Tolerance to spatial-relational transformations in unfamiliar faces: A further challenge to a configural processing account of identity recognition

The effects of configural changes on faces were investigated in children to determine their role in encoding and recognition processes. Upright, inverted, and contrast-reversed unfamiliar faces were presented in blocks in which one-third of the pictures repeated immediately or after one intervening face. Subjects (8–16 years) responded to repeated faces; eventrelated potentials were recorded throughout the procedure. Recognition improved steadily with age and all components studied showed age effects reflecting differing maturation processes occurring until adulthood. All children were affected by inversion and contrast-reversal, and face-type effects were seen on latencies and amplitudes of early components (P1 and N170), as well as on later frontal amplitudes. The “old-new” repetition effects (larger amplitude for repeated stimuli) were found at frontal sites and were similar across age groups and face types, suggesting a general working memory system comparably involved in all age groups. These data demonstrate that (1) there is quantitative development in face processing, (2) both face encoding and recognition improve with age, but (3) only encoding is affected by configural changes. The data also suggest a gradual tuning of face processing towards the upright orientation.

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Is There a Linear or a Nonlinear Relationship between Rotation and Configural Processing of Faces?

Perception ◽

10.1068/p3195 ◽

2002 ◽

Vol 31 (3) ◽

pp. 287-296 ◽

Cited By ~ 45

Author(s):

Stephan M Collishaw ◽

Graham J Hole

Keyword(s):

Recognition Accuracy ◽

Configural Processing ◽

Nonlinear Relationship ◽

Face Inversion Effect ◽

Processing Strategies ◽

The Face ◽

Effects Of Rotation ◽

Featural Processing ◽

Unfamiliar Faces ◽

Angle Of Rotation

Research suggests that inverted faces are harder to recognise than upright faces because of a disruption in processing their configural properties. Reasons for this difficulty were explored by investigating people's ability to identify faces at intermediate angles of rotation. Participants were asked to discriminate blurred famous and unfamiliar faces presented at nine angles. Blurred faces were used to minimise featural processing strategies, and to assess the effects of rotation that are specific to configural processing. The results indicate a linear relationship between angle of rotation and recognition accuracy. It appears that configural processing becomes gradually more disrupted the further a face is oriented away from the upright. The implications of these findings for competing explanations of the face-inversion effect are discussed.

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Face familiarity promotes stable identity recognition: exploring face perception using serial dependence

Royal Society Open Science ◽

10.1098/rsos.160685 ◽

2017 ◽

Vol 4 (3) ◽

pp. 160685 ◽

Cited By ~ 6

Author(s):

Rebecca Kok ◽

Jessica Taubert ◽

Erik Van der Burg ◽

Gillian Rhodes ◽

David Alais

Keyword(s):

Visual System ◽

Temporal Integration ◽

Visual Cognition ◽

Viewing Distance ◽

Serial Dependence ◽

Identity Recognition ◽

Sequential Dependencies ◽

Continuous Scale ◽

Retinal Input ◽

Unfamiliar Faces

Studies suggest that familiar faces are processed in a manner distinct from unfamiliar faces and that familiarity with a face confers an advantage in identity recognition. Our visual system seems to capitalize on experience to build stable face representations that are impervious to variation in retinal input that may occur due to changes in lighting, viewpoint, viewing distance, eye movements, etc. Emerging evidence also suggests that our visual system maintains a continuous perception of a face's identity from one moment to the next despite the retinal input variations through serial dependence. This study investigates whether interactions occur between face familiarity and serial dependence. In two experiments, participants used a continuous scale to rate attractiveness of unfamiliar and familiar faces (either experimentally learned or famous) presented in rapid sequences. Both experiments revealed robust inter-trial effects in which attractiveness ratings for a given face depended on the preceding face's attractiveness. This inter-trial attractiveness effect was most pronounced for unfamiliar faces. Indeed, when participants were familiar with a given face, attractiveness ratings showed significantly less serial dependence. These results represent the first evidence that familiar faces can resist the temporal integration seen in sequential dependencies and highlight the importance of familiarity to visual cognition.

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Face Inversion Effect Emerges Under Critical Configural Discrepancy

Swiss Journal of Psychology ◽

10.1024/1421-0185/a000018 ◽

2010 ◽

Vol 69 (3) ◽

pp. 161-167 ◽

Cited By ~ 3

Author(s):

Jisien Yang ◽

Adrian Schwaninger

Keyword(s):

Face Recognition ◽

Face Processing ◽

Underlying Mechanism ◽

Inversion Effect ◽

Configural Processing ◽

Major Contributor ◽

Face Inversion Effect ◽

Configural Information ◽

Face Inversion ◽

The Face

Configural processing has been considered the major contributor to the face inversion effect (FIE) in face recognition. However, most researchers have only obtained the FIE with one specific ratio of configural alteration. It remains unclear whether the ratio of configural alteration itself can mediate the occurrence of the FIE. We aimed to clarify this issue by manipulating the configural information parametrically using six different ratios, ranging from 4% to 24%. Participants were asked to judge whether a pair of faces were entirely identical or different. The paired faces that were to be compared were presented either simultaneously (Experiment 1) or sequentially (Experiment 2). Both experiments revealed that the FIE was observed only when the ratio of configural alteration was in the intermediate range. These results indicate that even though the FIE has been frequently adopted as an index to examine the underlying mechanism of face processing, the emergence of the FIE is not robust with any configural alteration but dependent on the ratio of configural alteration.

