I recognize your face but I can't remember your name: a simple explanation?

Face masks degrade our ability to remember face-name associations more than predicted by judgments of learning

In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, face masks became required attire. Face masks obstruct the bottom portion of faces, restricting face processing. The present study examined the influence face masks have on memory predictions and memory performance for new face-name associations. Participants studied face-name pairs presented for 8 s (Experiment 1) or 10 s (Experiment 2). Half of the face-name pairs included a face mask obstructing the nose and mouth of the pictured face, counterbalanced across participants. Participants provided item-by-item judgements of learning (JOLs) and completed subsequent cued recall and associative recognition memory tests. Both experiments demonstrated that face masks impaired memory for newly-learned names, however, the magnitude of the mask impact was under-predicted by JOLs. The presence of a face mask negatively influenced memory performance to a greater degree than participants' JOLs predicted. Results have implications for name learning during pandemics, as well as in settings where face masks are common (e.g., medical field).

Effects of Voice and Biographic Data on Face Encoding

There are various perceptual and informational cues for recognizing people. How these interact in the recognition process is of interest. Our goal was to determine if the encoding of faces was enhanced by the concurrent presence of a voice, biographic data, or both. Using a between-subject design, four groups of 10 subjects learned the identities of 24 faces seen in video-clips. Half of the faces were seen only with their names, while the other half had additional information. For the first group this was the person's voice, for the second, it was biographic data, and for the third, both voice and biographic data. In a fourth control group, the additional information was the voice of a generic narrator relating non-biographic information. In the retrieval phase, subjects performed a familiarity task and then a face-to-name identification task with dynamic faces alone. Our results consistently showed no benefit to face encoding with additional information, for either the familiarity or identification task. Tests for equivalency indicated that facilitative effects of a voice or biographic data on face encoding were not likely to exceed 3% in accuracy. We conclude that face encoding is minimally influenced by cross-modal information from voices or biographic data.

Effects of Faces and Voices on the Encoding of Biographic Information

There are multiple forms of knowledge about people. Whether diverse person-related data interact is of interest regarding the more general issue of integration of multi-source information about the world. Our goal was to examine whether perception of a person's face or voice enhanced the encoding of their biographic data. We performed three experiments. In the first experiment, subjects learned the biographic data of a character with or without a video clip of their face. In the second experiment, they learned the character's data with an audio clip of either a generic narrator's voice or the character's voice relating the same biographic information. In the third experiment, an audiovisual clip of both the face and voice of either a generic narrator or the character accompanied the learning of biographic data. After learning, a test phase presented biographic data alone, and subjects were tested first for familiarity and second for matching of biographic data to the name. The results showed equivalent learning of biographic data across all three experiments, and none showed evidence that a character's face or voice enhanced the learning of biographic information. We conclude that the simultaneous processing of perceptual representations of people may not modulate the encoding of biographic data.

Exploring the Representations of Individual Entities in the Brain Combining EEG and Distributional Semantics

Semantic knowledge about individual entities (i.e., the referents of proper names such as Jacinta Ardern) is fine-grained, episodic, and strongly social in nature, when compared with knowledge about generic entities (the referents of common nouns such as politician). We investigate the semantic representations of individual entities in the brain; and for the first time we approach this question using both neural data, in the form of newly-acquired EEG data, and distributional models of word meaning, employing them to isolate semantic information regarding individual entities in the brain. We ran two sets of analyses. The first set of analyses is only concerned with the evoked responses to individual entities and their categories. We find that it is possible to classify them according to both their coarse and their fine-grained category at appropriate timepoints, but that it is hard to map representational information learned from individuals to their categories. In the second set of analyses, we learn to decode from evoked responses to distributional word vectors. These results indicate that such a mapping can be learnt successfully: this counts not only as a demonstration that representations of individuals can be discriminated in EEG responses, but also as a first brain-based validation of distributional semantic models as representations of individual entities. Finally, in-depth analyses of the decoder performance provide additional evidence that the referents of proper names and categories have little in common when it comes to their representation in the brain.

