The effects of spatial frequency overlap on face recognition

The effects of spatial frequency overlap between pairs of low-pass versus high-pass images on face recognition and matching were examined in 6 experiments. Overlap was defined as the range of spatial frequencies shared by a pair of filtered images. This factor was manipulated by processing image pairs with high-pass/low-pass filter pairs whose 50% cutoff points varied in their separation from one another. The effects of the center frequency of filter pairs were also investigated. In general, performance improved with greater overlap and higher center frequency. In control conditions, the image pairs were processed with identical filters and thus had complete overlap. Even severely filtered low-pass or high-pass images in these conditions produced superior performance. These results suggest that face recognition is more strongly affected by spatial frequency overlap than by the frequency content of the images.     

The effects of distinctiveness,presentation time and delay on face recognition

Abstract

The distinctiveness of a face has been found to be an important factor in face recognition. We investigated the effect of the distinctiveness of a face upon subjects' speed and accuracy of recognition following different presentation times and retention intervals. It was found that (1) hits decreased with increasing delay; (2) false alarms increased and d primes decreased with a presentation time of 1 sec compared with 5 sec; (3) distinctive faces received more hits and higher d primes than non-distinctive faces; and (4) response latencies were shorter for distinctive targets than for distinctive distraction or non distinctive targets or distractors. These results were discussed in terms of the literature on the distinctiveness effect in face recognition.     

The effects of precedence on Navon-induced processing bias in face recognition

Macrae and Lewis (2002) showed that repeated reporting of the global dimension of Navon stimuli improved performance in a subsequent face identification task, whilst reporting the features of the Navon stimuli impaired performance. Using a face composite task, which is assumed to require featural processing, Weston and Perfect (2005) showed the complementary pattern: Featural responding to Navon letters speeded performance. However, both studies used Navon stimuli with global precedence, in which the overall configuration is easier to report than the features. Here we replicate the two studies above, whilst manipulating the precedence (global or featural) of the letter stimuli in the orientation task. Both studies replicated the previously reported findings with global precedence stimuli, but showed the reverse pattern with local precedence stimuli. These data raise important questions as to what is transferred between the Navon orientation task and the face-processing tasks that follow.     

The effects of precedence on Navon-induced processing bias in face recognition

Macrae and Lewis (2002) Macrae, C. N. and Lewis, H. L. 2002. Do I know you? Processing orientation and face recognition. Psychological Science, 13: 194–196. [Crossref], [PubMed], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar] showed that repeated reporting of the global dimension of Navon stimuli improved performance in a subsequent face identification task, whilst reporting the features of the Navon stimuli impaired performance. Using a face composite task, which is assumed to require featural processing, Weston and Perfect (2005) Weston, N. J. and Perfect, T. J. 2005. The effects of processing bias on the composite effect. /precode>. Psychonomic Bulletin and Review, 12: 1038–1042. [Crossref], [PubMed], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar] showed the complementary pattern: Featural responding to Navon letters speeded performance. However, both studies used Navon stimuli with global precedence, in which the overall configuration is easier to report than the features. Here we replicate the two studies above, whilst manipulating the precedence (global or featural) of the letter stimuli in the orientation task. Both studies replicated the previously reported findings with global precedence stimuli, but showed the reverse pattern with local precedence stimuli. These data raise important questions as to what is transferred between the Navon orientation task and the face-processing tasks that follow.     

Letter recognition at low contrast levels: effects of letter size

Contrast variation was used to measure recognition thresholds for lowercase letters, with the aim of obtaining a better understanding of the role that early stages of visual processing play in letter recognition. Frequency-of-recognition curves were measured for alphabets of different letter size. Since variation of the adaptational state of the eye changes the characteristics of primary visual processing in a quantifiable way, recognition thresholds were measured both at a high (150 cd m-2) and at a low (0.9 cd m-2) adaptation level. Thresholds decreased as letter size increased, in a way comparable with data on visual acuity. At the lower adaptation level, recognition thresholds became higher, which is also in accordance with visual acuity data. Furthermore, the slopes of the frequency-of-recognition curves for alphabets as a function of log contrast decreased with decreasing letter size. It is argued that this is mainly caused by an increasing dispersion of internal representations of individual letters on the internal psychological scale as letter size decreases.     