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The automatic detection of unattended social category information from unfamiliar faces

PsycEXTRA Dataset ◽

10.1037/e514472015-752 ◽

2014 ◽

Author(s):

Douglas Martin ◽

Rachel Swainson ◽

Gillian Slessor ◽

Jacqui Hutchison ◽

Diana Marosi

Keyword(s):

Automatic Detection ◽

Social Category ◽

Category Information ◽

Unfamiliar Faces

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Speaker Identity Recognition by Acoustic and Visual Data Fusion through Personal Privacy for Smart Care and Service Applications

Journal of Imaging Science and Technology ◽

10.2352/j.imagingsci.technol.2020.64.4.040404 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 64 (4) ◽

pp. 40404-1-40404-16

Author(s):

I.-J. Ding ◽

C.-M. Ruan

Keyword(s):

Face Detection ◽

Speaker Recognition ◽

Visual Information ◽

Classification Tree ◽

Gaussian Mixture ◽

Recognition Method ◽

Indoor Space ◽

Identity Recognition ◽

Visual Identity ◽

Speaker Classification

Abstract With rapid developments in techniques related to the internet of things, smart service applications such as voice-command-based speech recognition and smart care applications such as context-aware-based emotion recognition will gain much attention and potentially be a requirement in smart home or office environments. In such intelligence applications, identity recognition of the specific member in indoor spaces will be a crucial issue. In this study, a combined audio-visual identity recognition approach was developed. In this approach, visual information obtained from face detection was incorporated into acoustic Gaussian likelihood calculations for constructing speaker classification trees to significantly enhance the Gaussian mixture model (GMM)-based speaker recognition method. This study considered the privacy of the monitored person and reduced the degree of surveillance. Moreover, the popular Kinect sensor device containing a microphone array was adopted to obtain acoustic voice data from the person. The proposed audio-visual identity recognition approach deploys only two cameras in a specific indoor space for conveniently performing face detection and quickly determining the total number of people in the specific space. Such information pertaining to the number of people in the indoor space obtained using face detection was utilized to effectively regulate the accurate GMM speaker classification tree design. Two face-detection-regulated speaker classification tree schemes are presented for the GMM speaker recognition method in this study—the binary speaker classification tree (GMM-BT) and the non-binary speaker classification tree (GMM-NBT). The proposed GMM-BT and GMM-NBT methods achieve excellent identity recognition rates of 84.28% and 83%, respectively; both values are higher than the rate of the conventional GMM approach (80.5%). Moreover, as the extremely complex calculations of face recognition in general audio-visual speaker recognition tasks are not required, the proposed approach is rapid and efficient with only a slight increment of 0.051 s in the average recognition time.

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Visual body processing’s associations to Body Mass Index and internalization of societal beauty ideals

10.31234/osf.io/vnhzm ◽

2020 ◽

Author(s):

Valentina Cazzato ◽

Elizabeth Walters ◽

Cosimo Urgesi

Keyword(s):

Body Mass Index ◽

Body Mass ◽

Visual Processing ◽

The Body ◽

Configural Processing ◽

Cultural Ideals ◽

Beauty Ideals ◽

Female Bodies ◽

Processing Mechanisms ◽

Attention To Detail

We examined whether visual processing mechanisms of the body of conspecifics are different in women and men and whether these rely on westernised socio-cultural ideals and body image concerns. Twenty-four women and 24 men performed a visual discrimination task of upright or inverted images of female or male bodies and faces (Experiment 1) and objects (Experiment 2). In Experiment 1, both groups of women and men showed comparable abilities in the discrimination of upright and inverted bodies and faces. However, the genders of the human stimuli yielded different effects on participants’ performance, so that male bodies and female faces appeared to be processed less configurally than female bodies and male faces, respectively. Interestingly, altered configural processing for male bodies was significantly predicted by participants’ Body Mass Index (BMI) and their level of internalization of muscularity. Our findings suggest that configural visual processing of bodies and faces in women and men may be linked to a selective attention to detail needed for discriminating salient physical (perhaps sexual) cues of conspecifics. Importantly, BMI and muscularity internalization of beauty ideals may also play a crucial role in this mechanism.

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