Does Face Recognition Play A Part Of How Quickly People Are Able Recall Names Or Occupations?

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.

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.

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.

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

The primary outcome in the current study was measuring the ability to correctly recall different character sets that included similar or dissimilar distractor tasks. To test this hypothesis, the number of correctly recalled character sets were analyzed by a 2 (character set: consonants vs. digits) X 2 (distractor task: word-based vs. number-based) between-subjects ANOVA. The main effect for character sets was not statistically significant, F(1, 106) = 1.16, p = .284, ηp² = .01. The main effect for distractor tasks also produced non-statistically significant results, F(1, 106) = 1.0, p = .758, ηp² = .001 . Lastly the interaction effect showed a non-statistically significant result F(1, 106) = 1.22, p = .271, ηp² = .011. Descriptive statistics for these data can be found in Table 1.

Why would someone remember all of the multiplication facts they were ever taught, but not what they ate for dinner two days ago? Why would someone be more apt to recall the capitals of all fifty states, but not what they wore last Friday? All memories, while some may appear more important than others, are all stored in the brain, which is the central command center of the human nervous system, controlling every part of daily life. Some memories are more easily retrieved from the brain because emotionally charged events and recurring experiences are better remembered. How emotions allow memories to be more easily remembered, and the application of the five senses and experience on learning all help to explain why some memories are more clear

In Teitelbaum and Geiselman study Cross- race recognition was examined over black and white faces where the applicants consisted of whites, blacks, Latinos, and Asians. It is said that people of the same race are more likely to recognize faces of their own race rather than people of a different race. However when adding moods such as pleasant and unpleasant it was easier for the participant to recognize the faces when they were in an unpleasant atmosphere. Likewise when adding moods whatever mood is portrayed in that person, that is most likely what the participant would remember. This study most likely describes the availability heuristic, in which it is the process where we easily access the most accessible memories. For example, if we are

This essay will talk about face recognition and several reasons why it has been studied separately. The ability to recognise faces is of huge significance of people’s daily life and differs in important ways from other forms of object recognition (Bruce and Young, 1986). Than this essay will talk about the processes involved in face recognition which comes from the diversity of research about familiar and unfamiliar faces-it includes behavioural studies, studies on brain-damaged patients, and neuroimaging studies. Finally, it will discuss how face recognition differs from the recognition of other object by involving more holistic or configuration processing and different areas of the brain (Eysenck & Keane, 2005).

As Elizabeth Loftus describes in her book Memory: Surprising New Insights into How We Remember and Why We

In this test, authors did not involve humans’ appraisal in recognizing the facial

Students, independently, watched 2 video clips. The first video clip was a stimulus clip of a staged car theft of 15-s duration. The video was shot at an angle in which students where witnesses to the crime and they were approaching the car. It had a clear view of the offender. In the clip the witness alerted the offender that they were present by shouting which resulted in the offender fleeing. The second video clip was a 3 minute unrelated filler clip in which included numerous individuals that could have possibly hindered the participants in accurately identifying the offender. Once viewing both clips participants where then put in one of two retention intervals 3 minutes or 3 weeks to identify the offender. Retention intervals where used to further replicate real life situations and to see how time plays a role in memory accuracy. Upon the completion of time intervals either 3 minutes or 3 weeks participants were shown one of two photographs. One was of the actual offender and the other photograph was of a filler who matched the description of the offender. Both pictures only showed individuals head and shoulders. Participants were given general information informing them that the person in the photograph may or may not have been the car theft individual. A single photograph of either the offender or a filler was displayed with one of the three response options below was used in

Age and gender play a role in the rate of recognition of known and unknown stimuli. Francois Guillem and Melody Mograss (2004) conducted a continuous recognition memory task using male and female participants between the ages of 20-35 years old. Participants were shown pictures of unfamiliar faces and asked to identify whether they had or had not previously seen the face. Research shows that females have a faster recognition rate for both familiar and unfamiliar stimuli (Guillem et al,2004). Males process information or stimuli differently than females, in part due to brain structure and activation of neurons, but also because males tend to maintain less information and are quick to make decisions while females are more detail-oriented

​Women maintain superiority in the following STM-related skillsets: facial recognition, verbal memory, and multi-tasking. In an experiment conducted by Knox et al., men and women were asked to examine a "virtual room" that featured photographs of faces hanging on each wall (2). Upon exiting, they were then asked to match the photos to their corresponding places on the walls of the virtual room; the men averaged 21.2% accuracy, while the women averaged 61.1% accuracy (Knox et al. 2). These results provide adequate justification as to why women are more adept at remembering things such as the location of the car keys, and identifying familiar faces in a crowd ("Sex Differences in Memory").