Measurement and representation of facial familiarity
Measurement and representation of facial familiarity
Nine experiments examined the representational changes that occur as an unfamiliar face becomes familiar. In particular, the relationship between facial familiarity and two types of configurable processing – relational and holistic – was examined. Experiments 1 – 3 revealed that familiarity enhances relational processing. Specifically, the spatial-relationships between the internal features of a face were gradually emphasised with increasing familiarity. Consequently, highly familiar faces revealed an internal feature processing advantage over less familiar faces. In contrast, Experiments 4 – 7 revealed that familiarity does not enhance holistic processing. This was the case irrespective of whether holistic processing was measured by the complete-over-part task (Experiments 4 and 5) or the chimeric face task (Experiments 6 and 7) and irrespective of whether the matching task was sequential (Experiments 4 – 6) or simultaneous (Experiment 7). Familiarity therefore enhanced relational processing, but not holistic processing. A final two experiments examined whether there were any circumstances under which familiarity could influence holistic processing. The results revealed that dividing attentional resources, through the use of a dual task methodology, enabled an effect of familiarity to be revealed on the same two holistic tasks that previously failed to reveal an effect. Thus, although familiarity did not affect the ability to use holistic processing, it did affect the efficiency with which this processing occurred. The results therefore suggest that holistic information is particularly important in the structural encoding of faces, whether familiar or not, whilst relational information is particularly important in the recognition of familiar faces. The underlying representational changes driving these findings are discussed in terms of Burton, Bruce and Johnston’s (1990) model of person recognition and Tanaka, Giles, Kremen and Simon’s (1998) attractor fields model of face-space.
University of Southampton
Osborne, Cara D
1fa68983-88a7-4ccd-bba4-538b099baad7
2007
Osborne, Cara D
1fa68983-88a7-4ccd-bba4-538b099baad7
Osborne, Cara D
(2007)
Measurement and representation of facial familiarity.
University of Southampton, Doctoral Thesis.
Record type:
Thesis
(Doctoral)
Abstract
Nine experiments examined the representational changes that occur as an unfamiliar face becomes familiar. In particular, the relationship between facial familiarity and two types of configurable processing – relational and holistic – was examined. Experiments 1 – 3 revealed that familiarity enhances relational processing. Specifically, the spatial-relationships between the internal features of a face were gradually emphasised with increasing familiarity. Consequently, highly familiar faces revealed an internal feature processing advantage over less familiar faces. In contrast, Experiments 4 – 7 revealed that familiarity does not enhance holistic processing. This was the case irrespective of whether holistic processing was measured by the complete-over-part task (Experiments 4 and 5) or the chimeric face task (Experiments 6 and 7) and irrespective of whether the matching task was sequential (Experiments 4 – 6) or simultaneous (Experiment 7). Familiarity therefore enhanced relational processing, but not holistic processing. A final two experiments examined whether there were any circumstances under which familiarity could influence holistic processing. The results revealed that dividing attentional resources, through the use of a dual task methodology, enabled an effect of familiarity to be revealed on the same two holistic tasks that previously failed to reveal an effect. Thus, although familiarity did not affect the ability to use holistic processing, it did affect the efficiency with which this processing occurred. The results therefore suggest that holistic information is particularly important in the structural encoding of faces, whether familiar or not, whilst relational information is particularly important in the recognition of familiar faces. The underlying representational changes driving these findings are discussed in terms of Burton, Bruce and Johnston’s (1990) model of person recognition and Tanaka, Giles, Kremen and Simon’s (1998) attractor fields model of face-space.
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Published date: 2007
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Local EPrints ID: 466412
URI: http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/id/eprint/466412
PURE UUID: a4205c85-a85f-47a8-a733-4675add5e166
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Date deposited: 05 Jul 2022 05:15
Last modified: 05 Jul 2022 05:15
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Author:
Cara D Osborne
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