Event-Related Potential Correlates of Long-Term Memory for Briefly Presented Faces

Joyce, Carrie A.; Kutas, Marta

doi:10.1162/0898929053747603

Cited by 23 publications

(21 citation statements)

References 49 publications

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“…For example, short-term priming of location or stimulus features has been found for covert attention (Maljkovic & Nakayama, 1994. Furthermore, our findings extend previous knowledge on perceptual-priming tasks, in which learning is known to occur independently of awareness (Joyce & Kutas, 2005;Meister et al, 2005;Wiggs & Martin, 1994.…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 87%

The role of peripheral vision in implicit contextual cuing

Asselen

2009

Perception & Psychophysics

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76Our environment contains a large amount of visual information, such as different objects, buildings, and faces, making it impossible to process this complex information at once. In order to compensate for the limitations of the visual system, attention is allocated to the most relevant visual information. Attention can be guided by bottom-up and top-down processes. That is, a specific visual feature can attract attention (e.g., a fast-moving object or a bright color), resulting in an eye movement to the source of information (bottom-up process). In addition, knowledge about our environment can guide attention (top-down process).One of the top-down mechanisms that guide attention is a result of implicit contextual learning, as was initially shown by Chun and Jiang (1998). They suggested that visual information from our environment can be learned implicitly and can subsequently guide attention to a specific target location. That is, the association between a target and its surrounding visual context (such as spatial information) can be memorized, improving performance on a visual search task. The contextual-cuing paradigm is typically used to study implicit contextual learning of spatial information. It involves a visual search task, in which a rotated target stimulus (T) is presented among a number of rotated distractors (Ls). The participants have to locate the target as quickly as possible and indicate the direction of rotation. Half of the spatial configurations (i.e., positions of the stimuli) are repeated during the experiment. Interestingly, response times are shorter when the configurations are repeated than when they are new, indicating that contextual information was memorized (Chun, 2000;Chun & Jiang, 1998;Peterson & Kramer, 2001). Participants are not aware of the repetitions and perform at chance level on a recognition memory task, indicating that it is an implicit memory process. This effect is found after a few repetitions (Chun & Jiang, 1998) and remains for weeks after testing (Chun & Jiang, 2003;Jiang, Song, & Rigas, 2005), indicating that it is a robust mechanism.Recently, Brady and Chun (2007) proposed a model of implicit contextual learning, based on the idea that contextual learning results from the pairwise statistical association between the distractor locations and the target. They used this model to predict the outcome of different contextual-cuing tasks. An important and interesting aspect of the model is that it includes a spatial constraint, assuming that learning is restricted to the local area around the target. Thus, a very limited amount of contextual information is learned, which is spatially close to the target. They stated that "observers may be encoding just one snapshot of the local context surrounding the target when it is detected" (p. 813). Brady and Chun tested this model by comparing modeling results with behavioral results under different task conditions and found that the model was accurate in predicting the behavioral results of various experimental studies. The idea...

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Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 87%

The role of peripheral vision in implicit contextual cuing

Asselen

2009

Perception & Psychophysics

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“…Akin to the face recognition units of the face recognition model Burton et al, 1990;Bruce & Young, 1986), the N170 may be the premier stage in which face processing depends on familiarity. Although this is earlier than previously reported (e.g., Joyce & Kutas, 2005), our data suggest that the perceptual stage of face processing as reflected by the N170 depends on the existence of person-specific semantic information associated with the particular face.…”

