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 Objective Patterns of Face Recognition Deficits in 165 Adults with Self-Reported Developmental Prosopagnosia

2019 ◽  
Vol 9 (6) ◽  
pp. 133 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sarah Bate ◽  
Rachel J. Bennetts ◽  
Nicola Gregory ◽  
Jeremy J. Tree ◽  
Ebony Murray ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Face Recognition ◽  
Face Perception ◽  
Semantic Processing ◽  
Severe Form ◽  
Short Term ◽  
Face Memory ◽  
Familiar Face ◽  
Unfamiliar Face ◽  
Prevalent Form

In the last 15 years, increasing numbers of individuals have self-referred to research laboratories in the belief that they experience severe everyday difficulties with face recognition. The condition “developmental prosopagnosia” (DP) is typically diagnosed when impairment is identified on at least two objective face-processing tests, usually involving assessments of face perception, unfamiliar face memory, and famous face recognition. While existing evidence suggests that some individuals may have a mnemonic form of prosopagnosia, it is also possible that other subtypes exist. The current study assessed 165 adults who believe they experience DP, and 38% of the sample were impaired on at least two of the tests outlined above. While statistical dissociations between face perception and face memory were only observed in four cases, a further 25% of the sample displayed dissociations between impaired famous face recognition and intact short-term unfamiliar face memory and face perception. We discuss whether this pattern of findings reflects (a) limitations within dominant diagnostic tests and protocols, (b) a less severe form of DP, or (c) a currently unrecognized but prevalent form of the condition that affects long-term face memory, familiar face recognition or semantic processing.

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 Familiar and unfamiliar face recognition in crested macaques ( Macaca nigra )

2015 ◽  
Vol 2 (5) ◽  
pp. 150109 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jérôme Micheletta ◽  
Jamie Whitehouse ◽  
Lisa A. Parr ◽  
Paul Marshman ◽  
Antje Engelhardt ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Face Recognition ◽  
Social Factors ◽  
Novel Species ◽  
Primate Species ◽  
Pictorial Representation ◽  
Facial Features ◽  
Dominance Hierarchies ◽  
Macaca Nigra ◽  
Unfamiliar Face ◽  
Unfamiliar Faces

Many species use facial features to identify conspecifics, which is necessary to navigate a complex social environment. The fundamental mechanisms underlying face processing are starting to be well understood in a variety of primate species. However, most studies focus on a limited subset of species tested with unfamiliar faces. As well as limiting our understanding of how widely distributed across species these skills are, this also limits our understanding of how primates process faces of individuals they know, and whether social factors (e.g. dominance and social bonds) influence how readily they recognize others. In this study, socially housed crested macaques voluntarily participated in a series of computerized matching-to-sample tasks investigating their ability to discriminate (i) unfamiliar individuals and (ii) members of their own social group. The macaques performed above chance on all tasks. Familiar faces were not easier to discriminate than unfamiliar faces. However, the subjects were better at discriminating higher ranking familiar individuals, but not unfamiliar ones. This suggests that our subjects applied their knowledge of their dominance hierarchies to the pictorial representation of their group mates. Faces of high-ranking individuals garner more social attention, and therefore might be more deeply encoded than other individuals. Our results extend the study of face recognition to a novel species, and consequently provide valuable data for future comparative studies.

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 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.

Recognizing Face Identity from Natural and Morphed Smiles

2006 ◽  
Vol 59 (5) ◽  
pp. 801-808 ◽  
Author(s):  
Karen Lander ◽  
Lewis Chuang ◽  
Lee Wickham
Keyword(s):  
Face Recognition ◽  
Nonrigid Motion ◽  
Face Identity ◽  
Familiar Face ◽  
Static Image ◽  
General Benefit ◽  
Better Than

It is easier to identify a degraded familiar face when it is shown moving (smiling, talking; nonrigid motion), than when it is displayed as a static image (Knight & Johnston, 1997; Lander, Christie, & Bruce, 1999). Here we explore the theoretical underpinnings of the moving face recognition advantage. In Experiment 1 we show that the identification of personally familiar faces when shown naturally smiling is significantly better than when the person is shown artificially smiling (morphed motion), as a single static neutral image or as a single static smiling image. In Experiment 2 we demonstrate that speeding up the motion significantly impairs the recognition of identity from natural smiles, but has little effect on morphed smiles. We conclude that the recognition advantage for face motion does not reflect a general benefit for motion, but suggests that, for familiar faces, information about their characteristic motion is stored in memory.