I recognise your name but I can't remember your face: An advantage for names in recognition memory

Forgetting someone's name is a common failure of memory, and often occurs despite being able to recognise that person's face. This gives rise to the widespread view that memory for names is generally worse than memory for faces. However, this everyday error confounds stimulus class (faces vs. names) with memory task: recognition versus recall. Here we compare memory for faces and names when both are tested in the same recognition memory framework. Contrary to the common view, we find a clear advantage for names over faces. Across three experiments, we show that recognition of previously unfamiliar names exceeds recognition of previously unfamiliar faces. This advantage persists, even when the same face pictures are repeated at learning and test-a picture-memory task known to produce high levels of performance. Differential performance between names and faces disappears in recognition memory for familiar people. The results are discussed with reference to representational complexity and everyday memory errors.

A Probabilistic Model of Social Working Memory for Information Retrieval in Social Interactions

Social working memory (SWM) plays an important role in navigating social interactions. Inspired by studies in psychology, neuroscience, cognitive science, and machine learning, we propose a probabilistic model of SWM to mimic human social intelligence for personal information retrieval (IR) in social interactions. First, we establish a semantic hierarchy as social long-term memory to encode personal information. Next, we propose a semantic Bayesian network as the SWM, which integrates the cognitive functions of accessibility and self-regulation. One subgraphical model implements the accessibility function to learn the social consensus about IR-based on social information concept, clustering, social context, and similarity between persons. Beyond accessibility, one more layer is added to simulate the function of self-regulation to perform the personal adaptation to the consensus based on human personality. Two learning algorithms are proposed to train the probabilistic SWM model on a raw dataset of high uncertainty and incompleteness. One is an efficient learning algorithm of Newton's method, and the other is a genetic algorithm. Systematic evaluations show that the proposed SWM model is able to learn human social intelligence effectively and outperforms the baseline Bayesian cognitive model. Toward real-world applications, we implement our model on Google Glass as a wearable assistant for social interaction.

I Recognize your Face, but I Can't Remember your Name: A Question of Expertise?

In four experiments on the identification of familiar faces we reassessed a robust performance pattern—namely, the temporal advantage for retrieving biographical facts as compared to recalling proper names, which has been interpreted as reflecting a serial ordering of the access to semantic and name information. Evidence for recent parallel accounts had been provided by Scanlan and Johnston (1997) who reported an advantage for name retrieval in children. Here we replicated the findings of Scanlan and Johnston but also showed that the naming advantage disappears, and performance is very similar to that of adults when stimuli and tasks are used that are familiar to children. Conversely, we also demonstrated an advantage for name retrieval in adults when highly unfamiliar semantic facts were associated with the faces. Together these findings suggest that there is no fundamental difference in the cognitive architectures of children and adults. The experiments indicate that the relative speed of naming and semantic fact retrieval depends on the expertise with the semantic facts to be retrieved. Implications for models of face identification and naming are discussed.

Will Julia Roberts Harm Nicole Kidman? Semantic Priming Effects during Face Naming

Three experiments are reported, which examine whether face naming is vulnerable to semantic competition in a similar way to object naming. Previous experiments with object naming have shown that a related prime picture presented 3 trials before a target picture results in an increase in error rate and naming latencies when compared to unrelated prime conditions. The experiments here use the same paradigm, with errors as the main dependent variable. In Experiment 1, the prime and target faces were from the same occupational category (e.g., politicians, actors), and in Experiment 2, the primes and target faces were also associated to each other. In Experiment 3, the prime was presented as a name to be read aloud. Unrelated filler stimuli intervened between prime and target. In all experiments, there was a reduction in target-naming errors in the related conditions, and in Experiment 3 this was shown to be largely a reduction in naming failures. The results suggest that related name representations for famous people are not activated in parallel and in competition, and that there is some evidence for a relatively long lasting facilitatory effect. These results require some modification to any serial account of face naming to differentiate it from the generally well-established serial account of object naming.

