Familiarity of Faces: Sense or Feeling?

2015 ◽  
Vol 29 (1) ◽  
pp. 20-25 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paola Bonifacci ◽  
Lorenzo Desideri ◽  
Cristina Ottaviani
Keyword(s):  
Face Recognition ◽  
Eye Movements ◽  
Skin Conductance ◽  
Electrodermal Activity ◽  
Adaptive Process ◽  
Familiar Face ◽  
Skin Conductance Responses ◽  
Exploratory Investigation ◽  
Novel Approaches ◽  
Unfamiliar Faces

Where does the experience of familiarity come from? Is it the same as sensory perception? Two novel approaches were combined to investigate the highly adaptive process of familiar face recognition: the inclusion of friends and family members as personally familiar faces and measures of eye movements and skin conductance responses (SCR). A sample of 16 university students was asked to look at photographs of 8 personally familiar faces (friends and relatives) and 8 unfamiliar faces. From the analysis of eye movement patterns, a preference for internal features (mouth, eyes, nose) for both familiar and unfamiliar faces emerged and a significant increase in electrodermal activity was found for personally familiar compared to unfamiliar faces. Higher SCR recovery values were found in response to friends. Findings from this exploratory investigation suggest that familiar faces are not looked at in a special way; instead we “feel” a sense of familiarity that comes and goes faster for relatives than for close friends.

scholarly journals Covert Face Recognition without Prosopagnosia

1993 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 27-32 ◽  
Author(s):  
H. D. Ellis ◽  
A. W. Young ◽  
G. Koenken
Keyword(s):  
Information Processing ◽  
Face Recognition ◽  
Brain Injury ◽  
Skin Conductance ◽  
Visual Information ◽  
Electrodermal Activity ◽  
Similar Work ◽  
Skin Conductance Responses ◽  
Electrodermal Responses ◽  
Unfamiliar Faces

An experiment is reported where subjects were presented with familiar or unfamiliar faces for supraliminal durations or for durations individually assessed as being below the threshold for recognition. Their electrodermal responses to each stimulus were measured and the results showed higher peak amplitude skin conductance responses for familiar than for unfamiliar faces, regardless of whether they had been displayed supraliminally or subliminally. A parallel is drawn between elevated skin conductance responses to subliminal stimuli and findings of covert recognition of familiar faces in prosopagnosic patients, some of whom show increased electrodermal activity (EDA) to previously familiar faces. The supraliminal presentation data also served to replicate similar work by Tranel et al (1985). The results are considered alongside other data indicating the relation between non-conscious, “automatic” aspects of normal visual information processing and abilities which can be found to be preserved without awareness after brain injury.

Double Dissociation between Overt and Covert Face Recognition

1995 ◽  
Vol 7 (4) ◽  
pp. 425-432 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniel Tranel ◽  
Hanna Damasio ◽  
Antonio R. Damasio
Keyword(s):  
Face Recognition ◽  
Skin Conductance ◽  
Neural Systems ◽  
Double Dissociation ◽  
Skin Conductance Responses ◽  
Average Skin ◽  
Unfamiliar Faces

Some patients with face agnosia (prosopagnosia) caused by occipitotemporal damage produce discriminatory covert responses to the familiar faces that they fail to identify overtly. For example, their average skin conductance responses (SCRs) to familiar faces are significantly larger than average SCRs to unfamiliar faces. In this study we describe the opposite dissociation in four patients with bilateral ventromedial frontal damage: The patients recognized the identity of familiar faces normally, yet failed to generate discriminatory SCRs to those same familiar faces. Taken together, the two sets of results constitute a double dissociation: bilateral occipitotemporal damage impairs recognition but allows SCR discrimination, whereas bilateral ventromedial damage causes the opposite. The findings suggest that the neural systems that process the somatic-based valence of stimuli are separate from and parallel to the neural systems that process the factual, nonsomatic information associated with the same stimuli.

