Better the devil you know? Nonconscious processing of identity and affect of famous faces

The nonconscious recognition of facial identity was investigated in two experiments featuring brief (17-msec) masked stimulus presentation to prevent conscious recognition. Faces were presented in simultaneous pairs of one famous face and one unfamiliar face, and participants attempted to select the famous face. Subsequently, participants rated the famous persons as ”good“ or ”evil“ (Experiment 1) or liked or disliked (Experiment 2). In Experiments 1 and 2, responses were less accurate to faces of persons rated evil/disliked than to faces of persons rated good/liked, and faces of persons rated evil/disliked were selected significantly below chance. Experiment 2 showed the effect in a within-items analysis: A famous face was selected less often by participants who disliked the person than by participants who liked the person, and the former were selected below chance accuracy. The within-items analysis rules out possible confounding factors based on variations in physical characteristics of the stimulus faces and confirms that the effects are due to participants’ attitudes toward the famous persons. The results suggest that facial identity is recognized preconsciously, and that responses may be based on affect rather than familiarity.     

The categorical structure of semantic memory for famous people: a new approach using release from proactive interference

Memory for familiar people is essential to understand their identity and guide social interaction. Nevertheless, we know surprisingly little about the structure of such memory. Previous research has assumed that semantic memory for people has a categorical structure, but recently it was proposed that memory for people consists only of associations and lacks any categorical structure. Four experiments are reported that use a novel approach by adapting the 'release from proactive interference' (RPI) methodology for use with lists of famous names. Proactive interference occurs when items presented on successive trials are drawn from the same category. Recall can improve following a change to a different category. Sets of names were selected relating to aspects previously demonstrated, on the basis of reaction time data, to form a category (occupation) and a property (nationality) of celebrities (Johnston & Bruce, 1990). RPI was observed for a change at both levels of representation but was only present without explicitly cueing the change of set when the stimuli differed at the category level. At the property level, RPI was only evident when change of set was explicitly cued. RPI was absent at the set change in a novel, ad hoc distinction suggesting that the effect reflected the underlying memory structure.     

Accuracy of familiarity decisions to famous faces perceived without awareness depends on attitude to the target person and on response latency

Stone and Valentine (2004) presented masked 17 ms faces in simultaneous pairs of one famous and one unfamiliar face. Accuracy in selecting the famous face was higher when the famous person was regarded as "good" or liked than when regarded as "evil" or disliked. Experiment 1 attempted to replicate this phenomenon, but produced a different pattern of results. Experiment 2 investigated alternative explanations and found evidence supporting only the effect of response latency: responses made soon after stimulus onset were more accurate to liked than to disliked faces, whereas responses made after a longer delay were equally accurate to disliked faces. It appears that the effect of negative valence was corrected within the space of a few hundred milliseconds. Experiment 3, using an affective priming paradigm, supported the concept that an early-arising effect of valence is corrected if it is misleading to the directed task.     

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).     

Ethics Code Awareness,Perceived Ethical Values,and Organizational Commitment

This study examines the relationships among ethics code awareness, perceived corporate ethical values, and organizational commitment. Three key findings emerged. First, those aware of the existence of an ethics code in their organizations perceived their organizations as having more ethical values than those not aware of an ethics code in their organizations. Second, respondents exhibited higher levels of organizational commitment when they were aware of an ethics code in their companies. Finally, the relationship between ethics code awareness and organizational commitment was fully mediated by perceptions of an organization’s ethical values. The results suggest that ethics codes may lead to higher levels of organizational commitment by increasing the belief that their organizations have strong ethical values, as long as the existence of ethics codes are adequately communicated.     

Concomitant Pavlovian conditioning of heart rate and leg flexion responses in the rat

Pavlovian conditioning was studied in male Fischer 344 rats using tones as the conditioned stimulus (CS) and footshock as the unconditioned stimulus (UCS). Different groups of animals received (a) contiguous CS-UCS pairings with a 0.5 sec CS, (b) contiguous CS-UCS pairings with a 4.0 sec CS, or (c) a random sequence of noncontiguous tones and shocks using either a 0.5 sec or a 4.0 sec CS. Heart rate (HR) and leg flexion (LF) responses were recorded. Leg flexion conditioning occurred only in the 0.5 sec contiguous group. Decelerative HR CRs occurred only in the 4.0 sec contiguous group. Accelerative HR changes occurred in the other two groups but were significantly greater in the 0.5 sec contiguous group. These results are similar to but not identical to those obtained during eyeblink or nictitating membrane conditioning in rabbits, and suggest that the topography of the Pavlovian HR CR is dependent on the simultaneous occurrence of other classically conditioned responses.     

A unified account of the effects of distinctiveness, inversion, and race in face recognition

A framework is outlined in which individual faces are assumed to be encoded as a point in a multidimensional space, defined by dimensions that serve to discriminate faces. It is proposed that such a framework can account for the effects of distinctiveness, inversion, and race on recognition of faces. Two specific models within this framework are identified: a norm-based coding model, in which faces are encoded as vectors from a population norm or prototype; and a purely exemplar-based model. Both models make similar predictions, albeit in different ways, concerning the interactions between the effects of distinctiveness, inversion and race. These predictions were supported in five experiments in which photographs of faces served as stimuli. The norm-based coding version and the exemplar-based version of the framework cannot be distinguished on the basis of the experiments reported, but it is argued that a multidimensional space provides a useful heuristic framework to investigate recognition of faces. Finally, the relationship between the specific models is considered and an implementation in terms of parallel distributed processing is briefly discussed.     

Long-term age of acquisition effects in famous name processing

The age of acquisition (AoA) effect refers to the processing advantage that words, objects, and people learnt earlier in life hold over those acquired later. We explored the long-term effects of AoA on performance, using naturally occurring famous names, acquired by participants cumulatively over three decades. We manipulated AoA by selecting celebrities who had first become known to our participants in the 1960s, 1970s, or 1980s and explored the effects of age by testing participants aged in their 40s, 50s, or 60s. Seventy-two participants made push-button 'Yes-No' familiarity decision judgements to the printed names of celebrities. We found a significant AoA effect. A linear increase in reaction time was uncovered, with the participants being fastest to respond to the 1960s celebrities, followed by those from the 1970s, and being slowest to respond to celebrities from the 1980s. There was no age × AoA interaction, although the AoA effect was most pronounced in the oldest participant group. Our data demonstrate the long-term persistent influence of AoA on processing speed. Moreover, they indicate that the effects of AoA are much more subtle than simply reflecting a difference between the earliest acquired stimuli in a processing domain and all later acquired items.     

The effect of instructions on performance in the Wason selection task

The effect of instructions on performance on the standard abstract form of Wason’s selection task was examined. Instructions to determine whether or not the statement is violated did not lead to an increase in correct responding, contrary to previous suggestions that such instructions would induce falsification strategies, but rather to an increase in verification bias. Instructions to determine whether the statement is true or false led to increased variability in performance, supporting the suggestion that such instructions are inherently ambiguous. Thus, the results demonstrate that the form of instructions can have a significant effect on performance in the selection task. Verification bias did better as an explanation of the data than did matching bias, which only fared well when its predictions coincided with those of verification bias. A substantial proportion of the data was unaccounted for by either of these strategies, which is consistent with the findings of a number of other recent studies.