Repetition priming of access to biographical information from faces

Two experiments examined repetition priming on tasks that require access to semantic (or biographical) information from faces. In the second stage of each experiment, participants made either a nationality or an occupation decision to faces of celebrities, and, in the first stage, they made either the same or a different decision to faces (in Experiment 1) or the same or a different decision to printed names (in Experiment 2). All combinations of priming and test tasks produced clear repetition effects, which occurred irrespective of whether the decisions made were positive or negative. Same-domain (face-to-face) repetition priming was larger than cross-domain (name-to-face) priming, and priming was larger when the two tasks were the same. It is discussed how these findings are more readily accommodated by the Burton, Bruce, and Johnston (1990) model of face recognition than by episode-based accounts of repetition priming.

Self Priming: A Short term Benefit of Repetition

Burton, Bruce, and Johnston (1990) developed an interactive activation and competition (IAC) model of person recognition that gives a parsimonious account of semantic and repetition priming effects with seen faces and names. This model predicts that a familiarity decision to a person's name should be facilitated if the name is immediately preceded by the same person's face (or vice versa); Burton et al. (1990) called this effect “self priming”. In three experiments, we explored properties of self priming predicted from Burton et al.'s (1990) IAC model. When each stimulus is seen on only one trial, the Burton et al. (1990) model predicts that within-domain self priming (e.g. name prime-name target) should produce more facilitation than cross-domain self priming (e.g. face prime-name target). This prediction was investigated in Experiments 1 and 2; results were consistent with it. Two further predictions from the Burton et al. (1990) model are that the amounts of within and cross-domain self priming should not differ when subjects are primed to recognize the targets by prior encounters during the experiment, and that self priming should produce more facilitation than semantic priming. Results of Experiment 3 were again consistent with both predictions. We conclude that the Burton et al. (1990) IAC model stands the test of further rigorous examination.

Incomplete Faces Don't Show the Whole Picture: Repetition Priming from Jumbled Faces

Four experiments examined repetition priming of familiarity decisions to faces of famous people by the prior exposure of intact or jumbled faces. In Experiments 1 and 2 the primes were either the identical picture of the target face or a picture of the face with the internal features jumbled up. (In Experiment 2 the external features were also removed from all faces.) Compared with response times to previously unseen faces, familiarity decisions were made more rapidly if the subject had seen and identified the famous face in the pre-training stage; this was independent of whether they saw an intact or jumbled face. Priming was not shown if the face was not recognized earlier. Experiment 3 demonstrated that, if faces were not recognized spontaneously in the pre-training stage, being prompted as to their identity by the experimenter still did not yield priming at test—a result that replicated a previous study using incomplete faces (Brunas-Wagstaff, Young, & Ellis, 1992). Experiment 4 showed that it was the situation in which the information was given that was critical in determining whether priming occurred. The findings of this study are related to mechanisms for repetition priming of faces and used to discuss the necessity of modifications to the Bruce and Young (1986) model such as those offered by Burton, Bruce, and Johnston (1990).

I Recognise you but I Can't Place you: An Investigation of Familiar-only Experiences during Tests of Voice and Face Recognition

In this paper, we examine in detail the situation in which a subject finds that a face or voice is familiar but is unable to retrieve any biographical information about the person concerned. In two experiments, subjects were asked to identify a set of 40 celebrities either from hearing their voice or from seeing their face. Although many more celebrities were identified and named in response to their face than their voice, the results showed that there was a very large number of occasions when a celebrity's voice was felt to be familiar but the subject was unable to retrieve any biographical information about the person. This situation occurred less frequently in response to seeing a celebrity's face; when a face was found familiar, the subject was much more likely to be able to recall the celebrity's occupation. The possibility that these results might have come about because subjects were using different criteria to determine familiarity in the face and voice conditions was investigated and discounted. An additional finding was that when subjects found a face to be familiar-only, they were able to recall significantly more additional information about the person when they were cued by the person's voice than when they simply saw the face again. These results are discussed in relation to the models of person recognition put forward by Bruce and Young (1986) and Burton, Bruce, and Johnston (1990).