Self- or familiar-face recognition advantage? New insight using ambient images

2018 ◽  
Vol 71 (6) ◽  
pp. 1396-1404 ◽  
Author(s):  
Catherine Bortolon ◽  
Siméon Lorieux ◽  
Stéphane Raffard
Keyword(s):  
Face Recognition ◽  
Graduate Students ◽  
Matching Task ◽  
Healthy Individuals ◽  
Familiarity Effect ◽  
Familiar Face ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Face ◽  
First Time ◽  
Unfamiliar Faces

Self-face recognition has been widely explored in the past few years. Nevertheless, the current literature relies on the use of standardized photographs which do not represent daily-life face recognition. Therefore, we aim for the first time to evaluate self-face processing in healthy individuals using natural/ambient images which contain variations in the environment and in the face itself. In total, 40 undergraduate and graduate students performed a forced delayed-matching task, including images of one’s own face, friend, famous and unknown individuals. For both reaction time and accuracy, results showed that participants were faster and more accurate when matching different images of their own face compared to both famous and unfamiliar faces. Nevertheless, no significant differences were found between self-face and friend-face and between friend-face and famous-face. They were also faster and more accurate when matching friend and famous faces compared to unfamiliar faces. Our results suggest that faster and more accurate responses to self-face might be better explained by a familiarity effect – that is, (1) the result of frequent exposition to one’s own image through mirror and photos, (2) a more robust mental representation of one’s own face and (3) strong face recognition units as for other familiar faces.

scholarly journals How Familiarity Warps Representation in Face Space

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Vassiki Chauhan ◽  
M. Ida Gobbini
Keyword(s):  
Face Recognition ◽  
Structural Features ◽  
Image Distortion ◽  
Face Space ◽  
Familiar Face ◽  
Unfamiliar Faces

AbstractRecognition of familiar as compared to unfamiliar faces is robust and resistant to marked image distortion or degradation. Here we tested the flexibility of familiar face recognition with a morphing paradigm where the appearance of a personally familiar face was mixed with the appearance of a stranger. The aim was to assess how categorical boundaries for recognition of identity are affected by familiarity. We found a narrower categorical boundary for the identity of personally familiar faces when they were mixed with unfamiliar identities as compared to the control condition, in which the appearance of two unfamiliar faces were mixed. Our results suggest that familiarity warps the representational geometry of face space, amplifying perceptual distances for small changes in the appearance of familiar faces that are inconsistent with the structural features that define their identities.

scholarly journals Critical Features for Face Recognition

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Naphtali Abudarham ◽  
Lior Shkiller ◽  
Galit Yovel
Keyword(s):  
Neural Network ◽  
Face Recognition ◽  
Deep Neural Network ◽  
Recognition Algorithm ◽  
Facial Features ◽  
Perceptual Representation ◽  
Familiar Face ◽  
Perceptual Representations ◽  
Unfamiliar Faces ◽  
New Framework

Face recognition is a computationally challenging task that humans perform effortlessly. Nonetheless, this remarkable ability is limited to familiar faces and does not generalize to unfamiliar faces. To account for humans’ superior ability to recognize familiar faces, current theories suggest that familiar and unfamiliar faces have different perceptual representations. In the current study, we applied a reverse engineering approach to reveal which facial features are critical for familiar face recognition. In contrast to current views, we discovered that the same subset of features that are used for matching unfamiliar faces, are also used for matching as well as recognition of familiar faces. We further show that these features are also used by a deep neural network face recognition algorithm. We therefore propose a new framework that assumes similar perceptual representation for all faces and integrates cognition and perception to account for humans’ superior recognition of familiar faces.

scholarly journals How robust is familiar face recognition? A repeat detection study of more than 1000 faces

2018 ◽  
Vol 5 (5) ◽  
pp. 170634
Author(s):  
Angus F. Chapman ◽  
Hannah Hawkins-Elder ◽  
Tirta Susilo
Keyword(s):  
Face Recognition ◽  
Detection Task ◽  
Familiar Face ◽  
Robust Representation ◽  
Face Images ◽  
Unfamiliar Face ◽  
Unfamiliar Faces ◽  
Repeat Detection ◽  
Better Than

Recent theories suggest that familiar faces have a robust representation in memory because they have been encountered over a wide variety of contexts and image changes (e.g. lighting, viewpoint and expression). By contrast, unfamiliar faces are encountered only once, and so they do not benefit from such richness of experience and are represented based on image-specific details. In this registered report, we used a repeat detection task to test whether familiar faces are recognized better than unfamiliar faces across image changes. Participants viewed a stream of more than 1000 celebrity face images for 0.5 s each, any of which might be repeated at a later point and has to be detected. Some participants saw the same image at repeats, while others saw a different image of the same face. A post-experimental familiarity check allowed us to determine which celebrities were and were not familiar to each participant. We had three predictions: (i) detection would be better for familiar than unfamiliar faces, (ii) detection would be better across same rather than different images, and (iii) detection of familiar faces would be comparable across same and different images, but detection of unfamiliar faces would be poorer across different images. We obtained support for the first two predictions but not the last. Instead, we found that repeat detection of faces, regardless of familiarity, was poorer across different images. Our study suggests that the robustness of familiar face recognition may have limits, and that under some conditions, familiar face recognition can be just as influenced by image changes as unfamiliar face recognition.

