Real-life experience with personally familiar faces enhances discrimination based on global information

Despite the agreement that experience with faces leads to more efficient processing, the underlying mechanisms remain largely unknown. Building on empirical evidence from unfamiliar face processing in healthy populations and neuropsychological patients, the present experiment tested the hypothesis t...

Full description

Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Meike Ramon, Goedele Van Belle
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: PeerJ Inc. 2016-01-01
Series:PeerJ
Subjects:
Online Access:https://peerj.com/articles/1465.pdf
_version_ 1797418748991242240
author Meike Ramon
Goedele Van Belle
author_facet Meike Ramon
Goedele Van Belle
author_sort Meike Ramon
collection DOAJ
description Despite the agreement that experience with faces leads to more efficient processing, the underlying mechanisms remain largely unknown. Building on empirical evidence from unfamiliar face processing in healthy populations and neuropsychological patients, the present experiment tested the hypothesis that personal familiarity is associated with superior discrimination when identity information is derived based on global, as opposed to local facial information. Diagnosticity and availability of local and global information was manipulated through varied physical similarity and spatial resolution of morph faces created from personally familiar or unfamiliar faces. We found that discrimination of subtle changes between highly similar morph faces was unaffected by familiarity. Contrariwise, relatively more pronounced physical (i.e., identity) differences were more efficiently discriminated for personally familiar faces, indicating more efficient processing of global, as opposed to local facial information through real-life experience.
first_indexed 2024-03-09T06:37:27Z
format Article
id doaj.art-a428b06eee1a47a39ccebce428d62fd6
institution Directory Open Access Journal
issn 2167-8359
language English
last_indexed 2024-03-09T06:37:27Z
publishDate 2016-01-01
publisher PeerJ Inc.
record_format Article
series PeerJ
spelling doaj.art-a428b06eee1a47a39ccebce428d62fd62023-12-03T10:55:37ZengPeerJ Inc.PeerJ2167-83592016-01-014e146510.7717/peerj.1465Real-life experience with personally familiar faces enhances discrimination based on global informationMeike Ramon0Goedele Van Belle1Institute of Research in Psychology, Institute of Neuroscience, Université Catholique de Louvain, Louvain-La-Neuve, BelgiumInstitute of Research in Psychology, Institute of Neuroscience, Université Catholique de Louvain, Louvain-La-Neuve, BelgiumDespite the agreement that experience with faces leads to more efficient processing, the underlying mechanisms remain largely unknown. Building on empirical evidence from unfamiliar face processing in healthy populations and neuropsychological patients, the present experiment tested the hypothesis that personal familiarity is associated with superior discrimination when identity information is derived based on global, as opposed to local facial information. Diagnosticity and availability of local and global information was manipulated through varied physical similarity and spatial resolution of morph faces created from personally familiar or unfamiliar faces. We found that discrimination of subtle changes between highly similar morph faces was unaffected by familiarity. Contrariwise, relatively more pronounced physical (i.e., identity) differences were more efficiently discriminated for personally familiar faces, indicating more efficient processing of global, as opposed to local facial information through real-life experience.https://peerj.com/articles/1465.pdfFace processingGlobal information integrationHolistic processingReal-life exposurePersonal familiarity
spellingShingle Meike Ramon
Goedele Van Belle
Real-life experience with personally familiar faces enhances discrimination based on global information
PeerJ
Face processing
Global information integration
Holistic processing
Real-life exposure
Personal familiarity
title Real-life experience with personally familiar faces enhances discrimination based on global information
title_full Real-life experience with personally familiar faces enhances discrimination based on global information
title_fullStr Real-life experience with personally familiar faces enhances discrimination based on global information
title_full_unstemmed Real-life experience with personally familiar faces enhances discrimination based on global information
title_short Real-life experience with personally familiar faces enhances discrimination based on global information
title_sort real life experience with personally familiar faces enhances discrimination based on global information
topic Face processing
Global information integration
Holistic processing
Real-life exposure
Personal familiarity
url https://peerj.com/articles/1465.pdf
work_keys_str_mv AT meikeramon reallifeexperiencewithpersonallyfamiliarfacesenhancesdiscriminationbasedonglobalinformation
AT goedelevanbelle reallifeexperiencewithpersonallyfamiliarfacesenhancesdiscriminationbasedonglobalinformation