Are Faces “Special” Objects? Associative and Sem antic Priming of Face and Object Recognition and Naming

Faces represent a “special” class of physically similar stimuli but it remains uncertain whether they are processed by cognitive systems that are functionally separate from those used for objects. This paper reports two experiments, which examine whether there exist qualitative differences in the semantic and associative priming of faces, “structurally similar” objects (living things), and “structurally distinct” objects (artefacts). Recognition was examined in Experiment 1 using the familiarity judgement task for faces and the object decision task for objects, and naming was examined in Experiment 2. Both experiments compared, within subjects, priming by associates (e.g. Eric Morecambe → Ernie Wise, lion → tiger and lock key) and priming by non-associates from the same semantic category (e.g. Keith Richards → Paul McCartney, bee → spider and nail-file → comb) against both “neutral” and unrelated prime conditions. Both experiments produced a remarkably similar pattern of results. For faces, there was a substantial priming effect from associates but no reliable priming from non-associates of the same semantic category. In contrast, both structurally similar and distinct objects were primed reliably by both associates and semantically (i.e. categorically) related non-associates. The results are interpreted within a model that proposes that the semantic representations of objects are inter-connected by abstracted superordinate categories, but that the representations of people (the elements of which, we propose, are specific biographical descriptive information units) are inter-connected by networks of inter-personal relatedness rather than by “categories” of celebrity.

By which name should I call thee? The consequences of having multiple names

The nominal competitor effect suggests that, when a person has two names associated with them, recall of either name is more difficult than if they just had one name. Drawing on a connectionist framework, this effect could arise either if multiple names were represented as being connected to a single person identity node (PIN), or if multiple names were represented as being connected via one-to-one links to multiple PINs. Whilst the latter has intuitive appeal, results from two experiments support the former architecture. Having two names connected to a single PIN not only gives rise to a nominal competitor effect (Experiment 1), but also gives rise to a familiarity enhancement effect (Experiment 2). These empirical results are simulated using an extension of Brédart, Valentine, Calder, and Gassi's (1995) connectionist architecture, which reveals that both effects hold even when the association of both names to the PIN is unequal. These results are presented in terms of a more complete model for person recognition, and the representation of semantic information within such a model is examined.

The cognitive psychology and neuroscience of naming people

The use of proper names enables us to designate entities, including people, at a very specific level of categorization: the unique entity or the individual. The paper presents a general overview of psychological/cognitive and neuroscientific studies that have compared the production of proper names, in particular people's names, with the production of common nouns during the last thirty years. The search for specific brain correlates of proper naming included single-case and group studies of patients with brain lesions, and studies utilizing functional neuroimaging or brain electrical stimulation with healthy participants. These studies have led neuroscientists to hypothesize that the recall of proper names involves a rather complex network including mainly left frontal and temporal regions. Behavioural evidence supports the view that proper names are more difficult to recall than common names, and scientists have proposed different explanations for this relative difficulty. Finally, several new directions for future research are proposed to improve our understanding of both cognitive processes and their brain correlates involved during proper name recall.

Dynamic neural architecture for social knowledge retrieval

Social behavior is often shaped by the rich storehouse of biographical information that we hold for other people. In our daily life, we rapidly and flexibly retrieve a host of biographical details about individuals in our social network, which often guide our decisions as we navigate complex social interactions. Even abstract traits associated with an individual, such as their political affiliation, can cue a rich cascade of person-specific knowledge. Here, we asked whether the anterior temporal lobe (ATL) serves as a hub for a distributed neural circuit that represents person knowledge. Fifty participants across two studies learned biographical information about fictitious people in a 2-d training paradigm. On day 3, they retrieved this biographical information while undergoing an fMRI scan. A series of multivariate and connectivity analyses suggest that the ATL stores abstract person identity representations. Moreover, this region coordinates interactions with a distributed network to support the flexible retrieval of person attributes. Together, our results suggest that the ATL is a central hub for representing and retrieving person knowledge.

