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Familiarisation with faces selectively enhances sensitivity to changes made to the eyes
1Department of Psychology, University of Stirling, Stirling FK9 4LA, Scotland, UK. christopher.odonnell@stir.ac.uk
Perception
|July 24, 2001
Summary
Learning new faces involves using external features like hair. Familiar faces enhance sensitivity to eye changes, not other internal features, while maintaining hair change detection.
Area of Science:
- Cognitive Psychology
- Neuroscience
- Vision Science
Background:
- Facial recognition relies on processing various facial features.
- Understanding how familiarity influences feature weighting is crucial for facial perception research.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate which facial features are utilized in learning new faces.
- To determine how familiarity with faces affects the detection of changes in internal and external features.
Main Methods:
- Two experiments used dynamic video presentations for face training.
- A same-different decision task assessed sensitivity to manipulated facial features (internal and external).
- Subjects identified changes in trained (familiar) and untrained (novel) faces.
Main Results:
- Hair changes were most easily detected in unfamiliar faces.
- Familiarity selectively enhanced sensitivity to eye changes.
- Sensitivity to hair changes was maintained for familiar faces.
- No enhancement was observed for other internal facial features with familiarization.
Conclusions:
- Familiar face representations are not solely weighted towards internal features.
- Selective enhancement of eye change detection, not a general internal feature bias, characterizes familiar face recognition.
- Sensitivity to external features like hair remains important even for familiar faces.