How fast is famous face recognition?

Abstract

The rapid recognition of familiar faces is crucial for social interactions. However the actual speed with which recognition can be achieved remains largely unknown as most studies have been carried out without any speed constraints. Different paradigms have been used, leading to conflicting results, and although many authors suggest that face recognition is fast, the speed of face recognition has not been directly compared to “fast” visual tasks. In this study, we sought to overcome these limitations. Subjects performed three tasks, a familiarity categorization task (famous faces among unknown faces), a superordinate categorization task (human faces among animal ones), and a gender categorization task. All tasks were performed under speed constraints. The results show that, despite the use of speed constraints, subjects were slow when they had to categorize famous faces: minimum reaction time was 467 ms, which is 180 ms more than during superordinate categorization and 160 ms more than in the gender condition. Our results are compatible with a hierarchy of face processing from the superordinate level to the familiarity level. The processes taking place between detection and recognition need to be investigated in detail.

Fast and Famous: Looking for the Fastest Speed at Which a Face Can be Recognized

“…As some participants failed to do the task [χ 2 -test between hits and false alarms (FA), p  < 0.05], their data were discarded from further analyses (see Table 1 for details). RTs <200 ms were considered as anticipation and were discarded from analyses (Rousselet et al, 2003; Barragan-Jason et al, 2012). To obtain an estimation of the minimal processing time required to recognize targets, the minimal behavioral reaction time (minRT) was computed by determining the latency at which correct go-responses (hits) started to significantly outnumber incorrect go-responses (FA; Rousselet et al, 2003; Bacon-Macé et al, 2007).…”

“…For each condition, the analyses were performed either across trials (by pooling all trials from all participants for a given condition) and across participants (mean of all participants’ individual mean performances). Across-trial analyses have been used in previous studies (Rousselet et al, 2003; Barragan-Jason et al, 2012; Besson et al, 2012) and are like building a “meta-participant,” reflecting the performance over all the population. MinRTs across trials were computed using 10 ms time bins and determined as the middle of the first bin that was significant, χ 2 -test, p  < 0.05, followed by at least three significant consecutive bins.…”

“…Both series were comparable in luminance, contrast, number of pixels of the face in the image (manually cropped from their background). We also controlled other factors such as head orientation, emotion, and gaze (see supplementary Table 1 of Barragan-Jason et al, 2012). Examples of stimuli are provided in Figure A1A in Appendix.…”

“…So what is the fastest speed at which a face can be recognized? Highly variable reaction times (RTs) have actually been reported in studies of face recognition, ranging from 400 to 900 ms (mean or median RTs, e.g., Kampf et al, 2002; Herzmann et al, 2004; Caharel et al, 2005; Anaki et al, 2007; Baird and Burton, 2008; Anaki and Bentin, 2009; Ramon et al, 2011; Barragan-Jason et al, 2012). Such variability can be accounted for by numerous factors, such as the number of stimuli (only one to hundreds), the use of repeated or trial-unique stimuli, and the nature of the stimuli (photographs or drawings).…”

Face Familiarity Decisions Take 200 msec in the Human Brain: Electrophysiological Evidence from a Go/No-go Speeded Task

“…However, the actual speed with which the human brain categorizes a face as familiar remains largely undetermined. A number of behavioral studies have addressed this question (Barragan-Jason, Besson, Ceccaldi, & Barbeau, 2013;Barragan-Jason, Lachat, & Barbeau, 2012;Bruce, Henderson, Newman, & Burton, 2001;Burton, Bruce, & Hancock, 1999;Tong & Nakayama, 1999;OʼToole, Edelman, & Bülthoff, 1998;Hill, Schyns, & Akamatsu, 1997;Bruce, 1982). However, because behavioral RT measures include the time to initiate and execute the motor response, these studies do not allow for a direct assessment of the speed of face familiarity categorization.…”