Long-term effects of covert face recognition

Covert face recognition has previously been thought to produce only very short-lasting effects. In this study we demonstrate that manipulating subjects' attentional load affects explicit, but not implicit memory for faces, and that implicit effects can persist over much longer intervals than is normally reported. Subjects performed letter-string tasks of high vs. low perceptual load (Lavie, N. (1995). Perceptual load as a necessary condition for selective attention. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Perfomance. 21, 451-468.), while ignoring task-irrelevant celebrity faces. Memory for the faces was then assessed using (a) a surprise recognition test for the celebrities' names, and (b) repetition priming in a face familiarity task. The load manipulation strongly influenced explicit recognition memory, but had no effect on repetition priming from the same items. Moreover, faces from the high load condition produced the same amount of priming whether they were explicitly remembered or not. This result resolves a long-standing anomaly in the face recognition literature, and is discussed in relation to covert processing in prosopagnosia.     

A causal model of burnout among self-managed work team members

The findings on burnout that are almost universally from research in service settings are applied to an industrial setting with self-managed work teams. Researchers formulated several hypotheses on the basis of this literature. These hypotheses were then used to develop a structural (causal) model that was tested and refined using LISREL 8. Data were collected from 320 employees concerning perceptions of several job and organization conditions, as well as the three components of burnout. Results indicated that role conflict contributed to emotional exhaustion, and participation in work teams diminished it. Job ambiguity, low co-worker support, and low job ability contributed to feelings of low personal accomplishment. These results were consistent with previous findings. When insufficient time to complete a job was removed from the workload measures, workload actually diminished burnout, a finding opposite from previous research. Other organization factors had no significant impact on burnout in this setting.     

The effects of inversion and familiarity on face versus body cues to person recognition

Extensive research has focused on face recognition, and much is known about this topic. However, much of this work seems to be based on an assumption that faces are the most important aspect of person recognition. Here we test this assumption in two experiments. We show that when viewers are forced to choose, they do use the face more than the body, both for familiar (trained) person recognition and for unfamiliar person matching. However, we also show that headless bodies are recognized and matched with very high accuracy. We further show that processing style may be similar for faces and bodies, with inversion effects found in all cases (bodies with heads, faces alone and bodies alone), and evidence that mismatching bodies and heads causes interference. We suggest that recent findings of no inversion effect when stimuli are headless bodies may have been obtained because the stimuli led viewers to focus on nonbody aspects (e.g., clothes) or because pose and identity tasks led to somewhat different processing. Our results are consistent with holistic processing for bodies as well as faces. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved).     

Perceptual effects and recollective experience in face recognition

Four experiments were conducted investigating the effect of size congruency on facial recognition memory, measured by remember, know and guess responses. Different study times were employed, that is extremely short (300 and 700 ms), short (1,000 ms), and long times (5,000 ms). With the short study time (1,000 ms) size congruency occurred in knowing. With the long study time the effect of size congruency occurred in remembering. These results support the distinctiveness/ fluency account of remembering and knowing as well as the memory systems account, since the size congruency effect that occurred in knowing under conditions that facilitated perceptual fluency also occurred independently in remembering under conditions that facilitated elaborative encoding. They do not support the idea that remember and know responses reflect differences in trace strength.     

The effects of delay and exposure duration in a face recognition task

Face recognition was investigated in a successive comparison task. Subjects were required to makesame/different judgments about pairs of Photo-fit faces that were either identical or differed by a single feature. Picture information extraction and retention were examined by manipulating stimulus delay and exposure duration. Results indicated that overall performance was better for the top of the face. The eyes and mouth were more vulnerable than the rest of the face to recognition decrement after a delay, possibly due to their role in facial expression. When features were ranked in order of processing difficulty for each subject, it appeared that features were processed serially and delay affected a retrieval stage, while short exposure affected a visual comparison stage of processing. For the feature ranks, a single dimension of “salience” appeared to be both perceptual and mnemonic.     

Best face forward: Similarity effects in repetition priming of face recognition

Two experiments examined the graded similarity effect in the repetition priming of familiar face recognition. From the model of repetition priming proposed by Burton, Bruce, and Johnston (1990) it was predicted that similarity effects may be a confound of stimulus preparation. Experiment 1 was used to discount this hypothesis, but failed to replicate a pattern of graded priming related to the similarity of prime and target faces. Experiment 2 attempted a more extensive investigation using two different measures of prime-target similarity. The results replicated Ellis, Young, Flude, and Hay's (1987) finding that similar primes confer more priming than dissimilar ones, but found no correlation between amount of priming and the degree of prime-target resemblance for either similarity metric used. In view of these findings the mechanism of repetition priming in familiar face recognition is discussed.     

