Bruce And Young Case Study

This double dissociation therefore suggests that recognition of faces and common objects is served by different mechanisms that are independent for each other. Although brain cells of face recognition have not been located, some functional models could help us interpret face recognition and prosopagnosia. One of the most influential models was proposed by Bruce and Young (1986). In this model face recognition involves several steps, and three steps more relate to prosopagnosia.

One practitioner, Bruce, reflects on his predicament: “I work in an agency that is not providing the services agreed to in exchange for grant money. Its brochures advertise the services as available and the agency documentation shows the services as provided, so the grantor believes the services are in place. The staff doesn’t have the necessary resources, so those directly responsible for the care of the individuals who should be receiving the services are under a lot of stress. The consumers were promised something and are not getting it” (Kenyon, 1999, p. 213).

Imagine lacking the ability to recognize the familiar face of a loved one or spouse. Or having to rely on voices, clothing, and certain attributes of that individual in order to have some kind of knowledge on who they actually are. This condition is defined as Prosopagnosia; known as face blindness or facial agnostic. According to Barton (2008), it was first described as a consequence of cerebral damage by Quaking and Bordello in 1867. This term comes from the Greek word “face” and “lack of knowledge.” Stated by the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (2007), Prosopagnosia is anticipated to be the result of damages, abnormalities, or destruction in the right fusiform gyrus; part of the brain that controls the perception of faces and the functionality of memory in the neural system. This deficit can be present from birth, the result of a stroke, a traumatic brain injury, or neurodegenerative diseases. In order to help an individual with Prosopagnosia, it is essential to develop compensatory or redeeming strategies, as well as the use of clues or attributes to help them better identify individuals.

In adults, three variables were used to test the other-race effect on facial recognition: orientation, face type and ethnicity. Adults at least 18 years of age and older (N = 64) were asked to recognize upright and inverted adult and infant faces. Recognition was tested using a forced-choice procedure. 4 slides were shown during a trial to make sure participants understood the instructions. Next, participants viewed 48 slides with faces alternating between adult female and infant faces; first segment each face was upright, second segment faces were inverted. The results of the study found that there was no significance between race and facial recognition. Other research conducted has shown that race does in fact have a significant effect on facial recognition.

The researchers used 11 Polaroid photos of VJ’s club members to teach the face-name associations. This was performed by the method of combining visual imagery, vanishing cues, and expanding rehearsal (Clare et al., 2001). The researchers took VJ to the familiar environment of the club to do generalisation sessions using the photos and found the initial recall was 20% and raised to 98% over time and became 100% at the one, three, six and nine months follow-up

The studies conducted by Northwestern say that brain activity increases in the first 200 milliseconds when we first interact with a person from our same race or from a different race. The studies say that there is a time right after a person meets another of the same race or a different race that determines whether the face is remembered or even forgotten. The point where the brain begins to remember or forget the memory is almost immediately after a person first sees the face. People also remember people by their attributes for example, you might see that a face reminds you of someone you know. You may see that the persons expression appears kind or afraid, or it looks like the face of a famous athlete or a singer. Being able to identify people's attributes increases the likelihood that a face will be

There are several different types of psychological and neurological phenomena that individuals live with every day. One of most interesting conditions that many individuals might not be aware of is prosopagnosia or face blindness. Prosopagnosia is the inability to recognize and distinguish faces. For example, individuals with this condition could have difficulty recognizing their child’s, spouse’s, parent’s, or friend’s face. Many individuals with prosopagnosia will rely on other features to distinguish between other people, such as hair style or color, voices, or posture. As discussed in Chapter 3, prosopagnosia is thought to affect the Fusiform Face Area.

The face recognition model developed by Bruce and Young has eight key parts and it suggests how we process familiar and unfamiliar faces, including facial expressions. The diagram below shows how these parts are interconnected. Structural encoding is where facial features and expressions are encoded. This information is translated at the same time, down two different pathways, to various units. One being expression analysis, where the emotional state of the person is shown by facial features. By using facial speech analysis we can process auditory information. This was shown by McGurk (1976) who created two video clips, one with lip movements indicating 'Ba' and other indicating 'Fa'. Both clips had the sound 'Ba' played over the clip.

