Naming Faces: The Effects of Facial Distinctiveness and Surname Frequency

The effects of the frequency of a surname in the population and of the distinctiveness of a face on the latency to name famous faces were explored. Distinctive faces were named more quickly than were typical faces. Celebrities with low-frequency surnames were named faster than celebrities with high-frequency surnames, but only if their faces were distinctive. Subsequent experiments showed that the effect of surname frequency could not be attributed to differences in the articulatory onsets of the surnames and was not present in a task that did not require a naming response. Experiments in which surnames were taught to previously unfamiliar faces showed that familiar surnames (e.g. the surnames of celebrities) were produced more rapidly than were unfamiliar surnames. If familiar surnames were taught, no effect of surname frequency was observed. It is concluded that lexical access to peoples' names is frequency sensitive—surnames shared by few individuals are accessed faster than are high-frequency surnames. However, when learning names to unfamiliar faces, familiar surnames (i.e. the surnames of people already known to the subject) are learned and accessed more quickly than unfamiliar surnames.     

Attentional bias for threat: Evidence for delayed disengagement from emotional faces

This study examined cognitive aspects of coping with stress, how these related to religiosity, and how they related to outcomes (positive mood and distress). Participants (n=126) were of Protestant or Jewish background, and had all experienced recent major stress. They were assessed on measures of religiosity, religious coping, perception of the consequences of the stressful event, attributions for its occurrence, and distress, intrusive unpleasant thoughts, and positive affect. Religiosity affected ways of thinking about the stressful situation, namely: Belief that G-d is enabling the individual to bear their troubles (religious/spiritual support), belief that it was all for the best, and (more weakly) belief that all is ultimately controlled by G-d. Religiosity affected neither the proportion of positive consequences perceived as outcomes of the event, nor the causal attributions examined. Religious background (Protestant vs. Jewish) had negligible effects on the cognitions measures. Causal pathway analysis suggested that religion-related cognitions might directly affect positive affect, but not distress. Problems of design and interpretation are discussed. The study suggests some cognitively mediated means by which religion may have comforting effects.     

Book reviews

Hearing Haggerd, M. P. & Evans, E. F. (Eds.). 1987. British Medical Bulletin, 43 (4), 775-1037. ISBN 0-443-02899-6. £22.50.

Perlmutter, M. (Ed.) (1986). Perspectives on intellectual development : The Minnesota Symposium on Child Psychology. Vol. 19. Hillsdale,NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc. Pp. 261. ISBN 0-89859-784-6. £19.95.

Ellis, H. D., Jeeves, M. A., Newcombe, F., & Young, A. (Eds.) (1986). Aspects of face processing. Bordrecht : Martinus Nijhoff. Pp. 509. ISBN 90-247-3357-X. £80.25.

Gabrielsson, A. (Ed.) (1987). Action and perception in shythm and music. Stockholm: Royal Swedish Academy of Music. Pp. 237. ISBN 91-85428-51-5.

Dowling, John E. (1987). The Retina. Cambridge, MA, and London :Belknap Press. Pp. xiv + 282. ISBN 0-674-76680-6. $29.95.

Foorman, B. R. & Siegel, A. W. (1986). Acquisition of reading skills : Cultural constraints and cognitive universals. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc. Pp. 168. ISBN 0-89859-642-4. £15.00.

Stillings, N., Feinstein, M., Garfield, J., Rissland, E., Rosenbaum, D., Weisler, S., & Baker-Ward, L. (1987). Cognitive science : An introduction. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Pp. 533. ISBN 0-262-19257-8. £22.50.

Kapur, N. (1988). Memory disorders in clinical practice. London:Butterworths. Pp. 289. ISBN 0-407-00712-1. £39.50.

Bussis, A. M., Chittenden, E. A. Amarel, M. & Klausner, E. (1985). Inquiry into meaning: An invetigation of learning to read. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc. Pp. 367. ISBN 0-89859-504-5. £32.95.     

The effects of distinctiveness in recognising and classifying faces

In an earlier study it was found that distinctive familiar faces were recognised faster than typical familiar faces in a familiarity decision task. In the first experiment reported here this effect was replicated with the use of celebrities' faces rather than personally familiar faces. In the second and third experiments the effect of distinctiveness was found to reverse if the task was to distinguish between faces and jumbled faces. Subjects took longer to classify distinctive faces as faces than they did to classify typical faces. Thus distinctive faces were recognised faster, but were classified as faces more slowly than were typical faces, both when personally familiar faces and when famous faces were used as stimuli. These results are interpeted as evidence that faces are encoded by reference to a general face prototype.     

An Investigation of the Contact Hypothesis of the Own-race Bias in Face Recognition

Although previous studies have demonstrated that faces of one's own race are recognized more accurately than are faces of other races, the theoretical basis of this effect is not clearly understood at present. The experiment reported in this paper tested the contact hypothesis of the own-race bias in face recognition using a cross-cultural design. Four groups of subjects were tested for their recognition of distinctive and typical own-race and other-race faces: (1) black Africans who had a high degree of contact with white faces, (2) black Africans who had little or no contact with white faces, (3) white Africans who had a high degree of contact with black faces, and (4) white Britons who had little contact with black faces. The results showed that although on the whole subjects recognized own-race faces more accurately and more confidently than they recognized other-race faces, the own-race bias in face recognition was significantly smaller among the high-contact subjects than it was among the low-contact subjects. Also, although high-contact black and white subjects showed significant main effects of distinctiveness in their recognition of faces of both races, low-contact black and white subjects showed significant main effects of distinctiveness only in their recognition of own-race faces. It is argued that these results support the contact hypothesis of the own-race bias in face recognition and Valentine's multidimensional space (MDS) framework of face encoding.