Familiar and Unfamiliar Face Recognition in a Crowd
Affiliation(s)
Department of Psychology, Aichi University, Toyohashi, Japan. Chubu Telecommunications Co., Nagoya, Japan.
Department of Psychology, Aichi University, Toyohashi, Japan. Chubu Telecommunications Co., Nagoya, Japan.
ABSTRACT
The purpose of the present study was to investigate whether the visual search process for familiar faces differs from that for unfamiliar faces. We used a single-target visual search task and recorded eye movements of participants during the task. We employed three different types of face familiarity: personally familiar faces (friends and teachers), famous faces, and unfamiliar faces. Participants had to search through arrays of faces for a target face. In each trial, a target face and three distractor faces were horizontally aligned and presented at the same time. In the personally familiar or famous condition, the target was a personally familiar face or a famous face, respectively, and the distractor faces were unfamiliar. In the unfamiliar condition, the target was an unfamiliar face and the distractor faces were personally familiar. The reaction times to identify the target demonstrated that the visual search for unfamiliar faces is slower than that for personally familiar faces and famous faces, but there was no significant difference between reaction times to recognize the personally familiar and the famous face targets. Additionally, the eye movement results in the unfamiliar face condition showed that an exhaustive search of the entire array occurred more frequently than a self-terminating search, but this was not true for both the personally familiar faces and famous faces conditions. These results suggest that the visual search process for familiar faces (personally familiar and famous) in a crowd differs from that for unfamiliar faces.
Cite this paper
Ito, H. & Sakurai, A. (2014). Familiar and Unfamiliar Face Recognition in a Crowd. Psychology, 5, 1011-1018. doi: 10.4236/psych.2014.59113.
Ito, H. & Sakurai, A. (2014). Familiar and Unfamiliar Face Recognition in a Crowd. Psychology, 5, 1011-1018. doi: 10.4236/psych.2014.59113.
References
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http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/S1364-6613(00)01501-1 [2] Balas, B., Cox, D., & Conwell, E. (2007). The Effect of Real-World Personal Familiarity on the Speed of Face Information Processing. PLoS ONE, 2, Article ID: e1223.
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http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/a0024060 [5] Bruce, V. (1979). Searching for Politicians: An Information Processing Approach to Face Recognition. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 31, 373-395.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14640747908400734 [6] Bruce, V. (1982). Changing Faces: Visual and Non-Visual Coding Processes in Face Recognition. British Journal of Psychology, 73, 105-116.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.2044-8295.1982.tb01795.x [7] Bruce, V., Henderson, Z., Greenwood, K., Hancock, P. J. B., Burton, A. M., & Miller, P. (1999). Verification of Face Identities from Images Captured on Video. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Applied, 5, 339-360.
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http://dx.doi.org/10.1207/s15516709cog2301_1 [9] Clutterbuck, R., & Johnston, R. A. (2002). Exploring Levels of Face Familiarity by Using an Indirect Face-Matching Measure. Perception, 31, 985-994.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1068/p3335 [10] Ellis, H. D., Shepherd, J. W., & Davies, G. M. (1979). Identification of Familiar and Unfamiliar Faces from Internal and External Features; Some Implications for Theories of Face Recognition. Perception, 8, 431-439.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1068/p080431 [11] Ewbank, M. P., & Andrews, T. J. (2008). Differential Sensitivity for Viewpoint between Familiar and Unfamiliar Faces in Human Visual Cortex. NeuroImage, 40, 1857-1870.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1006/nimg.1998.0409 [12] Gobbini, M. I., & Haxby, J. V. (2007). Neural Systems for Recognition of Familiar Faces. Neuropsychologia, 45, 32-41.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2006.04.015 [13] Gobbini, M. I., Leibenluft, E., Santiago, N., & Haxby, J. V. (2004). Social and Emotional Attachment in the Neural Representation of Faces. NeuroImage, 22, 1628-1635.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.neuroimage.2004.03.049 [14] Gorno-Tempini, M. L., & Price, C. J. (2001). Identification of Famous Faces and Buildings: A Functional Neuroimaging Study of Semantically Unique Items. Brain, 124, 2087-2097.