scholarly journals An objective, sensitive and ecologically valid neural measure of rapid human individual face recognition

2019 ◽  
Vol 6 (6) ◽  
pp. 181904 ◽  
Author(s):  
Friederike G. S. Zimmermann ◽  
Xiaoqian Yan ◽  
Bruno Rossion
Keyword(s):  
Face Recognition ◽  
Visual Stimulation ◽  
Natural Images ◽  
Neural Basis ◽  
Face Identity ◽  
Familiar Face ◽  
Recognition Response ◽  
Human Individual ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Unfamiliar Faces

Humans may be the only species able to rapidly and automatically recognize a familiar face identity in a crowd of unfamiliar faces, an important social skill. Here, by combining electroencephalography (EEG) and fast periodic visual stimulation (FPVS), we introduce an ecologically valid, objective and sensitive neural measure of this human individual face recognition function. Natural images of various unfamiliar faces are presented at a fast rate of 6 Hz, allowing one fixation per face, with variable natural images of a highly familiar face identity, a celebrity, appearing every seven images (0.86 Hz). Following a few minutes of stimulation, a high signal-to-noise ratio neural response reflecting the generalized discrimination of the familiar face identity from unfamiliar faces is observed over the occipito-temporal cortex at 0.86 Hz and harmonics. When face images are presented upside-down, the individual familiar face recognition response is negligible, being reduced by a factor of 5 over occipito-temporal regions. Differences in the magnitude of the individual face recognition response across different familiar face identities suggest that factors such as exposure, within-person variability and distinctiveness mediate this response. Our findings of a biological marker for fast and automatic recognition of individual familiar faces with ecological stimuli open an avenue for understanding this function, its development and neural basis in neurotypical individual brains along with its pathology. This should also have implications for the use of facial recognition measures in forensic science.

scholarly journals Agents' pivotality and reward fairness modulate sense of agency in cooperative joint action

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Solène Le Bars ◽  
Alexandre Devaux ◽  
Tena Nevidal ◽  
Valerian Chambon ◽  
Elisabeth Pacherie
Keyword(s):  
Skin Conductance ◽  
Joint Action ◽  
Electrodermal Activity ◽  
Skin Conductance Level ◽  
Motor Task ◽  
Sense Of Agency ◽  
Skin Conductance Responses ◽  
The Individual ◽  
And Control ◽  
Individual Motor

The sense of agency (SoA) experienced in joint action is an essential subjective dimension of human cooperativeness, but we still know little about the specific factors that contribute to its emergence or alteration. In the present study, dyads of participants were instructed to coordinate their key presses to move a cursor up to a specific target (i.e., to achieve a common goal). We applied random deviations on the cursor’s trajectory to manipulate the motor fluency of the joint action, while the agents’ motor roles were either balanced (i.e., equivalent) or unbalanced (i.e., one agent contributed more than the other), making the agents more or less pivotal to the joint action. Then, the final outcomes were shared equally, fairly (i.e., reflecting individual motor contributions) or arbitrarily in an all-or none fashion, between the co-agents. Self and joint SoA were measured through self-reports about feeling of control (FoC), and electrodermal activity was recorded during the whole motor task. We observed that self and joint FoC were reduced in the case of low motor fluency, pointing out the importance of sensorimotor cues for both I- and we-modes. Moreover, while self FoC was reduced in the low pivotality condition (i.e., low motor role), joint FoC was significantly enhanced when agents’ roles and rewards were symmetrical (i.e. equal). Skin conductance responses to rewards were impacted by the way outcomes were shared between partners (i.e., fairly, equally or arbitrarily) but not by the individual gains, which demonstrates the sensitivity of low-level physiological reactions to external signs of fairness. Skin conductance level was also reduced in the fair context, where rewards were shared according to individual motor contributions, relative to the all-or-none context, which could mirror the feeling of effective responsibility and control over actions’ outcomes.

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