Familiarity is not notoriety: phenomenological accounts of face recognition

Abstract

From a phenomenological perspective, faces are perceived differently from objects as their perception always involves the possibility of a relational engagement (Bredlau, 2011). This is especially true for familiar faces, i.e., faces of people with a history of real relational engagements. Similarly, valence of emotional expressions assumes a key role, as they define the sense and direction of this engagement. Following these premises, the aim of the present study is to demonstrate that face recognition is facilitated by at least two variables, familiarity and emotional expression, and that perception of familiar faces is not influenced by orientation. In order to verify this hypothesis, we implemented a 3 × 3 × 2 factorial design, showing 17 healthy subjects three type of faces (unfamiliar, personally familiar, famous) characterized by three different emotional expressions (happy, hungry/sad, neutral) and in two different orientation (upright vs. inverted). We showed every subject a total of 180 faces with the instructions to give a familiarity judgment. Reaction times (RTs) were recorded and we found that the recognition of a face is facilitated by personal familiarity and emotional expression, and that this process is otherwise independent from a cognitive elaboration of stimuli and remains stable despite orientation. These results highlight the need to make a distinction between famous and personally familiar faces when studying face perception and to consider its historical aspects from a phenomenological point of view.

Self-face advantage over familiar and unfamiliar faces: A three-level meta-analytic approach

“…First, we considered the level of familiarity, since previous studies have shown that we respond faster to familiar faces compared with unfamiliar faces (Burton et al, 2011), and thus we could expect that the overall effect observed could be larger when considering self-face versus unfamiliar faces. Second, we considered the effect of identity, since differences have been found in terms of behavioral performance (Liccione et al, 2014), as well as physiological (Guerra, Sanchez-Adam, Anllo-Vento, Ramirez, & Vila, 2012a;Guerra et al, 2012b;Vico, Guerra, Robles, Vila, & Anllo-Vento, 2010), and neuronal (Gobbini & Haxby, 2007;Gobbini et al, 2004) processes involved in the processing of famous (people we have seen only through the media) and familiar (people we have personally encountered in life) faces. These differences may be explained by the amount and type of experience individuals have with the familiar and famous (Burton et al, 2011) as well as other affective aspects (Guerra et al, 2012a).…”

“…These differences may be explained by the amount and type of experience individuals have with the familiar and famous (Burton et al, 2011) as well as other affective aspects (Guerra et al, 2012a). As suggested by Liccione et al (2014), Baffective and emotional aspects related to personal narratives with others seem to play a special role in face processing^(page 8). Thus, we may expect that the self-face may rely on different processes when compared to a famous face (and unknown faces) but may be characterized by a robust mental representation such as other familiar faces, since the self-face is a familiar face as well.…”

Implicit Recognition of Familiar and Unfamiliar Faces in Schizophrenia: A Study of the Skin Conductance Response in Familiarity Disorders

“…Face-to-face encounters require responding and entering a relationship (which does not occur with famous people). Relationships with relatives involve the self, and familiar faces are embodied stimuli with meaning that include the self ( 27 ). The anomalies of “self-experience” are known to be specific to schizophrenia ( 32 , 33 ).…”

A Multidimensional View on Social and Non-Social Rewards

“…In fact, it has been shown that familiar faces are processed differently than faces of unknown people, due to different visual representations stored in memory, personal knowledge, and personal relevance ( 31 ). Furthermore, “familiarity” in the context of social rewards has multi-faceted meanings and there may be qualitative differences between familiarity with relatives, celebrities, and experimentally learned individuals ( 31 ), which can potentially lead to inconsistencies through differential engagement in experimental tasks ( 32 ). Altogether, familiarity may modulate social and non-social rewards differently, which should be considered in study designs.…”