Factors in Cognitive Psychology - Essay Example

? Face Recognition: Factors in Cognitive Psychology Human social interaction is strongly based on their ability to recognize others, and identify known individuals from unknown ones, and recognize those who are friendly from those who are not. Witnesses to crimes are often asked to recognize individuals from a line – up who may be associated with the crime scene; a condition that relies heavily on the ability of the witness to recognize the right individual without error. Given the value of being able to recognize faces, both at the individual level, and at the social level; research in cognitive sciences has helped in understanding the principles that affect this process and the problems and errors that are likely to be committed. Face Recognition, Identification, & Classification An individual recognizes a face by analyzing the features of the presented face, and drawing relationships between he observed features to form meaningful information for the self (Diamond & Cary, 1986). Humans receive information from the senses about the individual components of an object – like a face – and also extract information about the relationship shared by those individual components such that they form a whole object. Diamond & Cary (1986) describe this as the ‘first order relational information’. According to them, this information is not enough for appropriate face recognition, as this information only gives details like the relative positions of components and the distance between them. In order for the face to be recognized as one, it needs to be compared to a prototype of a face exists with the individual – the second order relational information. Second order relational information is gathered by individuals through experiences, and the abstraction of these experiences is used as a basis for comparison (Diamond & Cary, 1986). Research shows that faces are processed holistically rather than in terms of the component parts and that information about faces is also stored in relation to whole faces. This is evident from the studies that show that it is more difficult for an individual to recognize a partial face as compared to a whole one (Diamond & Cary, 1986). The processed information about faces is stored in a specific part of the brain’s visual cortex. Concepts and Categories in Face Recognition, Identification, and Classification Tarr and Cheng (2003) state that face recognition differs from other forms of recognition. According to them, information about faces comes in to the individual level entry point whereas information about most objects comes in at the basic level entry point. This is because the information at the basic entry point is not adequate for facial recognition. While, objects are differentiated amongst on the basis of component parts quite easily; faces are distinguished holistically. Thus, the human conceptualization of faces is based on whole faces; and categorization occurs after reviewing all the information and not information about individual components (Tarr and Cheng, 2003). Gauthier, Skudlarski, Gore, and Anderson (2000) have found that this process is similar across a number of species. Birds show the same fusiform face area activation in the visual cortex as humans. An interesting factor is the meaning associated with the object. The more meaningful the individual considers the object, the more likely that it will be processed holistically. For example, car experts show similar activation when recognizing faces and cars (Gauthier, Skudlarski, Gore, and Anderson, 2000). Long-Term Memory and its Affect on Face Recognition Encoding and retrieval procedures associated with long term memory have been found to be significant in an individual’s ability to recognize a face (Rakover & Cahlon, 2001). Encoding of faces seems to happen as whole units which are then stored in long term memory and the retrieval processes help in accessing these memories as required. Rakover and Cahlon (2001) find that the encoding process has to be adequate for effective retrieval. According to them, there are a number of steps associated with encoding of faces into long term memory. The first is structural encoding, a process which processes the visual information and stores it into long-term memory. There are two processes involved – the view centered description and the expression independent description. The view centered description represents the basic facial information like contrast, intensity and color. Factors like illumination, visibility and such other physical factors affect these representations (Rakover & Cahlon, 2001). Expression independent descriptions are constructed on the basis of the previously collected facial information and are similar to abstract representations of the faces, and provide information about whole faces to enable recognition. These are abstracted representations in that they store the commonalities associated with multiple viewpoints (Rakover &Cahlon, 2001). During the recognition process, information from structural encoding is matched to the presented stimuli; and facial recognition is use to eliminate instances from multiple matches. Coded information in the expression independent description is used to further filter the data available for matching. When the brain makes a match between stored and presented data, recognition takes place (Rakover &Cahlon, 2001). The integrity of retrieval processes also plays an extremely important role in the process of face recognition. It is important that the appropriate coded information is accessed and retrieved without distortion and forgetting for accurate recognition to take place. Brain damage studies have contributed to the understanding of who retrieval functions affect facial recognition (Robinson-Riegler, & Robinson-Riegler, 2008). Errors in facial recognition Although the process of face recognition is quite complex to control for errors, it is not perfect. There are multiple anecdotal references to mistaken recognition in fiction as well as academic literature. Brain damage is one reason for errors in facial recognition (Robinson-Riegler & Robinson-Riegler, 2008). Damage to the fusiform face area can lead to the individual being unable to recognize themselves – a condition called prosopagnosia. Individuals who are not able to recognize themselves have difficulty coping with reflections, and experience a great deal of distress (Robinson-Riegler & Robinson-Riegler, 2008). Another error that has been often depicted in fiction is that of unconscious transference. Unconscious transference is a situation in which an individual mistakenly associates the presented face with another face seen previously. These individuals are unable to differentiate between the two faces and seem to be unable to spot the differences (Robinson-Riegler & Robinson-Riegler, 2008). This is also seen in criminal recognition procedures when a witness makes a mistake and selects the wrong individual in a lineup or is unable to tell the difference between the presented faces. Conclusion It is thus evident that the process of face recognition is valuable enough for human cognition to process it in a complex and elaborate manner. Thus, people are often able to recognize faces, of having seen those faces even when they are unable to recall any other information associated with that person. Nevertheless, the process is not foolproof, and is susceptible to errors. Inadequate information, restricted experience, brain damage and such other factors are likely to cause the individual to make errors in recognizing faces such that they are unable to recognize a previously seen face; or believe that they are able to recognize a face that they have not seen before due to a similarity with another face stored in memory. References Diamond, R., & Carey, S. (1986).Why faces are and are not special: An effect of expertise.  Journal of Experimental Psychology: Vol. 115, pp. 107 -117. Gauthier, I., Skudlarski, P., Gore, J. C., & Anderson, A.W. (2000). Expertise for cars and birds recruits brain areas involved in face recognition. Nature Neuroscience, vol. 3, pp.191-197. Rakover, S., & Cahlon, B. (2001). Face recognition: cognitive and computational processes. NY: John Benjamins Publishing Company. Robinson-Riegler, G., & Robinson-Riegler, B. (2008). Cognitive psychology: Applying the science of the mind (2nd ed.). Boston , MA : Pearson/Allyn and Bacon. Tarr, M. J., & Cheng, Y. D. (2003). Learning to see faces and objects. Trends in Cognitive Science, vol. 7, pp. 23-30. Read More