The locus of semantic priming effects in person recognition

Abstract

Semantic priming in person recognition has been studied extensively. In a typical experiment, participants are asked to make a familiarity decision to target items that have been immediately preceded by related or unrelated primes. Facilitation is usually observed from related primes, and this priming is equivalent across stimulus domains (i.e., faces and names prime one another equally). Structural models of face recognition (e.g., IAC: Burton, Bruce, & Johnston, 1990) accommodate these effects by proposing a level of person identity nodes (PINs) at which recognition routes converge, and which allow access to a common pool of semantics. We present three experiments that examine semantic priming for different decisions. Priming for a semantic decision (e.g., British/American?) shows exactly the same pattern that is normally observed for a familiarity decision. The pattern is equivalent for name and face recognition. However, no semantic priming is observed when participants are asked to make a sex decision. These results constrain future models of face processing and are discussed with reference to current theories of semantic priming.

Congenital prosopagnosia - a common hereditary cognitive dysfunction in humans

“…When a semantic cue of the name of the individual face is provided prosopagnosics are better at learning to associate, e.g. a famous face with a correct name, than with an incorrect one (51,52,53).…”

Associative priming in faces: Semantic relatedness or simple co-occurrence?

“…The IAC model, which has dominated theoretical approaches to face processing for over a decade, is based on the semantic relatedness assumption as well. Although the role of co-occurrence has been acknowledged in the literature as a possible cause of association (see, e.g., Bruce & Valentine, 1986;McNeill & Burton, 2002), no significant effect has been reported on the basis of co-occurrence exclusively. An important point to bear in mind, however, is that in all the studies cited here faces and names of celebrities were used as stimuli.…”

An interactive activation and competition model of person knowledge, suggested by proactive interference by traits spontaneously inferred from behaviours

“…This extension (Figure ) includes knowledge of strangers, at the scenario level incorporating behavioural and trait information. As such, it suggests a framework for integrating the extensive STI literature with the IAC literature on recognition of familiar people's names and faces (e.g., McNeill & Burton, ) as well as classic work on the organization of person knowledge in free recall (e.g., Hamilton et al ., ). Although the present studies only begin to test parts of this model, such an integration points to several directions for future research.…”

“…Another IAC model was developed to account specifically for data from studies of the recognition of familiar people's faces (Burton, Bruce, & Hancock, ; Burton, Bruce, & Johnston, ). One variant includes person identification nodes (PINs), which serve as the single points of access to stored social knowledge of familiar individuals (McNeill & Burton, ). The PINs connect to lower‐level face recognition units (FRUs) and name recognition units (NRUs), and also to higher‐level semantic information units (SIUs) representing information such as occupations and nationality.…”

“…The major motivations for this inquiry are to suggest extending the McNeill and Burton () IAC model to (1) knowledge of strangers, (2) at the scenario level, which includes information about (3) behaviours and (4) their trait implications. Towards these ends, we sought (5) to demonstrate PI and RPI effects with trait‐implying behavioural information, which would provide novel evidence for the centrality of personality traits for spontaneously organizing person knowledge and (6) to expand the methods available for STI research by introducing PI and RPI as useful tools for probing the spontaneous structures of person knowledge.…”