The effect of feature displacement on face recognition

Human beings possess a remarkable ability to recognise familiar faces quickly and without apparent effort. In spite of this facility, the mechanisms of visual recognition remain tantalizingly obscure. An experiment is reported in which image processing equipment was used to displace slightly the features of a set of original facial images to form groups of modified images. Observers were then required to indicate whether they were being shown the "original" or a "modified" face, when shown one face at a time on a TV monitor screen. Memory reinforcement was provided by displaying the original face at another screen position, between presentations. The data show, inter alia, the very high significance of the vertical positioning of the mouth, followed by eyes, and then the nose, as well as high sensitivity to close-set eyes, coupled with marked insensitivity to wide-set eyes. Implications of the results for the use of recognition aids such as Identikit and Photofit are briefly discussed.     

The effects of team strategic orientation on team process and information search

We tested the effects of team strategic orientation on team member perceptions, work strategy and information search. In Experiment 1, 80 teams worked on a hidden profile decision-making task. A defensive team strategic orientation increased members’ perceptions of the problem’s scope, leading to a more process-focused work strategy and broader information search compared to an offensive team strategic orientation. When teams needed critical information from the environment, defensive teams outperformed offensive teams; offensive teams performed better when critical information resided within the team. In Experiment 2, these findings were replicated with 92 teams performing a different decision task. When making a second decision, half of the teams were led to change their strategic orientation; teams shifting from offense to defense altered their information search behavior more readily than did teams shifting in the opposite direction, suggesting an asymmetric adaptation effect.     

Research on face recognition: The Aberdeen influence

The review of ‘Recognizing faces’ by Hadyn Ellis, published in the British Journal of Psychology in 1975, marked the genesis of a distinct field of research. This seminal review sprang from a broader programme of research on face recognition conducted at the University of Aberdeen, whose influence continues to be felt in what has become an internationally important research area. We discuss the background to the Aberdeen research, summarize some of its achievements, and offer reasons why it proved so successful. These reasons include the synergy between theory and practice‐based studies, the value of combining different perspectives and sources of evidence, sound techniques that led to easily reproducible findings, and the emphasis on testing even the most ‘common sense’ assumptions.     

The role of eyebrows in face recognition

A fundamental challenge in face recognition lies in determining which facial characteristics are important in the identification of faces. Several studies have indicated the significance of certain facial features in this regard, particularly internal ones such as the eyes and mouth. Surprisingly, however, one rather prominent facial feature has received little attention in this domain: the eyebrows. Past work has examined the role of eyebrows in emotional expression and nonverbal communication, as well as in facial aesthetics and sexual dimorphism. However, it has not been made clear whether the eyebrows play an important role in the identification of faces. Here, we report experimental results which suggest that for face recognition the eyebrows may be at least as influential as the eyes. Specifically, we find that the absence of eyebrows in familiar faces leads to a very large and significant disruption in recognition performance. In fact, a significantly greater decrement in face recognition is observed in the absence of eyebrows than in the absence of eyes. These results may have important implications for our understanding of the mechanisms of face recognition in humans as well as for the development of artificial face-recognition systems.     

The neural plasticity of other-race face recognition

Although it is well established that people are better at recognizing own-race faces than at recognizing other-race faces, the neural mechanisms mediating this advantage are not well understood. In this study, Caucasian participants were trained to differentiate African American (or Hispanic) faces at the individual level (e.g., Joe, Bob) and to categorize Hispanic (or African American) faces at the basic level of race (e.g., Hispanic, African American). Behaviorally, subordinate-level individuation training led to improved performance on a posttraining recognition test, relative to basic-level training. As measured by event-related potentials, subordinate- and basic-level training had relatively little effect on the face N170 component. However, as compared with basic-level training, subordinate-level training elicited an increased response in the posterior expert N250 component. These results demonstrate that learning to discriminate other-race faces at the subordinate level of the individual leads to improved recognition and enhanced activation of the expert N250 component.