scholarly journals Real-World Face Recognition: The Importance of Surface Reflectance Properties

Perception ◽  
10.1068/p5779 ◽  
2007 ◽  
Vol 36 (9) ◽  
pp. 1368-1374 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard Russell ◽  
Pawan Sinha
Keyword(s):  
Face Recognition ◽  
Real World ◽  
Recognition Task ◽  
Color Images ◽  
Surface Reflectance ◽  
Shape Information ◽  
Familiar Face ◽  
The Face ◽  
Unfamiliar Face ◽  
Facial Attributes

The face recognition task we perform most often in everyday experience is the identification of people with whom we are familiar. However, because of logistical challenges, most studies focus on unfamiliar-face recognition, wherein subjects are asked to match or remember images of unfamiliar people's faces. Here we explore the importance of two facial attributes—shape and surface reflectance—in the context of a familiar-face recognition task. In our experiment, subjects were asked to recognise color images of the faces of their friends. The images were manipulated such that only reflectance or only shape information was useful for recognizing any particular face. Subjects were actually better at recognizing their friends' faces from reflectance information than from shape information. This provides evidence that reflectance information is important for face recognition in ecologically relevant contexts.

scholarly journals The geometry of face memory

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Liang She ◽  
Marcus K. Benna ◽  
Yuelin Shi ◽  
Stefano Fusi ◽  
Doris Y. Tsao
Keyword(s):  
Perirhinal Cortex ◽  
Network Code ◽  
Short Latency ◽  
Neuronal Responses ◽  
Visual Objects ◽  
Familiar Face ◽  
Long Latency ◽  
Unfamiliar Face ◽  
Face Subspace ◽  
Unfamiliar Faces

AbstractThe ability to recognize familiar visual objects is critical to survival. Neurons in inferotemporal (IT) cortex represent the percept of visual objects using a distributed axis code. However, the network code for the memory of visual objects remains elusive. Here, we measured neuronal responses to familiar and unfamiliar faces in two face patches, AM and PR. In both areas, familiar and unfamiliar faces were represented in distinct subspaces. The familiar face subspace was shifted relative to the unfamiliar face subspace at short latency and then distorted to increase neural distances between familiar faces at long latency. Our results suggest that memories of familiar faces are represented in IT and perirhinal cortex by a distinct long-latency code that is optimized to distinguish familiar identities.One Sentence SummaryFamiliar and unfamiliar faces are represented in distinct neural subspaces, with the former represented by a unique long-latency geometry.

scholarly journals Compressed representation of natural image variability underlies high accuracy in face recognition

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
David White ◽  
Tanya Wayne ◽  
Victor Perrone de Lima Varela
Keyword(s):  
Face Recognition ◽  
Computational Analysis ◽  
High Accuracy ◽  
Natural Image ◽  
Cognitive Representations ◽  
Human Face Recognition ◽  
Familiar Face ◽  
Similarity Ratings ◽  
Image Averaging ◽  
Unfamiliar Faces

Accurately recognising faces is fundamental to human social interaction. In recent years it has become clear that people’s accuracy differs markedly depending on viewer’s familiarity with a face and their individual skill, but the cognitive and neural bases of these accuracy differences are not understood. We examined cognitive representations underlying these accuracy differences by measuring similarity ratings to natural facial image variation. Using image averaging, and inspired by the computation of Analysis of Variance, we partitioned image variation into differences between faces (between-identity variation) and differences between photos of the same face (within-identity variation). Contrary to prevailing accounts of human face recognition and perceptual learning, we found that modulation of within-identity variation – rather than between-identity variation – was associated with high accuracy. First, similarity of within-identity variation was compressed for familiar faces relative to unfamiliar faces. Second, viewers that are extremely accurate in face recognition – ‘super-recognisers’ – showed enhanced compression of within-identity variation that was most marked for familiar faces. We also present computational analysis showing that cognitive transformations of between- and within-identity variation make separable contributions to perceptual expertise in unfamiliar and familiar face identification respectively. We conclude that inter- and intra-individual accuracy differences primarily arise from differences in the representation of familiar face image variation.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document