Biomedical subjects

J W Tanaka

Publications and source records attributed to J W Tanaka.

5 recordsLinked to original sources

PubMed1997

Features and their configuration in face recognition.

Tanaka and Farah (1993) have proposed a holistic approach to face recognition in which information about the features of a face and their configuration are combined together in the face representation. An implication of the holistic hypothesis is that alterations in facial configuration should interfere with retrieval of features. In four experiments, the effect of configuration on feature recognition was investigated by creating two configurations of a face, one with eyes close together and one with eyes far apart. After subjects studied faces presented in one of the two configurations (eyes-close or eyes-far), they were tested for their recognition of features shown in isolation, in a new face configuration, and in the old face configuration. It was found that subjects recognized features best when presented in the old configuration, next best in the new configuration, and poorest in isolation. Moreover, subjects were not sensitive to configural information in inverted faces (Experiment 2) or nonface stimuli (i.e., houses; Experiments 3 and 4). Importantly, for normal faces, altering the spatial location of the eyes not only impaired subjects' recognition of the eye features but also impaired their recognition of the nose and mouth features-features whose spatial locations were not directly altered. These findings emphasize the interdependency of featural and configural information in a holistic face representation.

Adult↗

PubMed1995

What causes the face inversion effect?

What is it about the way faces are represented by the visual system that makes them so much harder to recognize when inverted? The authors tested the hypothesis that the "face inversion" effect results from the use of holistic shape representations. This suggests that the susceptibility of nonface patterns to inversion should be a function of their degree of part decomposition. In Experiment 1 this was tested and confirmed with dot patterns in which the degree of part decomposition was manipulated by grouping and segregation on the basis of dot color. The hypothesis also predicted that the face inversion effect can be eliminated with face stimuli if participants are induced to recognize the faces in terms of their component parts. In Experiment 2 this was tested and confirmed with whole, intact faces, in which the degree of part decomposition was manipulated by allowing participants to study them, initially, in either whole, intact versions or versions with parts presented separately.

Adult↗

PubMed1993

Parts and wholes in face recognition.

Are faces recognized using more holistic representations than other types of stimuli? Taking holistic representation to mean representation without an internal part structure, we interpret the available evidence on this issue and then design new empirical tests. Based on previous research, we reasoned that if a portion of an object corresponds to an explicitly represented part in a hierarchical visual representation, then when that portion is presented in isolation it will be identified relatively more easily than if it did not have the status of an explicitly represented part. The hypothesis that face recognition is holistic therefore predicts that a part of a face will be disproportionately more easily recognized in the whole face than as an isolated part, relative to recognition of the parts and wholes of other kinds of stimuli. This prediction was borne out in three experiments: subjects were more accurate at identifying the parts of faces, presented in the whole object, than they were at identifying the same part presented in isolation, even though both parts and wholes were tested in a forced-choice format and the whole faces differed only by one part. In contrast, three other types of stimuli--scrambled faces, inverted faces, and houses--did not show this advantage for part identification in whole object recognition.

Adult↗

PubMed1991

Composites, compromises, and CHARM: what is the evidence for blend memory representations?

Metcalfe's (1990) distributed memory model simulates many misinformation effects by assuming representations that superimpose information from multiple sources. In the present article, two types of evidence are reviewed for such "blend" representations: composite recollections, including items from both the original and postevent sources (e.g., a previously seen intersection is remembered with a subsequently suggested stop sign), and compromise recollections, including features that cannot be exclusively associated with either source (e.g., a green car that was later suggested to be blue is remembered as bluish green). The considerable evidence for composite recollections provides little support for blend representations. Compromise recollections, though seemingly more persuasive, are both rare and interpretable without postulating blend representations. Speculation is made about potential findings that would support blend representations.

Association Learning↗

PubMed1991

Second-order relational properties and the inversion effect: testing a theory of face perception.

Recognition of faces is more severely impaired by inversion than is recognition of other types of objects. This was originally interpreted as evidence for the existence of special face-recognition mechanisms. Recently, Diamond and Carey (1986) attributed the inversion effect to the use of second-order relational properties that are important for, but not unique to, face recognition. According to their hypothesis, face recognition differs from the recognition of most other objects in its dependence on second-order relational properties. This hypothesis was tested in two experiments by comparing the effects of inversion on the identification of dot patterns that differed in the extent to which they required the encoding of second-order relational properties. Identification of the second-order relational patterns was not more disrupted by inversion than was identification of first-order patterns. These results fail to support the hypothesis that second-order relational properties are responsible for the inversion effect.

Adult↗