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V Bruce

Publications and source records attributed to V Bruce.

At least 55 records · Page 3Linked to original sources
PubMed1991

Context effects in the processing of familiar faces.

In this paper we report five experiments that investigate the influence of prime faces upon the speed with which familiar faces are recognized and named. Previously, priming had been reported when the prime and target faces were closely associated, e.g., Prince Charles and Princess Diana (Bruce & Valentine, 1986). In Experiment 1 we show that there is a reliable effect of relatedness on a double-familiarity decision, even when the faces are only categorically related, e.g., Kirk Douglas and Clint Eastwood. Then it was shown that such an effect emerges only on a double decision task (Experiments 2 and 3). Experiment 4 showed that on a primed naming task, faces preceded by a categorically related prime were responded to more quickly than those preceded by an unrelated prime, and the effect was due to inhibition. Experiment 5 replicated this effect and also showed that when associatively related primes were used, a facilitatory, and not an inhibitory, effect is found. It is argued that the facilitation of associative priming arises at an earlier locus than the inhibition of categorial priming.

Adult↗
PubMed1991

Understanding covert recognition.

An implementation of Bruce and Young's (1986) functional model of face recognition is used to examine patterns of covert face recognition previously reported in a prosopagnosic patient, PH. Although PH is unable to recognize overly the faces of people known to him, he shows normal patterns of face processing when tested indirectly. A simple manipulation of one set of connections in the implemented model induces behaviour consistent with patterns of results from PH obtained in semantic priming and interference tasks. We compare this account with previous explanations of covert recognition and demonstrate that the implemented model provides the most natural and parsimonious account available. Two further patients are discussed who show deficits in person perception. The first (MS) is prosopagnosic but shows no covert recognition. The second (ME) is not prosopagnosic, but cannot access semantic information relating to familiar people. The model provides an account of recognition impairments which is sufficiently general also to be useful in describing these patients.

Adult↗
PubMed1991

Remembering facial configurations.

Eight experiments are reported showing that subjects can remember rather subtle aspects of the configuration of facial features to which they have earlier been exposed. Subjects saw several slightly different configurations (formed by altering the relative placement of internal features of the face) of each of ten different faces, and they were asked to rate the apparent age and masculinity-femininity of each. Afterwards, subjects were asked to select from pairs of faces the configuration which was identical to one previously rated. Subjects responded strongly to the central or "prototypical" configuration of each studied face where this was included as one member of each test pair, whether or not it had been studied (Experiments 1, 2 and 4). Subjects were also quite accurate at recognizing one of the previously encountered extremes of the series of configurations that had been rated (Experiment 3), but when unseen prototypes were paired with seen exemplars subjects' performance was at chance (Experiment 5). Prototype learning of face patterns was shown to be stronger than that for house patterns, though both classes of patterns were affected equally by inversion (Experiment 6). The final two experiments demonstrated that preferences for the prototype could be affected by instructions at study and by whether different exemplars of the same face were shown consecutively or distributed through the study series. The discussion examines the implications of these results for theories of the representation of faces and for instance-based models of memory.

Adolescent↗
PubMed1991

Recognising facial surfaces.

The extent to which faces depicted as surfaces devoid of pigmentation and with minimal texture cues ('head models') could be matched with photographs (when unfamiliar) and identified (when familiar) was examined in three experiments. The head models were obtained by scanning the three-dimensional surface of the face with a laser, and by displaying the surface measured in this way by using standard computer-aided design techniques. Performance in all tasks was above chance but far from ceiling. Experiment 1 showed that matching of unfamiliar head models with photographs was affected by the resolution with which the surface was displayed, suggesting that subjects based their decisions, at least in part, on three-dimensional surface structure. Matching accuracy was also affected by other factors to do with the view-points shown in the head models and test photographs, and the type of lighting used to portray the head model. In experiment 2 further evidence for the importance of the nature of the illumination used was obtained, and it was found that the addition of a hairstyle (not that of the target face) did not facilitate matching. In experiment 3 identification of the head models by colleagues of the people shown was compared with identification of photographs where the hair was concealed and eyes were closed. Head models were identified less well than these photographs, suggesting that the difficulties in their recognition are not solely due to the lack of hair. Women's heads were disproportionately difficult to recognise from the head models. The results are discussed in terms of their implications for the use of such three-dimensional head models in forensic and surgical applications.