This implies that bilateral and unilateral hippocampus does not contribute majorly to familiarity and recollection of unknown human’s faces.

Overly, the model provides coherent explanation of many kind of information about faces and how they relate to each other. It provides evidence about significant differences in processing of familiar and unfamiliar faces. Nonetheless there are limitations. For instance, there is not enough information about processing unfamiliar faces. Burton et al. (1999)

Prosopagnosia is defined as the difficulty in recognizing an individuals face; it is broken down into 3 main types; Apperceptive prosopagnosia, associative prosopagnosia and developmental prosopagnosia. Perception is an important aspect when recognizing faces, without recognizing the stimulus (face) you would not be able to identify a person. Therefore the individuals who sufferer from this disorder is unable to accurately recognize a face whether that be the face of a familiar person such as a family member or close friend, the face of a famous person, or even their own face. This paper will look at prosopagnosia in greater detail, it will explain the 3 main types, as well as give insight as to why face recognition is important in our

Prior to the early 1970s the prominent idea of how memories were formed and retrieved revolved around the idea of processing memory into specific stores (Francis & Neath, 2014). These memory stores were identified as sensory memory, short-term memory, and long-term memory. In contrast to this idea, two researchers named Fergus Craik and Robert Lockhart proposed an idea linking the type of encoding to retrieval (Goldstein, 2015). This idea is known as the levels of processing theory. According to this theory, memory depends on the depth of processing that a given item is received by an individual (Goldstein, 2015). Craik and Lockhart stressed four points in supporting their theory. First, they argued that memory was the result of a series of analyses, each level of the series forming a deeper level of processing than the preceding level (Francis & Neath, 2014). The shallow levels of processing were believed to hold less importance and are defined as giving little attention to meaning of an item. Examples of which include focusing on how a word sounds or memorizing a phone number by repeating it over and over again (Francis & Neath, 2014) (Goldstein, 2015). The deeper levels processing involve paying close attention to the meaning of an item and relating that meaning to something else, an example of which would be focusing on the meaning of a word rather than just how the word sounds (Francis & Neath, 2014) (Goldstein, 2015). The second point Craik and Lockhart

Agnosia is defined as the inability to recognize objects through the processing of sensory information, which means there is no deficit in semantic memory or problems with naming objects. An individual suffering from agnosia still possesses all the relevant semantic information tied to a precept, but they cannot recognize the precept when it is presented to them and therefore trigger the recall of said information. There are many types of agnosia, but this essay will focus on visual object agnosia and prosopagnosia. The former is the inability to recognise objects: patients suffering from visual object agnosia do not have impaired vision, and in some cases can even copy the object they are seeing (patient H.J.A., Humphreys & Riddoch, 1987) or draw it from memory (patient D.F., Milner & Goodale, 1992), but are unable to recognize it when they see it. In the latter, prosopagnosia, patients cannot recognise faces of familiar individuals, and have to rely on other characteristics such as their voice or clothing to recognize them. Patients suffering from prosopagnosia can either acquire it through a lesion in relevant brain areas (acquired prosopagnosia) or for less understood reasons have it from birth, in which case it is termed developmental prosopagnosia. The study of patients with agnosia is integral to the field of visual recognition, as the specifics of their deficits can provide great insight into the ways our brain processes information; for example, the location of

The model claims that there is one facial recognition unit for each face and that viewing a face will in turn activate the appropriate face recognition unit. The Person Identity Nodes identify who the person is by classifying or associating them with something. Once again there is only one unit of identification per person. It is at this point that all points of domain and recognition occur. (Burton,A.M; Bruce, V;Johnston,R.A, 1990) (Burton,A.M; Bruce,V& Handcock,P.J,

Craik, F. I., Rose, N. S., & Gopie, N. “Recognition Without Awareness: Encoding and Retrieval Factors.” American Psychological Association. (2015). 1271-1273.Web.