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/brain/124.10.2087 [15] Halgren, E., Dale, A. M., Sereno, M. I., Tootell, R. B. H., Marinkovic, K., & Rosen, B. R. (1999). Location of Human Face-Selective Cortex with Respect to Retinotopic Areas. Human Brain Mapping, 7, 29-37. [16] Haxby, J. V., Hoffman, E. A., & Gobbini, M. I. (2000). The Distributed Human Neural System for Face Perception. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 4, 223-233.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/S1364-6613(00)01482-0 [17] Hill, H., & Bruce, V. (1996). Effects of Lighting on the Perception of Facial Surfaces. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 22, 986-1004.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/0096-1523.22.4.986 [18] Hill, H., Schyns, P. G., & Akamatsu, S. (1997). Information and Viewpoint Dependence in Face Recognition. Cognition, 62, 201-222.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/S0010-0277(96)00785-8 [19] Hoffman, E. A., & Haxby, J. V. (2000). Distinct Representations of Eye Gaze and Identity in the Distributed Human Neural System for Face Perception. Nature Neuroscience, 3, 80-84.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/71152 [20] Johnston, A., Hill, H., & Carman, N. (1992). Recognizing Faces: Effects of Lighting Direction, Inversion, and Brightness Reversal. Perception, 21, 365-375.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1068/p210365 [21] Johnston, R., & Edmonds, A. (2009). Familiar and Unfamiliar Face Recognition: A Review. Memory, 17, 577-596.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09658210902976969 [22] Kanwisher, N., McDermott, J., & Chun, M. M. (1997). The Fusiform Face Area: A Module in Human Extrastriate Cortex Specialized for Face Perception. Journal of Neuroscience, 17, 4302-4311. [23] Malone, D. R., Morris, H. H., Kay, M. C., & Levin, H. S. (1982). Prosopagnosia: A Double Dissociation between the Recognition of Familiar and Unfamiliar Faces. Journal of Neurology, Neurosurgery & Psychiatry, 45, 820-822.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1136/jnnp.45.9.820 [24] Natu, V., & O’Toole, A. J. (2011). The Neural Processing of Familiar and Unfamiliar Faces: A Review and Synopsis. British Journal of Psychology, 102, 726-747.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.2044-8295.2011.02053.x [25] O’Donnell, C., & Bruce, V. (2001). Familiarisation with Faces Selectively Enhances Sensitivity to Changes Made to the Eyes. Perception, 30, 755-754.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1068/p3027 [26] O’Toole, A. J., Edelman, S., & Bülthoff, H. H. (1998). Stimulus-Specific Effects in Face Recognition over Changes in Viewpoint. Vision Research, 38, 2351-2363.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/S0042-6989(98)00042-X [27] O’Toole, A. J., Weimer, S., Dunlop, J., Barwick, R., Ayyad, J., & Phillips, P. J. (2010). Recognizing People from Dynamic Video: Dissecting Identity with a Fusion Approach. Vision Research, 10, 643.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1167/10.7.643 [28] Persike, M., Meinhardt-Injac, B., & Meinhardt, G. (2013). The Preview Benefit for Familiar and Unfamiliar Faces. Vision Research, 87, 1-9.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.visres.2013.05.005 [29] Rossion, B., Schiltz, C., & Crommelinck, M. (2003). The Functionally Defined Right Occipital and Fusiform “Face Areas” Discriminate from Visually Familiar Faces. NeuroImage, 19, 877-883.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/S1053-8119(03)00105-8 [30] Sugiura, M., Kawashima, R., Nakamura, K., Sato, N., Nakamura, A., Kato, T., & Fukuda, H. (2001). Activation Reduction in Anterior Temporal Cortices during Repeated Recognition of Faces of Personal Acquaintances. NeuroImage, 13, 877-890.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1006/nimg.2001.0747 [31] Thornton, T. L., & Gilden, D. L. (2007). Parallel and Serial Processes in Visual Search. Psychological Review, 114, 71-103.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/0033-295X.114.1.71 [32] Tranel, D., Damasio, A. R., & Damasio, H. (1988). Intact Recognition of Facial Expression, Sex, and Age in Patients with Impaired Recognition of Facial Identity. Neurology, 28, 690-696.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1212/WNL.38.5.690 [33] Treisman, A. M., & Gelade, G. (1980). A Feature-Integration Theory of Attention. Cognitive Psychology, 12, 97-136.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/0010-0285(80)90005-5 [34] Walton, B. R. P., & Hills, P. J. (2012). Face Distortion Aftereffects in Personally Familiar, Famous, and Unfamiliar Faces. Frontiers in Psychology, 3, Article ID: 258.