Prosopagnosia: current perspectives

Prosopagnosia is a selective visual agnosia characterized by the inability to recognize the identity of faces. There are both acquired forms secondary to brain damage and developmental forms without obvious structural lesions. In this review, we first discuss the diagnosis of acquired and developmental prosopagnosia, and the challenges present in the latter case. Second, we discuss the evidence regarding the selectivity of the prosopagnosic defect, particularly in relation to the recognition of other objects, written words (another visual object category requiring high expertise), and voices. Third, we summarize recent findings about the structural and functional basis of prosopagnosia from studies using magnetic resonance imaging, functional magnetic resonance imaging, and event-related potentials. Finally, we discuss recent attempts at rehabilitation of face recognition in prosopagnosia.

Recognizing and identifying people: A neuropsychological review

Recognizing people is a classic example of a cognitive function that involves multiple processing stages and parallel routes of information. Neuropsychological data have provided important evidence for models of this process, particularly from case reports; however, the quality and extent of the data varies widely between studies. In this review we first discuss the requirements and logical basis of the types of neuropsychological evidence to support conclusions about the modules in this process. We then survey the adequacy of the current body of reports to address two key issues. First is the question of which cognitive operation generates a sense of familiarity: the current debate revolves around whether familiarity arises in modality-specific recognition units or later amodal processes. Key evidence on this point comes from the search for dissociations between familiarity for faces, voices and names. The second question is whether lesions can differentially affect the abilities to link diverse sources of person information (e.g., face, voice, name, biographic data). Dissociations of these linkages may favor a 'distributed-only' model of the organization of semantic knowledge, whereas a 'person-hub' model would predict uniform impairments of all linkages. While we conclude that there is reasonable evidence for dissociations in name, voice and face familiarity in regards to the first question, the evidence for or against dissociated linkages between information stores in regards to the second question is tenuous at best. We identify deficiencies in the current literature that should motivate and inform the design of future studies.

Preservation of Person-Specific Semantic Knowledge in Semantic Dementia: Does Direct Personal Experience Have a Specific Role?

Semantic dementia patients seem to have better knowledge of information linked to the self. More specifically, despite having severe semantic impairment, these patients show that they have more general information about the people they know personally by direct experience than they do about other individuals they know indirectly. However, the role of direct personal experience remains debated because of confounding factors such as frequency, recency of exposure, and affective relevance. We performed an exploratory study comparing the performance of five semantic dementia patients with that of 10 matched healthy controls on the recognition (familiarity judgment) and identification (biographic information recall) of personally familiar names vs. famous names. As expected, intergroup comparisons indicated a semantic breakdown in semantic dementia patients as compared with healthy controls. Moreover, unlike healthy controls, the semantic dementia patients recognized and identified personally familiar names better than they did famous names. This pattern of results suggests that direct personal experience indeed plays a specific role in the relative preservation of person-specific semantic meaning in semantic dementia. We discuss the role of direct personal experience on the preservation of semantic knowledge and the potential neurophysiological mechanisms underlying these processes.

The accessibility of semantic knowledge for odours that can and cannot be named

When faces, objects, or voices are encountered, naming lapses can occur, but this does not preclude knowing other specific semantic information about the nameless thing. In the experiments reported here, we examined whether this is also the case for odours, using a procedure based upon the Pyramid and Palm Trees test. In Experiment 1, participants were presented with a target odour, then two pictures, and had to pick the picture semantically associated with the target. In Experiment 2, participants were presented with a target odour, then two test odours, and again had to pick the semantically associated test stimulus. In each experiment, other tests followed, including a parallel verbal-based test, an odour-naming test, and various ratings. Neither experiment found any evidence of specific semantic knowledge about a target odour, unless the target odour name (Experiment 1) or all of the odour names (Experiment 2) were known. Additional tests suggested that these effects were independent of odour familiarity and similarity. We suggest that the absence of specific semantic information in the absence of a name may reflect poor connectivity between olfactory perceptual and semantic memory systems.

