Meet The Simpsons: Top—down Effects in Face Learning

Abstract

We examined whether prior knowledge of a person affects the visual processes involved in learning a face. In two experiments, subjects were taught to associate human faces with characters they knew (from the TV show The Simpsons) or characters they did not (novel names). In each experiment, knowledge of the character predicted performance in a recognition memory test, relying only on old/new confidence ratings. In experiment 1, we established the technique and showed that there is a face-learning advantage for known people, even when face items are counterbalanced for familiarity across the experiment. In experiment 2 we replicated the effect in a setting which discouraged subjects from attending more to known than unknown people, and eliminated any visual association between face stimuli and a character from The Simpsons. We conclude that prior knowledge about a person can enhance learning of a new face.

Are We Face Experts?

“…These rich semantic and emotional properties of familiar faces may in themselves account for some of the differences between familiar and unfamiliar faces [70][71], but there is also a strong visual component. Although we occasionally make errors in recognising familiar faces in everyday life [72][73], recognition is usually fast and accurate across huge variations in image properties, even for degraded or briefly presented images [74][75].…”

Telling faces together: Learning new faces through exposure to multiple instances

“…Furthermore, learning faces alongside semantic or personal information leads to more accurate recognition (Klatzky, Martin, & Kane, 1982) and accompanying differences in neural activation (Kaufmann, Schweinberger, & Burton, 2009). Faces that are successfully associated with semantic information are recognized more confidently, spanning multiple sessions (Bonner, Burton, Jenkins, & McNeill, 2003). However, while these findings provide some useful foundations, recognition in these experiments typically involves testing the same image that was initially learned, or a still from a seen video.…”

Word Learning Deficits in Children With Dyslexia

“…However, many studies using paired associate learning tasks have asked children to pair new words with familiar images, which reduces visuospatial processing load (e.g., Bonner, Burton, Jenkins, McNeill & Bruce, 2003). In these paradigms children did not need to create new semantic representations for referents; they were only required to create a link between a stored representation and a new word.…”