Adolescent↗
PubMed1990

Understanding face recognition with an interactive activation model.

In this paper we describe how the microstructure of the Bruce & Young (1986) functional model of face recognition may be explored and extended using an interactive activation implementation. A simulation of the recognition of familiarity of individuals is developed which accounts for a range of published findings on the effects of semantic priming, repetition priming and distinctiveness. Finally, we offer some speculative predictions made by the model, and point to an empirical programme of research which it suggests.

Arousal↗
PubMed1990

Resolving semantically induced tip-of-the-tongue states for proper nouns.

Three experiments are reported in which tip-of-the-tongue states (TOTSs) were induced in subjects by reading them pieces of item-specific information. In Experiments 1 and 2, subjects attempted to name famous people. These experiments showed that, in a TOTS, seeing a picture of the face of the target person did not facilitate naming, whereas the initials of the person's name did. In Experiment 3, a similar result was obtained with a landmark-naming task. The results of the experiments are discussed with reference to current models of memory structure and name retrieval.

Adult↗
PubMed1989

Repetition priming of face recognition in a serial choice reaction-time task.

Marshall & Walker (1987) found that pictorial stimuli yield visual priming that is disrupted by an unpredictable visual event in the response-stimulus interval. They argue that visual stimuli are represented in memory in the form of distinct visual and object codes. Bruce & Young (1986) propose similar pictorial, structural and semantic codes which mediate the recognition of faces, yet repetition priming results obtained with faces as stimuli (Bruce & Valentine, 1985), and with objects (Warren & Morton, 1982) are quite different from those of Marshall & Walker (1987), in the sense that recognition is facilitated by pictures presented 20 minutes earlier. The experiment reported here used different views of familiar and unfamiliar faces as stimuli in a serial choice reaction-time task and found that, with identical pictures, repetition priming survives and intervening item requiring a response, with both familiar and unfamiliar faces. Furthermore, with familiar faces such priming was present even when the view of the prime was different from the target. The theoretical implications of these results are discussed.

Choice Behavior↗
PubMed1989

Further experiments on the perception of growth in three dimensions.

Mark and Todd (1983) reported an experiment in which the cardioidal strain transformation was extended to three dimensions and applied to a three-dimensional (3-D) representation of the head of a 15-year-old girl in a direction that made the transformed head appear younger to the vast majority of their subjects. The experiments reported here extend this research in order to examine whether subjects are indeed detecting cardioidal strain in three dimensions, rather than detecting changes in head slant or making 2-D comparisons of the shape of the occluding contour. Three-dimensional surfaces were obtained by measuring a real head manually (Experiment 1) and with a laser scanner (Experiment 2), and transformed to different age levels using the 3-D strain transformation described by Mark and Todd (1983). There were no statistically significant differences in the accuracy with which relative age judgments could be made in response to pairs of profiles, pairs of 3/4 views, or pairs of mixed views (profile plus 3/4 view), suggesting that subjects can indeed extract the cardioidal strain level of the head in three dimensions. However, an additional effect that emerged in these studies was that judgments were crucially affected by the instructions given to subjects, which suggests that factors other than cardioidal strain are important in making judgments about rich data structures.

Adult↗
PubMed1988

Feature saliency in judging the sex and familiarity of faces.

