The categorical structure of knowledge for famous people (and a novel application of Centre-Surround theory)☆

Categorical priming of famous person recognition: A hitherto overlooked methodological factor can resolve a long-standing debate

“…Bruce (1983), Brennen and Bruce (1991), and Stone and Valentine (2007) all reported categorical priming, as did Carson and Burton (2001) from multiple primes though not from a single prime, while Barry, Johnston and Scanlan (1998) and Young, Flude, Hellawell and Ellis (1994) reported nonsignificant categorical priming. The latter two papers both noted that the absence of categorical priming, compared with larger and statistically significant associative priming, challenged the Burton et al (1990) model of organisation of person knowledge.…”

Getting connected: Both associative and semantic links structure semantic memory for newly learned persons

“…While a number of previous studies reported purely categorical priming with famous faces or names (e.g., Carson & Burton, 2001;Stone & Valentine, 2007;Wiese & Schweinberger, 2008), the use of celebrity stimuli does not allow to test for priming effects exclusively based on co-occurrence (as celebrities who regularly co-occur typically also share semantic information). The present study demonstrates such priming effects in a learning paradigm with pre-experimentally unfamiliar faces, and is the first that demonstrates purely associative person priming at a short prime/target SOA, which renders expectancy-based effects highly unlikely 3 .…”

“…Thus, while Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt are both highly associated (because they co-occur regularly) and categorically related (since both are Hollywood actors), it is possible to combine two actors who are not associated because they never appeared in the same movie (such as Hugh Grant and Brad Pitt). While initial studies did not observe priming for categorically related pairs (Barry et al, 1998;Young, Flude, Hellawell, & Ellis, 1994), a number of more recent experiments demonstrated this effect (Carson & Burton, 2001;Stone, 2008;Stone & Valentine, 2007;Wiese & Schweinberger, 2008, 2011. The typically observed "associative boost", which reflects stronger priming for associated (e.g., Jolie !…”

Stimulus/Response Learning in Masked Congruency Priming of Faces: Evidence for Covert Mental Classifications?

“…The prime and probe faces used here had no preexisting relationship (they were randomly assigned to congruent or incongruent trials), but when a prime and probe are already related, either categorically or associatively, priming on a fame task can be reliably found, as described in the introduction (e.g., Stone & Valentine, 2006). Indeed, Wiese et al (2011) found reliable masked priming in a fame task for primeonly primes that were associated with the same classification response in both the primed and unprimed case (e.g., the face of Angelina Jolie preceded by the masked name of Brad Pitt-the primed case-relative to the face of Angelina Jolie preceded by the masked name of Boris Yeltsin-the unprimed case).…”

“…In typical semantic priming paradigms using faces, the prime and probe pertain to famous people (known to participants), and priming is defined by the reduction in response time (RT) to make a fame decision about a probe face as a function of whether or not the person denoted by the prime is categorically (or associatively) related to the probe (e.g., a famous person with the same occupation; Wiese & Schweinberger, 2008). Such priming has been reported even when the prime was masked and for the first occurrence of a face as a prime, which precludes any contribution from S-R learning (Stone, 2008;Stone & Valentine, 2006;Wiese, Henson, & Schweinberger, 2011). …”