Impact of intention on the ERP correlates of face recognition

Target-context unitization effect on the familiarity-related FN400: A face recognition exclusion task

“…3: background-exclusion task). These figures show two main peaks similar to those previously reported for recognition tasks using non-famous faces (e.g., Guillaume et al, 2012a,b;Guillaume and Tiberghien, 2013;MacKenzie and Donaldson, 2009;Yick and Wilding, 2014;Yovel and Paller, 2004). They correspond to the ERP recognition effects usually described in the literature as FN400 or mid-frontal old-new effect (300-500 ms) and the late positive component (LPC) corresponding to the parietal old-new effect (500-800 ms).…”

“…Their findings provide evidence for the anterior projection of the old-new effect in tasks whose requirements are restricted to information about faces and their features. In a process dissociation procedure contrasting inclusion and exclusion situations with facial expression as the exclusion criterion, we found that the FN400 old-new effect was graded with respect to expression in the inclusion task (old-same expression N old-different expression) but not in the exclusion situation, where facial expression had to be diagnosed for all recognized faces (Guillaume and Tiberghien, 2013). The outcomes of these experiments are consistent with the view that, for faces, the 300-500 ms epoch contains indices of recollection as well as familiarity.…”

“…The 300-500 ms and 500-800 ms epochs were selected a priori on the basis of approaches and findings in previous ERP studies of face recognition. Analyses were conducted in time windows and at electrode sites where it has been proposed that ERPs index the processes of familiarity and recollection (Guillaume and Tiberghien, 2013;MacKenzie and Donaldson, 2007;Yick and Wilding, 2014). For familiarity, the focused analyses were conducted at three mid-frontal electrodes (F3, Fz, F4) in the epoch between 300 and 500 ms based on the suggestion that early frontal effects might index familiarity.…”

“…Furthermore, the FN400 signal is sensitive not only to perceptual variations or novelty detection but also to the retrieval of specific episodic details (Ecker et al, 2007a,b,c;Ecker and Zimmer, 2009;Guillaume and Tiberghien, 2013;Nyhus and Curran, 2010) and to reality monitoring (Rosburg et al, 2013). Since familiarity is related to a fast-acting, automatic, and acontextual form of memory based on long-term priming (Paller et al, 2007Voss et al, 2012), the retrieval of details associated with the face should not impact the midfrontal old-new effect (300-500 ms).…”

“…However, the contribution of perceptual matching to FN400 modulation has been shown to vary with task demands (e.g., Groh-Bordin et al, 2006). For example, the FN400 effect was modulated differently by task demand depending on whether face-intrinsic information, such as expression, had to be taken into account (exclusion task) or ignored (inclusion task) for correct judgment (Guillaume and Tiberghien, 2013). On the other hand, recent ERP studies suggest that familiarity, under some circumstances, may contribute to source memory (e.g., Diana et al, 2008;Elfman et al, 2008) and associative recognition (Jäger and Mecklinger, 2009;Yonelinas et al, 1999;see Mandler, 2008 for a critical review); and there is growing evidence that associative recognition can be supported by familiarity as long as the associated elements are similar or easy to unitize (Diana et al, 2008;Harlow et al, 2010;Rhodes, and Donaldson, 2007).…”