Two experiments are reported on the effect of feature masking on judgements of the sex and familiarity of faces. In experiment 1 the effect of masking the eyes, nose, or mouth of famous and nonfamous, male and female faces on response times in two tasks was investigated. In the first, recognition, task only masking of the eyes had a significant effect on response times. In the second, sex-judgement, task masking of the nose gave rise to a significant and large increase in response times. In experiment 2 it was found that when facial features were presented in isolation in a sex-judgement task, responses to noses were at chance level, unlike those for eyes or mouths. It appears that visual information available from the nose in isolation from the rest of the face is not sufficient for sex judgement, yet masking of the nose may disrupt the extraction of information about the overall topography of the face, information that may be more useful for sex judgement than for identification of a face.

Adult↗
PubMed1986

Influences of familiarity on the processing of faces.

Three experiments are reported in which undergraduate subjects made simple perceptual judgements about the faces of familiar and unfamiliar academic staff. Any effects of familiarity in these tasks were assessed by comparison with performance on the two groups of faces when both sets were unfamiliar to student subjects at a different university. In experiment 1 there was no effect of familiarity of the faces on a task requiring judgements of expression, consistent with recent models of face processing in which expression analysis proceeds independently from the analysis of identity. In experiment 2 there was a significant effect of familiarity on a task in which the sex of the faces was judged. This appeared to be due to familiarity acting to facilitate only those faces whose sex was difficult to judge from the picture presented. In experiment 3, significant effects of familiarity were also observed when the task was to distinguish intact faces from jumbled faces. Although the effects of familiarity in experiments 2 and 3 were small and emerged in interactions between item sets and university, they suggest that a simple perceptual hierarchy of the kind proposed by Ellis requires some revision.

Face↗
PubMed1986

The effects of distinctiveness in recognising and classifying faces.

In an earlier study it was found that distinctive familiar faces were recognised faster than typical familiar faces in a familiarity decision task. In the first experiment reported here this effect was replicated with the use of celebrities' faces rather than personally familiar faces. In the second and third experiments the effect of distinctiveness was found to reverse if the task was to distinguish between faces and jumbled faces. Subjects took longer to classify distinctive faces as faces than they did to classify typical faces. Thus distinctive faces were recognised faster, but were classified as faces more slowly than were typical faces, both when personally familiar faces and when famous faces were used as stimuli. These results are interpeted as evidence that faces are encoded by reference to a general face prototype.

Decision Making↗
PubMed1986

Understanding face recognition.

The aim of this paper is to develop a theoretical model and a set of terms for understanding and discussing how we recognize familiar faces, and the relationship between recognition and other aspects of face processing. It is suggested that there are seven distinct types of information that we derive from seen faces; these are labelled pictorial, structural, visually derived semantic, identity-specific semantic, name, expression and facial speech codes. A functional model is proposed in which structural encoding processes provide descriptions suitable for the analysis of facial speech, for analysis of expression and for face recognition units. Recognition of familiar faces involves a match between the products of structural encoding and previously stored structural codes describing the appearance of familiar faces, held in face recognition units. Identity-specific semantic codes are then accessed from person identity nodes, and subsequently name codes are retrieved. It is also proposed that the cognitive system plays an active role in deciding whether or not the initial match is sufficiently close to indicate true recognition or merely a 'resemblance'; several factors are seen as influencing such decisions. This functional model is used to draw together data from diverse sources including laboratory experiments, studies of everyday errors, and studies of patients with different types of cerebral injury. It is also used to clarify similarities and differences between processes for object, word and face recognition.

Attention↗
PubMed1985

Muscle fibre variation in the gluteus medius of the horse.

The gluteus medius of two killed Thoroughbred horses were sampled along the muscle and across the muscle at four different depths. The distribution of fibre types in these two horses was assessed by staining cross sections of the muscle sample for ATPase. A non-uniform distribution of fibre types was found within the gluteus medius in both horses and there was a significant increase in percentage of slow twitch (ST) fibres from the surface to the deeper regions of the muscle. The rate of increase, however, depended on the individual site along the muscle. Averages ranges from a low of 2.4 per cent ST fibres to a high of 64.5 per cent. This study shows that small biopsy samples of fibres are not necessarily representative of the whole muscle and that there is a need in subsequent studies to define precisely biopsy location.

Adenosine Triphosphatases↗