Face Familiarity and Image-Specific Memory

Consciousness and cognition, 2001

A common view in face recognition research holds that there is a stored representation specific to each known face. It is also posited that semantic or memory-based information cannot influence low-level face processing. The two experiments reported in this article investigate the nature of this representation and the flow of face information processing. Participants had to search for a particular primed face among other faces. In Experiment 1, the search was done in a context where distractors had either a different degree of fame or the same degree of fame. In Experiment 2, the target face was primed either with semantic information or without any information. Both experiments demonstrated that increasing the display set size lengthened face detection time. However, the lengthening was a function of face fame. The search context also had an effect on the slope of the famous face detection. The results are explained in terms of the idea that face representations are reconstructed and that high-and low-level information are integrated into the processing. The integration process is not a conscious one.

British Journal of Psychology, 2011

The Bruce and Young (1986) framework makes a number of important distinctions between the types of representation needed to recognize a familiar face. Here, we return to these, focussing particularly on face recognition units. We argue that such representations need to incorporate idiosyncratic within-person variability, asking questions such as 'What counts as a picture of Harrison Ford?'. We describe a mechanism for achieving this, and discuss the relation between image variability and episodic face memories, in the context of behavioural and neurophysiological data.

Journal of Memory and Language, 2004

When people perform a recognition memory task, they may avail themselves of different forms of information. For example, they may recall specific learning episodes, or rely on general feelings of familiarity. Although subjective familiarity is often valid, it can make people vulnerable to memory illusions. Research using verbal materials has shown that ''old'' responses are often increased by enhancing perceptual fluency, as when selected words are shown with relatively higher contrast on a computer. Conversely, episodic memory can create an erroneous sense of perceptual advantages for recently studied words. In this investigation, symmetric fluency effects were tested in face memory, a domain that is often considered neurologically and psychologically unique. In eight experiments involving over 800 participants, we found consistent memorial and perceptual illusions-fluency created feelings of familiarity, and familiarity created feelings of fluency. In both directions, these effects were manifested as response biases, suggesting effects based on memorial and perceptual attributions.

Memory & Cognition, 2006

We examined the effect of verbally describing faces upon visual memory. In particular, we examined the locus of the facilitative effects of verbalization by manipulating the visual distinctiveness of the to-be-remembered faces and using the remember/know procedure as a measure of recognition performance (i.e., remember vs. know judgments). Participants were exposed to distinctive faces intermixed with typical faces and described (or not, in the control condition) each face following its presentation. Subsequently, the participants discriminated the original faces from distinctive and typical distractors in ayes/no recognition decision and made remember/know judgments. Distinctive faces elicited better discrimination performance than did typical faces. Furthermore, for both typical and distinctive faces, better discrimination performance was obtained in the description than in the control condition. Finally, these effects were evident for both recollection- and familiarity-based recognition decisions. We argue that verbalization and visual distinctiveness independently benefit face recognition, and we discuss these findings in terms of the nature of verbalization and the role of recollective and familiarity-based processes in recognition.

2016

Recognition of personally familiar faces is remarkably efficient, effortless and robust. We asked if feature-based face processing drives facilitated detection of familiar faces by testing the effect of face inversion on a visual search task for familiar and unfamiliar faces. Because face inversion disrupts configural and holistic face processing, we hypothesized that inversion would diminish the familiarity advantage to the extent that it is mediated by such processes. Subjects detected personally familiar and stranger target faces in arrays of two, four, or six face images. Subjects showed significant facilitation of personally familiar face detection for both upright and inverted faces, in terms of reaction times for target present trials and both reaction times and search rate for target absent trials. The effect of familiarity even on target absent trials suggests that familiarity facilitates rejection of unfamiliar distractors as well as detection of familiar targets. The pres...

Psychonomic bulletin & review, 1999

Recognition memory for single items can be dissociated from recognition memory for the associations between items. For example, recognition tests for single words produce curvilinear receiver operating characteristics (ROCs), but associative recognition tests for word pairs produce linear ROCs. These dissociations are consistent with dual-process theories of recognition and suggest that associative recognition relies on recollection but that item recognition relies on a combination of recollection and assessments of familiarity. In the present study, we examined associative recognition ROCs for facial stimuli by manipulating the central and external features, in order to determine whether linear ROCs would be observed for stimuli other than arbitrary word pairs. When the faces were presented upright, familiarity estimates were significantly above zero, and the associative ROCs were curvilinear, suggesting that familiarity contributed to associative judgments. However, presenting the...

British Journal of Psychology, 2005

How is information extracted from familiar and unfamiliar faces? Three experiments, in which eye-movement measures were used, examined whether there was differential sampling of the internal face region according to familiarity. Experiment 1 used a face familiarity task and found that whilst the majority of fixations fell within the internal region, there were no differences in the sampling of this region according to familiarity. Experiment 2 replicated these findings, using a standard recognition memory paradigm. The third experiment employed a matching task, and once again found that the majority of fixations fell within the internal region. Additionally, this experiment found that there was more sampling of the internal region when faces were familiar compared with when they were unfamiliar. The use of eye fixation measures affirms the importance of internal facial features in the recognition of familiar faces compared with unfamiliar faces, but only when viewers compare pairs of faces.

1994

Contemporary research on human memory has tended to disregard individual differences (Eysenck, 1977, 1983; Sternberg & French, 1990). However, there seems to be no empirical justification for this practice, especially in experimental situations where the stimuli that are used are 'socially relevant'. Human faces constitute one such category. Although there is strong evidence which suggests that people differ substantially in their ability to recognise faces in laboratory experiments (Baddeley & Woodhead, 1983) and in everyday situations (Schweich, van der Linden, Bredart, Bruyer, Neils & Schills, 1991), the sources of these differences are not clearly understood at present. In this thesis, individual differences in recognition memory for faces were examined using standard laboratory experimental techniques. Part I of this thesis consists of four chapters. Chapter One provides a general introduction to face recognition research. In Chapter Two, past research on individual dif...

Visual Cognition, 2009