Metacognitive awareness of the associative deficit for words and names

Older adults have considerable impairment in associative recognition despite minimal age differences in item recognition. The magnitude of this associative deficit varies by type of stimuli, strategy utilization, and other mediators and moderators ( Old & Naveh-Benjamin, 2008 , Psychology and Aging, 23, 104-118). Name pair stimuli have not been used to test the associative deficit hypothesis (ADH), although tests using name-face stimuli support the ADH. Additionally, metacognitive awareness of the ADH has not been investigated. We tested the ADH with word and name pair stimuli, and predicted that age-related associative deficits would be larger for words than names because names, unlike most common nouns, lack certain semantic properties that could be used to bind pairs of names together. Results supported the ADH for words but not names: Younger and older adults recognized equivalently fewer names on the associative test relative to the item test. As predicted, self-efficacy was higher for younger than older adults. Surprisingly, self-efficacy for the associative test was higher than for the item test but post-test estimates of performance success (postdictions) were higher for the item test than for the associative test, suggesting sensitivity by participants to different task demands in the item and associative tests following recognition attempts. Metacognitive accuracy was better for words than names and for the item test than associative test, and equivalent between age groups. Overall, participants overestimated their name recognition abilities. Our findings extend support for the ADH to a conceptually important and ecologically valid domain (names) and provide new data on metacognitive aspects of the ADH.

Assigned value improves memory of proper names

Names are more difficult to remember than other personal information such as occupations. The current research examined the influence of assigned point value on memory and metamemory judgements for names and occupations to determine whether incentive can improve recall of proper names. In Experiment 1 participants studied face-name and face-occupation pairs assigned 1 or 10 points, made judgements of learning, and were given a cued recall test. High-value names were recalled more often than low-value names. However, recall of occupations was not influenced by value. In Experiment 2 meaningless nonwords were used for both names and occupations. The name difficulty disappeared, and value influenced recall of both names and occupations. Thus value similarly influenced names and occupations when meaningfulness was held constant. In Experiment 3 participants were required to use overt rote rehearsal for all items. Value did not boost recall of high-value names, suggesting that differential processing could not be implemented to improve memory. Thus incentives may improve memory for proper names by motivating people to engage in selective rehearsal and effortful elaborative processing.

Electrophysiological studies of face processing in developmental prosopagnosia: neuropsychological and neurodevelopmental perspectives

People with developmental prosopagnosia (DP) show severe face-recognition deficits that typically emerge during childhood without history of neurological damage. We review findings from recent event-related brain potential (ERP) studies of face perception and face recognition in DP. The generic face-sensitivity of the N170 component is present in most DPs, suggesting rapid category-selective streaming of facial information. In contrast, DPs show atypical N170 face inversion effects, indicative of impaired structural encoding, specifically for upright faces. In line with neurodevelopmental accounts of DP, these effects are similar to those observed for other developmental disorders, as well as for younger children and older adults. Identity-sensitive ERP components (N250, P600f) triggered during successful face recognition are similar for DPs and control participants, indicating that the same mechanisms are active in both groups. The presence of covert face-recognition effects for the N250 component suggests that visual face memory and semantic memory can become disconnected in some individuals with DP. The implications of these results for neuropsychological and neurodevelopmental perspectives on DP are discussed.

What's unique about unique entities? An fMRI investigation of the semantics of famous faces and landmarks

Famous people and artifacts are referred to as "unique entities" (UEs) due to the unique nature of the knowledge we have about them. Past imaging and lesion experiments have indicated that the anterior temporal lobes (ATLs) as having a special role in the processing of UEs. It has remained unclear which attributes of UEs were responsible for the observed effects in imaging experiments. In this study, we investigated what factors of UEs influence brain activity. In a training paradigm, we systematically varied the uniqueness of semantic associations, the presence/absence of a proper name, and the number of semantic associations to determine factors modulating activity in regions subserving the processing of UEs. We found that a conjunction of unique semantic information and proper names modulated activity within a section of the left ATL. Overall, the processing of UEs involved a wider left-hemispheric cortical network. Within these regions, brain activity was significantly affected by the unique semantic attributes especially in the presence of a proper name, but we could not find evidence for an effect of the number of semantic associations. Findings are discussed in regard to current models of ATL function, the neurophysiology of semantics, and social cognitive processing.

