The effect of familiarity on face adaptation

Face aftereffects can provide information on how faces are stored by the human visual system (eg Leopold et al, 2001 Nature Neuroscience 4 89-94), but few studies have used robustly represented (highly familiar) faces. In this study we investigated the influence of facial familiarity on adaptation effects. Participants were adapted to a series of distorted faces (their own face, a famous face, or an unfamiliar face). In experiment 1, figural aftereffects were significantly smaller when participants were adapted to their own face than when they were adapted to the other faces (ie their own face appeared significantly less distorted than a famous or unfamiliar face). Experiment 2 showed that this 'own-face' effect did not occur when the same faces were used as adaptation stimuli for participants who were unfamiliar with them. Experiment 3 replicated experiment 1, but included a pre-adaptation baseline. The results highlight the importance of considering facial familiarity when conducting research on face aftereffects.     

A defense of local miracle compatibilism

David Lewis has offered a reply to the standard argument for the claim that the truth of determinism is incompatible with anyone’s being able to do otherwise than she in fact does. Helen Beebee has argued that Lewis’s compatibilist strategy is untenable. In this paper I show that one recent attempt to defend Lewis’s view against this argument fails and then go on to offer my own defense of Lewis’s view.

Attribute coding at different levels of processing

Schoolchildren, aged 16 years showed poorer incidental learning for nouns if the orienting task was one of finding rhymes for the items compared to assigning each word to a semantic category. On a recognition task including homophone and synonym foils, rhyming subjects made significantly more phonemic errors, whereas categorizing subjects produced a significantly greater number of semantic confusions. Subjects instructed to construct images for each of the nouns showed a performance pattern similar to the categorizing group. The results are interpreted in terms of Herriot's (1974) view that different levels of processing are associated with the coding of different clusters of stimulus attributes.     

Volume Contents

Volume Contents

Volume Contents     

Configural processing and perceptions of head tilt

Configural processing is important for face recognition, but its role in other types of face processing is unclear. In the present study, participants made judgments of head tilt for faces in which the vertical position of the internal facial region was varied. We found a highly reliable relationship between inner-face position and perceived head tilt. We also found that changes in inner-face position affected the perceived dimensions of an individual unchanged facial feature: compared to control faces, nearly two-thirds of faces in which the features had been moved down were judged to have a longer nose. This finding suggests an early integration of configural and featural processing to create a stable holistic percept of the face. The demonstration of holistic processing at a basic perceptual level (as opposed to during face recognition) is important as it constrains possible models of the relationships between featural and configural processing.     

Beyond the individual: the impact of ethnic context and classroom behavioral norms on victims' adjustment

With a sample of 1,630 sixth-grade students from 77 classrooms, the authors used hierarchical linear modeling to examine how ethnicity within context and classroom social disorder influenced the association between peer victimization and social-psychological adjustment (loneliness and social anxiety). Victimized students in classrooms where many classmates shared their ethnicity reported feeling the most loneliness and social anxiety. Additionally, classroom-level social disorder served as a moderator such that the association between victimization and anxiety was stronger in classrooms with low social disorder. Both findings were interpreted as evidence that problem behavior deviating from what is perceived as normative in a particular context heightens maladjustment. The authors discuss implications for studying ethnicity and classroom behavioral norms as context variables in peer relations.     

On Alternative Geometries,Arithmetics, and Logics; a Tribute to Łukasiewicz

The paper discusses the similarity between geometry, arithmetic, and logic, specifically with respect to the question of whether applied theories of each may be revised. It argues that they can - even when the revised logic is a paraconsistent one, or the revised arithmetic is an inconsistent one. Indeed, in the case of logic, it argues that logic is not only revisable, but, during its history, it has been revised. The paper also discusses Quine's well known argument against the possibility of logical deviancy.     

Children's working-memory processes: a response-timing analysis

Recall response durations were used to clarify processing in working-memory tasks. Experiment 1 examined children's performance in reading span, a task in which sentences were processed and the final word of each sentence was retained for subsequent recall. Experiment 2 examined the development of listening-, counting-, and digit-span task performance. Responses were much longer in the reading-and listening-span tasks than in the other span tasks, suggesting that participants in sentence-based span tasks take time to retrieve the semantic or linguistic structure as cues to recall of the sentence-final words. Response durations in working-memory tasks helped to predict academic skill and achievement, largely separate from the contributions of the memory spans themselves. Response durations thus are important in the interpretation of span task performance.