Section: Discussioncontrasting

confidence: 81%

Semantic Learning Modifies Perceptual Face Processing

Heisz¹,

Shedden²

2009

Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience

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Abstract& Face processing changes when a face is learned with personally relevant information. In a five-day learning paradigm, faces were presented with rich semantic stories that conveyed personal information about the faces. Event-related potentials were recorded before and after learning during a passive viewing task. When faces were novel, we observed the expected N170 repetition effect-a reduction in amplitude following face repetition. However, when faces were learned with personal information, the N170 repetition effect was eliminated, suggesting that semantic information modulates the N170 repetition effect. To control for the possibility that a simple perceptual effect contributed to the change in the N170 repetition effect, another experiment was conducted using stories that were not related to the person (i.e., stories about rocks and volcanoes). Although viewers were exposed to the faces an equal amount of time, the typical N170 repetition effect was observed, indicating that personal semantic information associated with a face, and not simply perceptual exposure, produced the observed reduction in the N170 repetition effect. These results are the first to reveal a critical perceptual change in face processing as a result of learning person-related information. The results have important implications for researchers studying face processing, as well as learning and memory in general, as they demonstrate that perceptual information alone is not enough to establish familiarity akin to real-world person learning. &

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“…Here, however, no differences were found for the LPC between famous and unknown eyes. A few studies have shown that the LPC is more positive to familiar than unfamiliar whole faces (Curran and Hancock 2007;Joyce and Kutas 2005;Yovel and Paller 2004), even when individuals are not aware that they had seen faces before (Schweinberger 1995;Seeck et al 1997). Nevertheless, our results are consistent with those of Jemel et al (2005) who observed no significant difference from 400 to 600 ms between unfamiliar and famous faces that were previously primed with the same-person.…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 82%

“…This may at the same time explain why the effects were found for both unknown and famous eyes. Previous studies that reported decreased N170 amplitudes after face-repetition (Henson et al 2002;Heisz et al 2006;Itier and Taylor 2004) and/or increased LPC amplitudes (Bentin and Deouell 2000;Eimer 2000;Schweinberger 1995;Schweinberger et al 2002;Henson et al 2003;Joyce and Kutas 2005) commonly used high quality images of whole faces in which identification was relatively easy. Future studies should investigate whether there is an effect Fig.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Familiarity effects are often observed at longer latencies (Bentin and Deouell 2000;Eimer 2000;Schweinberger et al 2002), rather than for the earlier N170. In particular, shifts in the amplitude of the late positive component (LPC) have been related to recognition memory (Rugg and Curran 2007), with an increased positivity from 300 ms onwards for faces that are repeated after either short (Schweinberger 1995;Schweinberger et al 2002;Jemel et al 2005) or long intervals (Curran and Hancock 2007;Yovel and Paller 2004;Joyce and Kutas 2005) between study and test-phase. These effects are consistent with the notion that identity-specific information is encoded at relatively late stages of face processing, following the structural face encoding stages (Bruce and Young 1986).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Face Perception in the Mind’s Eye

Burra

Vuilleumier

2010

Brain Topogr

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Perceptual filling-in occurs when visual stimuli are recognized in impoverished viewing conditions. Whether missing information is filled-in during face perception and which stages might be involved in this process are still unresolved questions. Because an identity can be brought to mind by seeing eyes only, we hypothesized that missing information might be filled-in from a memory trace for the whole face identity. We presented participants with faces in phase 1 and later we presented eyes-only in phase 2. For some of these eyes in phase 2, the whole face had been presented in the previous phase, for others identical eyes had been presented. Event-related potentials (ERPs) revealed an N170 component that was more negative when eyes were preceded by a whole face in the previous phase compared to eyes preceded by identical eyes-only. A more positive-going late positive complex (LPC) was also found, suggesting enhanced retrieval of face memory representations when eyes were preceded by whole faces. Our results show that pre-existing representations of face identity can influence early stages of visual encoding, 170 ms after stimulus onset. These effects may reflect top-down modulation by memory on visual recognition processes by filling-in the missing facial information.

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Event-Related Potential Correlates of Long-Term Memory for Briefly Presented Faces

Cited by 23 publications

References 49 publications

The role of peripheral vision in implicit contextual cuing

The role of peripheral vision in implicit contextual cuing

Semantic Learning Modifies Perceptual Face Processing

Face Perception in the Mind’s Eye

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