Cognitive Exam Face Recognition Essay

Secondly, face recognition units contain stored descriptions of known faces. When a familiar face is seen, face recognition units send signals to cognitive system and active person identity nodes. Person identity nodes allow access to semantic information about the person. The impairment

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.

There was a study done by Young, Hay, and Ellis (1985) that uses people with no medical issues. They asked people to keep a diary record of problems they experienced in face recognition. They found people never reported putting a name to a face while knowing nothing else about that person. This supports the model as it suggests that we cannot think of a person's name unless we know other contextual information about them.

Dr. P, a musician and teacher who had developed visual agnosia, had difficulty processing what he sees, especially faces, he could only identify them by features which he remembered. He only completed tasks if he was singing, if interrupted, he could no longer remember what he was doing nor complete it. Sacks diagnosed Dr. P with prosopagnosia, the inability to identify

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.

Lindsay and Wells (1985) proposed that SEQ is far more superior than SIM as it showed a significantly higher reduction of false identification rates (false alarm rate) in the target-absent trial, known as the sequential-superiority effect. This can be explained by the signal detection theory (SDT). SDT measures an individual’s decision-making performance into two categories – discrimination accuracy (the individual’s ability to distinguish between hits and false alarms) and response criterion (strength of evidence before a hit can be registered) (Meissner et al., 2005). In lineup procedures, the level of response criterions is associated with information that is encoded unconsciously in the brain (familiarity). In a SIM lineup, familiarity is relied upon more when faces are presented at the same time and any lineup member that exceeds the criterion threshold and matches the

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

In this essay descriptions as well as identifications of research evidence for both Bruce and Young’s 1986 cognitive model of face recognition and Burton, Bruce and Johnston’s 1990 cognitive model of face recognition; which are then applied to two separate case studies and an explanation of which better suits each shall be given. For the purposes of this essay, Bruce and Young’s 1986 model shall be theory 1, and Burton, Bruce and Johnston’s 1990 model, shall be theory 2.

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

They were then asked to decide whether they were the same or different when upright and inverted. Deprived patients distinguished faces from the featural set normally, but were significantly impaired for the configural set. These results indicate experience is indeed necessary for the normal development of face processing; specifically configural processing of faces. They also suggest that when visual input is delayed by only two months, there are permanent deficits (Le Grand et al., 2001).

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

Predominantly all fMRI studies show reduced activity in amygdala area, area associated with emotional processing, including FER (Ashwin, Baron-Cohen, Wheelwright, O’Riordan & Bullmore, 2007; Pelphrey, Morris, McCarthy & LaBar, 2007) and neutral face processing (Hadjikhani, Joseph, Snyder & Tager-Flusberg, 2007). Reviewed Corbett et al. 2009 findings are consistent with the majority, while Dalton et al. 2005, same as Monk et al., 2010 did found higher activation in amygdala (see table 3). Interestingly, Monk et al. 2010, to insure participants attended to faces, did use an attention-cueing paradigm (Monk et al., 2010). Overall, evidence suggests that there is decreased automatic activation of amygdala when emotional faces are processed, although there is a possibility of this be due to diminished attention to faces (Harms, Martin & Wallace, 2010).

I agree with Stahl’s point of view that this disorder is very difficult to live with and also as difficult who are not born with it and have to adapt.In my view people with this disorder should be helped to learn methods such as Close’s, so it could help them to recognize familiar faces especially their family members. Some might object to the need to take time out to teach people with this disorder, of course, on the grounds that people with prosopagnosia have very poor memory on recognition of faces. Yet I would argue that numerous other well-known people with this disorder whether it be Chuck Close or Oliver Sacks have discovered their own method of learning to remember faces. Overall, I believe that each individual with this disorder could

Abstract- In this paper, I investigated some of the models of computational neuroscience used in the face recognition field. The model to be discussed is HMAX model. The paper contains what HMAX model is, how it is derived in terms of biological background, and how it is being used for facial recognition. Also, I simulated the simplified version of the model in MATLAB. The simulation of the simplified version verified one cell in the highest hierarchy covers the entire retinal space of the given image.

However, most studies investigating the context effect, presented the context concurrently with the stimuli (Richards, Blanchette & Munjiza, 2007; Blanchette & Richards 2003). Thus, the chances of it affecting the processing of information were not certain. A particular experimental paradigm used to study context effect is the adaptation paradigm, which ensures complete influence of the context. Adaptation can be defined as a change in response of the sensory system to a constant stimulus. The classic experiment of adaptation after-effect was of color, where a red square gives a green perception after adapting to it for a few seconds (Clifford & Rhodes, 2005). This adaptation after-effect is also found with all the different identities and facial expressions (Fox & Barton, 2007) but the magnitude of effect depends on congruence of identity (Pell & Richards, 2013), duration (Rhodes, Jeffery, Clifford & Leopold, 2007) and familiarity of the faces (Carbon et al., 2007). Adaptation effect is strongest when the adaptor is presented for a longer period of time, when the identity of the target and adaptor are congruent and when the face used is a familiar one. The fact that the strength of this effect is present across various dimensions like gender, expressions and identity, shows that adaptation is strategic and occurs at a higher level of visual and perceptual processing (Watson & Clifford, 2003). One of the explanations for the adaptation phenomenon is “response suppression” which refers to the reduced firing rate of the neurons in response to repeated stimuli (Desimone., 1996; Huber & O’Reilly 2003). Wiggs and Martin (1998) advanced this idea and suggested that when a