Are Faces Special?

Prosopagnosia, also called face blindness, is a neuropsychological condition that refers to impairment in the recognition of faces. Although prosopagnosic patients suffer from other types of recognition impairments (place recognition, car recognition, facial expression of emotion, est.), they experience face recognition problems above or over other types impairments. Prosopagnosia occurs without intellectual, sensory or cognitive impairments; in other words, people with prosopagnosia can still recognize people from non-facial cues. They cannot recognize familiar people by their faces alone, and often use alternative routes to alleviate the effects of this impairment. These routes include

Dunbar, G. (2005). Evaluating Research Methods in Psychology. New Jersey: John Wiley & Sons Inc.

* The view of modern psychologists are frequently difficult to categorize into traditional schools of thought.

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.

The finding that presenting faces sequentially did not reduce the false alarm rate compared to presenting the faces simultaneously was unexpected. Previous research demonstrated SEQ line-ups inducing a criterion shift that resulted in more conservative responses, reducing both hit and false alarm rates

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.

Cohen’s article is a reminder to be careful when reviewing research. This article shows how not all research is true and people put their faith into what they want the research to mean. It is damaging to the progression of psychology as a science if researchers do not claim something as significant for being true. We do this by claiming something is significant because that is what NHST says, and

This article argues that the physical appearance not only matters, it is important to our everyday life. It states that we uses some of the physical characteristics, especially facial appearance, to identify certain types of people. It is a survival skill in the case of recognizing criminals ,children, and peers. This is a scholarly research on facial appearance. I can use this to a one of the major point to support my thesis.

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.

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).

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

The uncanny valley is a phenomenon that occurs when we see human-like beings and we notice that they have or are missing some human features. The realization that they are missing human features causes negative feelings of unease. In this paper I will first describe the uncanny valley. MacDorman & Cattopadhyay (2016) provide an interesting explanation as to why it can occur and how the effect can be influenced. MacDorman & Cattopadhyay (2016) suggests that eeriness of the uncanny valley is not because of how eerie they look. Rather, it depends on how human-like they are. Then, I will describe visual expertise. Visual expertise in this sense refers to our ability to identify faces and other objects that we have experience in perceiving. That experience is used to make top-down assumptions about what faces and their features should look like. Harel (2016) looks at visual expertise, where it works, and how it works. Lastly, I will describe the relationship between the uncanny valley and visual expertise. Kätsyri, Förger, Mäkäräinen, & Takala (2015) provide an argument in their surveying that can explain the relationship. They suggest that a possible explanation is that the visual expertise that we have with facial recognition perceives featural differences in an artificial human-like face. The difference elicit that eerie response because we see something that does look human-like, but we identify as not being human.

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

In a study commissioned by Bruce Wampold and Jeb Brown in the Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology in