Biomedical subjects

C Neil Macrae

Publications and source records attributed to C Neil Macrae.

9 recordsLinked to original sources

PubMed2003

Remembering or knowing others? Person recognition and recollective experience.

Using Tulving's (1985) remember/know procedure, the present research investigated the experiential concomitants of person recognition. Noting basic differences in the manner in which the mind processes expectancy-related material, it was anticipated that facial typicality would be a critical determinant of people's recollective experiences (i.e., remembering vs knowing). In particular, it was expected that whereas remember responses would be more prevalent for distinctive than typical faces, know responses would reflect the opposite pattern. The results of two experiments provided general support for these predictions. In addition, the recollective advantage for distinctive faces was traced to the availability of attentional resources at encoding. These results are considered in the context of contemporary issues in person recognition and social cognition.

Analysis of Variance↗

PubMed2002

Distinct neural systems subserve person and object knowledge.

Studies using functional neuroimaging and patient populations have demonstrated that distinct brain regions subserve semantic knowledge for different classes of inanimate objects (e.g., tools, musical instruments, and houses). What this work has yet to consider, however, is how conceptual knowledge about people may be organized in the brain. In particular, is there a distinct functional neuroanatomy associated with person knowledge? By using event-related functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), we measured neural activity while participants made semantic judgments about people or objects. A unique pattern of brain activity was associated with person judgments and included brain regions previously implicated in other aspects of social-cognitive functioning: medial prefrontal cortex, superior temporal cortex, intraparietal sulcus, and fusiform gyrus. These regions were generally marked by relatively little change from baseline brain activity for person judgments along with significant deactivations for object judgments. Together, these findings support the notion that person knowledge may be functionally dissociable from other classes of semantic knowledge within the brain.

Adolescent↗

PubMed2002

Working memory and the suppression of reflexive saccades.

Conscious behavioral intentions can frequently fail under conditions of attentional depletion. In attempting to trace the cognitive origin of this effect, we hypothesized that failures of action control--specifically, oculomotor movement--can result from the imposition of fronto-executive load. To evaluate this prediction, participants performed an antisaccade task while simultaneously completing a working-memory task that is known to make variable demands on prefrontal processes (n-back task, see Jonides et al., 1997). The results of two experiments are reported. As expected, antisaccade error rates were increased in accordance with the fronto-executive demands of the n-back task (Experiment 1). In addition, the debilitating effects of working-memory load were restricted to the inhibitory component of the antisaccade task (Experiment 2). These findings corroborate the view that working memory operations play a critical role in the suppression of prepotent behavioral responses.

Attention↗

PubMed2002

Mike or me? Self-recognition in a split-brain patient.

A split-brain patient (epileptic individual whose corpus callosum had been severed to minimize the spread of seizure activity) was asked to recognize morphed facial stimuli--presented separately to each hemisphere--as either himself or a familiar other. Both hemispheres were capable of face recognition, but the left hemisphere showed a recognition bias for self and the right hemisphere a bias for familiar others. These findings suggest a possible dissociation between self-recognition and more generalized face processing within the human brain.

Cerebral Cortex↗

PubMed2002

Do I know you? Processing orientation and face recognition.

Recognition performance is impaired when people are required to provide a verbal description of a complex stimulus (i.e., verbal-overshadowing effect), such as the face of the perpetrator in a simulated robbery. A shift in the processing operations that support successful face recognition is believed to underlie this effect. Specifically, when participants shift from a global to a local processing orientation, face recognition is impaired. Extending research on this general topic, the present experiment revealed that verbalization is not a necessary precondition for the emergence of impaired recognition performance. Rather, face recognition can be disrupted by a task (i.e., letter identification) that triggers the activation of a local processing orientation. Conversely, the activation of a global processing orientation can enhance the accuracy offace recognition. The theoretical and practical implications of these findings for recent treatments of verbal overshadowing and memory function are considered.

Adult↗

PubMed2002

Are you looking at me? Eye gaze and person perception.

Previous research has highlighted the pivotal role played by gaze detection and interpretation in the development of social cognition. Extending work of this kind, the present research investigated the effects of eye gaze on basic aspects of the person-perception process, namely, person construal and the extraction of category-related knowledge from semantic memory. It was anticipated that gaze direction would moderate the efficiency of the mental operations through which these social-cognitive products are generated. Specifically, eye gaze was expected to influence both the speed with which targets could be categorized as men and women and the rate at which associated stereotypic material could be accessed from semantic memory. The results of two experiments supported these predictions: Targets with nondeviated (i.e., direct) eye gaze elicited facilitated categorical responses. The implications of these findings for recent treatments of person perception are considered.

Adult↗

PubMed2002

Person perception across the menstrual cycle: hormonal influences on social-cognitive functioning.

Women's reactions to men shift during the menstrual cycle. For example, during the phase of high conception risk, women prefer men with masculinized facial features. A favored explanation for this effect is that women display an enhanced sensitivity to stimuli that have significant reproductive relevance during the phase of the menstrual cycle in which conception risk is high. Consistent with this viewpoint, the present research demonstrated that women's cycle-dependent attentiveness to "maleness" also extends to basic aspects of the person-perception process. Specifically, during the phase of high conception risk, women displayed an enhanced ability both to categorize men and to access associated category-related (i.e., stereotypic) material from semantic memory. The implications of these findings for contemporary treatments of person perception are considered.

Adult↗

PubMed2002

I was always on my mind: the self and temporary forgetting.

Previous research has demonstrated that the act of remembering can prompt the temporary suppression of related items in memory-that is, retrieval-induced forgetting (Anderson, Bjork, & Bjork, 1994). In extending work of this kind, the present research sought to identify some important boundary conditions of this effect. As expected, temporary forgetting was eliminated under task conditions that elicited distinctive encoding operations-specifically, when material was relevant to the self. This result is noteworthy since it identifies spontaneous processing operations that protect information from temporary forgetting, a finding that has important implications both for the emergence of this inhibitory effect in everyday life and for theoretical treatments of memory function.

Female↗

PubMedDate not supplied

Directed remembering: subliminal cues alter nonconscious memory strategies.

Much research on memory function has focused on changes in recognition performance brought about by differences in the processes engaged during encoding. In most of this work, participants either receive explicit instructions to remember particular items or they perform orienting (i.e., encoding) tasks that support different levels of memory performance. In daily life, however, the retention or dismissal of information often occurs without conscious intent, thereby suggesting an alternative, nonconscious route through which purposive remembering and forgetting can occur. Based on this line of reasoning, we speculated that recognition performance in a standard item-based forgetting paradigm may be moderated by subliminal cues that trigger the automatic activation of different mnemonic strategies. We report the results of two experiments that supported this prediction. In each experiment, the basic item-based forgetting effect was replicated, but via the subliminal presentation of "remember" and "forget" cues. In addition, cue-dependent differences in memory performance were traced to the operation of a covert rehearsal mechanism during encoding. We consider the implications of these findings for the non-conscious#10; operation of memory processes in everyday life.

Adult↗