferences than the external features (hair, face shape, ears, and chin), especially when judging traits such as approachability and trustworthiness. Experiment 2 investigated how judgement agreement was affected when the upper head, eye, nose, or mouth regions were presented in isolation or when these regions were obscured. A different pattern of results emerged for different characteristics, indicating that different types of facial information are used in the various judgements. Moreover, the informativeness of a particular region/feature depends on whether it is presented alone or in the context of the whole face. These findings provide evidence for the importance of holistic processing in making social attributions from facial appearance.     

Temporal integration in face perception: evidence of configural processing of temporally separated face parts

Temporal integration is the process by which temporally separated visual components are combined into a unified representation. Although this process has been studied in object recognition, little is known about temporal integration in face perception and recognition. In the present study, the authors investigated the characteristics and time boundaries of facial temporal integration. Whole faces of nonfamous and famous people were segmented horizontally into 3 parts and presented in sequence, with varying interval lengths between parts. Inversion and misalignment effects were found at short intervals (0-200 ms). Moreover, their magnitude was comparable to those found with whole-face presentations. These effects were eliminated, or substantially reduced, when the delay interval was 700 ms. Order of parts presentation did not influence the pattern of inversion effects obtained within each temporal delay condition. These results demonstrate that temporal integration of faces occurs in a temporary and limited visual buffer. Moreover, they indicate that only integrated faces can undergo configural processing.     

Cognitive appraisals and emotional experience: Further evidence

Abstract

The present study uses methods derived from Smith and Ellsworth (1985) to investigate the degree to which emotions are associated with distinctive patterns of cognitive appraisal. Subjects described past situations in which they had unambiguously experienced each of eight emotions: guilt. embarrassment, shame. anxiety. anger, hope. joy, and pride. These situations were then rated on each of 10 appraisal scales: unpleasantness. unexpectedness of events from own and from others' perspective, inconsistency of own actions with own and others' behavioural standards, benefit to self and to others, own and others' responsibility for events. and degree to which events were beyond anyone's control. Analysis of these ratings revealed distinctive patterns of appraisal associated with the eight emotions. including discriminable patterns for guilt and shame—emotions that were not distinguished in terms of the appraisal dimensions recovered by Smith and Ellsworth. Thus the present study demonstrates that appraisal dimensions (such as unexpectedness, benefit, and inconsistency with behavioural standards) in addition than those used by Smith and Ellsworth have utility in distinguishing among emotions.