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2012.00258 [35] Warrington, E. K., & James, M. (1967). An Experimental Investigation of Facial Recognition in Patients with Unilateral Cerebral Lesions. Cortex, 3, 317-326.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/S0010-9452(67)80020-0 [36] Wolfe, J. M. (1992). The Parallel Guidance of Visual Attention. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 1, 124-128.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/1467-8721.ep10769733 [37] Young, A. W., Hay, D. C., McWeeny, K. H., Flude, B. M., & Ellis, A. W. (1985). Matching Familiar and Unfamiliar Faces on Internal and External Features. Perception, 14, 737-746.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1068/p140737 [38] Young, A. W., Newcombe, F., DeHaan, E. H. F., Small, M., & Hay, D. C. (1993). Face Perception after Brain Injury. Selective Impairments Affecting Identity and Expression. Brain, 116, 941-959.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/brain/116.4.941
[1] Allison, T., Puce, A., & McCarthy, G. (2000). Social Perception from Visual Cues: Role of the STS Region. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 4, 267-276.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/S1364-6613(00)01501-1 [2] Balas, B., Cox, D., & Conwell, E. (2007). The Effect of Real-World Personal Familiarity on the Speed of Face Information Processing. PLoS ONE, 2, Article ID: e1223.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0001223 [3] Barton, J. J. S., Radcliffe, N., Cherkasova, M. V., Edelman, J., & Intriligator, J. M. (2006). Information Processing during Face Recognition: The Effects of Familiarity, Inversion, and Morphing on Scanning Fixations. Perception, 35, 1089-1105.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1068/p5547 [4] Becker, D. V., Anderson, U. S., Mortensen, C. R., Neufeld, S. L., & Neel, R. (2011). The Face in the Crowd Effect Unconfounded: Happy Faces, Not Angry Faces, Are More Efficiently Detected in Single- and Multiple-Target Visual Search Tasks. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 140, 637-659.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/a0024060 [5] Bruce, V. (1979). Searching for Politicians: An Information Processing Approach to Face Recognition. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 31, 373-395.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14640747908400734 [6] Bruce, V. (1982). Changing Faces: Visual and Non-Visual Coding Processes in Face Recognition. British Journal of Psychology, 73, 105-116.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.2044-8295.1982.tb01795.x [7] Bruce, V., Henderson, Z., Greenwood, K., Hancock, P. J. B., Burton, A. M., & Miller, P. (1999). Verification of Face Identities from Images Captured on Video. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Applied, 5, 339-360.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/1076-898X.5.4.339 [8] Burton, A. M., Bruce, V., & Hancock, P. J. B. (1999). From Pixels to People: A Model of Familiar Face Recognition. Cognitive Science, 23, 1-31.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1207/s15516709cog2301_1 [9] Clutterbuck, R., & Johnston, R. A. (2002). Exploring Levels of Face Familiarity by Using an Indirect Face-Matching Measure. Perception, 31, 985-994.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1068/p3335 [10] Ellis, H. D., Shepherd, J. W., & Davies, G. M. (1979). Identification of Familiar and Unfamiliar Faces from Internal and External Features; Some Implications for Theories of Face Recognition. Perception, 8, 431-439.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1068/p080431 [11] Ewbank, M. P., & Andrews, T. J. (2008). Differential Sensitivity for Viewpoint between Familiar and Unfamiliar Faces in Human Visual Cortex. NeuroImage, 40, 1857-1870.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1006/nimg.1998.0409 [12] Gobbini, M. I., & Haxby, J. V. (2007). Neural Systems for Recognition of Familiar Faces. Neuropsychologia, 45, 32-41.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2006.04.015 [13] Gobbini, M. I., Leibenluft, E., Santiago, N., & Haxby, J. V. (2004). Social and Emotional Attachment in the Neural Representation of Faces. NeuroImage, 22, 1628-1635.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.neuroimage.2004.03.049 [14] Gorno-Tempini, M. L., & Price, C. J. (2001). Identification of Famous Faces and Buildings: A Functional Neuroimaging Study of Semantically Unique Items. Brain, 124, 2087-2097.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/brain/124.10.2087 [15] Halgren, E., Dale, A. M., Sereno, M. I., Tootell, R. B. H., Marinkovic, K., & Rosen, B. R. (1999). Location of Human Face-Selective Cortex with Respect to Retinotopic Areas. Human Brain Mapping, 7, 29-37. [16] Haxby, J. V., Hoffman, E. A., & Gobbini, M. I. (2000). The Distributed Human Neural System for Face Perception. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 4, 223-233.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/S1364-6613(00)01482-0 [17] Hill, H., & Bruce, V. (1996). Effects of Lighting on the Perception of Facial Surfaces. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 22, 986-1004.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/0096-1523.22.4.986 [18] Hill, H., Schyns, P. G., & Akamatsu, S. (1997). Information and Viewpoint Dependence in Face Recognition. Cognition, 62, 201-222.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/S0010-0277(96)00785-8 [19] Hoffman, E. A., & Haxby, J. V. (2000). Distinct Representations of Eye Gaze and Identity in the Distributed Human Neural System for Face Perception. Nature Neuroscience, 3, 80-84.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/71152 [20] Johnston, A., Hill, H., & Carman, N. (1992). Recognizing Faces: Effects of Lighting Direction, Inversion, and Brightness Reversal. Perception, 21, 365-375.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1068/p210365 [21] Johnston, R., & Edmonds, A. (2009). Familiar and Unfamiliar Face Recognition: A Review. Memory, 17, 577-596.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09658210902976969 [22] Kanwisher, N., McDermott, J., & Chun, M. M. (1997). The Fusiform Face Area: A Module in Human Extrastriate Cortex Specialized for Face Perception. Journal of Neuroscience, 17, 4302-4311. [23] Malone, D. R., Morris, H. H., Kay, M. C., & Levin, H. S. (1982). Prosopagnosia: A Double Dissociation between the Recognition of Familiar and Unfamiliar Faces. Journal of Neurology, Neurosurgery & Psychiatry, 45, 820-822.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1136/jnnp.45.9.820 [24] Natu, V., & O’Toole, A. J. (2011). The Neural Processing of Familiar and Unfamiliar Faces: A Review and Synopsis. British Journal of Psychology, 102, 726-747.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.2044-8295.2011.02053.x [25] O’Donnell, C., & Bruce, V. (2001). Familiarisation with Faces Selectively Enhances Sensitivity to Changes Made to the Eyes. Perception, 30, 755-754.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1068/p3027 [26] O’Toole, A. J., Edelman, S., & Bülthoff, H. H. (1998). Stimulus-Specific Effects in Face Recognition over Changes in Viewpoint. Vision Research, 38, 2351-2363.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/S0042-6989(98)00042-X [27] O’Toole, A. J., Weimer, S., Dunlop, J., Barwick, R., Ayyad, J., & Phillips, P. J. (2010). Recognizing People from Dynamic Video: Dissecting Identity with a Fusion Approach. Vision Research, 10, 643.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1167/10.7.643 [28] Persike, M., Meinhardt-Injac, B., & Meinhardt, G. (2013). The Preview Benefit for Familiar and Unfamiliar Faces. Vision Research, 87, 1-9.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.visres.2013.05.005 [29] Rossion, B., Schiltz, C., & Crommelinck, M. (2003). The Functionally Defined Right Occipital and Fusiform “Face Areas” Discriminate from Visually Familiar Faces. NeuroImage, 19, 877-883.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/S1053-8119(03)00105-8 [30] Sugiura, M., Kawashima, R., Nakamura, K., Sato, N., Nakamura, A., Kato, T., & Fukuda, H. (2001). Activation Reduction in Anterior Temporal Cortices during Repeated Recognition of Faces of Personal Acquaintances. NeuroImage, 13, 877-890.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1006/nimg.2001.0747 [31] Thornton, T. L., & Gilden, D. L. (2007). Parallel and Serial Processes in Visual Search. Psychological Review, 114, 71-103.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/0033-295X.114.1.71 [32] Tranel, D., Damasio, A. R., & Damasio, H. (1988). Intact Recognition of Facial Expression, Sex, and Age in Patients with Impaired Recognition of Facial Identity. Neurology, 28, 690-696.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1212/WNL.38.5.690 [33] Treisman, A. M., & Gelade, G. (1980). A Feature-Integration Theory of Attention. Cognitive Psychology, 12, 97-136.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/0010-0285(80)90005-5 [34] Walton, B. R. P., & Hills, P. J. (2012). Face Distortion Aftereffects in Personally Familiar, Famous, and Unfamiliar Faces. Frontiers in Psychology, 3, Article ID: 258.
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2012.00258 [35] Warrington, E. K., & James, M. (1967). An Experimental Investigation of Facial Recognition in Patients with Unilateral Cerebral Lesions. Cortex, 3, 317-326.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/S0010-9452(67)80020-0 [36] Wolfe, J. M. (1992). The Parallel Guidance of Visual Attention. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 1, 124-128.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/1467-8721.ep10769733 [37] Young, A. W., Hay, D. C., McWeeny, K. H., Flude, B. M., & Ellis, A. W. (1985). Matching Familiar and Unfamiliar Faces on Internal and External Features. Perception, 14, 737-746.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1068/p140737 [38] Young, A. W., Newcombe, F., DeHaan, E. H. F., Small, M., & Hay, D. C. (1993). Face Perception after Brain Injury. Selective Impairments Affecting Identity and Expression. Brain, 116, 941-959.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/brain/116.4.941