Improved proper name recall in aging after electrical stimulation of the anterior temporal lobes

Evidence from neuroimaging and neuropsychology suggests that portions of the anterior temporal lobes (ATLs) play a critical role in proper name retrieval. We previously found that anodal transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) to the ATLs improved retrieval of proper names in young adults (Ross et al., 2010). Here we extend that finding to older adults who tend to experience greater proper-naming deficits than young adults. The task was to look at pictures of famous faces or landmarks and verbally recall the associated proper name. Our results show a numerical improvement in face naming after left or right ATL stimulation, but a statistically significant effect only after left-lateralized stimulation. The magnitude of the enhancing effect was similar in older and younger adults but the lateralization of the effect differed depending on age. The implications of these findings for the use of tDCS as tool for rehabilitation of age-related loss of name recall are discussed.

Putting a name to a face: the role of name labels in the formation of face memories

Although previous research in ERPs has focused on the conditions under which faces are recognized, less research has focused on the process by which face representations are acquired and maintained. In Experiment 1, participants were required to monitor for a target "Joe" face that was shown among a series of nontarget "Other" faces. At the halfway point, participants were instructed to switch targets from the Joe face to a previous nontarget face that is now labeled "Bob." The ERP analysis focused on the posterior N250 component known to index face familiarity and the P300 component associated with context updating and response decision. Results showed that, in the first half of the experiment, there was increase in N250 negativity to the target Joe face compared with the nontarget Bob and designated Other face. In the second half of the experiment, an enhanced N250 negativity was produced to the now-target Bob face compared with the Other face. Critically, the enhanced N250 negativity to the Joe face was maintained, although Joe was no longer the target. The P300 component followed a similar pattern of brain response, where the Joe face elicited a significantly larger P300 amplitude than the Other face and the Bob face. In the Bob half of the experiment, the Bob face elicited a reliably larger P300 than the Other faces, and the heightened P300 to the Joe face was sustained. In Experiment 2, we examined whether the increased N250 and P300 to Joe was because of simple naming effects. Participants were introduced to both Joe and Bob faces and names at the beginning of the experiment. In the first half of the experiment, participants monitored for the target Joe face and at the halfway point, they were instructed to switch targets to the Bob face. Findings show that N250 negativity significantly increased to the Joe face relative to the Bob and Other faces in the first half of the experiment and an enhanced N250 negativity was found for the target Bob face and the nontarget Joe face in the second half. An increased P300 amplitude was demonstrated to the target Joe and Bob faces in the first and second halves of the experiment, respectively. Importantly, the P300 amplitude elicited by the Joe face equaled the P300 amplitude to the Bob face, although it was no longer the target face. The findings from Experiments 1 and 2 suggest that the N250 component is not solely determined by name labeling, exposure, or task relevancy, but it is the combination of these factors that contribute to the acquisition of enduring face representations.

Naming very familiar people: When retrieving names is faster than retrieving semantic biographical information

One of the most reliable findings in the literature on person indentification is that semantic categorization of a face occurs more quickly than naming a face. Here we present two experiments in which participants are shown the faces of their colleagues, i.e., personally familiar people, encountered with high frequency. In each experiment, naming was faster than making a semantic classification, despite the fact that the semantic classifications were highly salient to the participants (Experiment 1: highest degree obtained; Experiment 2: nationality). The finding is consistent with models that allow or parallel access from faces to semantic information and to names, and demonstrates the need for the frequency of exposure to names to be taken into account in models of proper name processing e.g. Burke, Mackay, Worthley and Wade (1991).

Children and adults recall the names of highly familiar faces faster than semantic information

Adults find it harder to remember the names of familiar people than other biographical information such as occupation or nationality. It has been suggested that the opposite effect occurs in children (Scanlan & Johnston, 1997). We failed to replicate the effects found by Scanlan and Johnston and instead found that children were slower to match a name than an occupation to a famous face (Experiment 1). In Experiments 2 and 3, however, we show a temporal advantage for names in both adults and children when highly familiar faces are used. This is the case for famous and personally known faces. These results show that the speed of name retrieval is influenced by familiarity in the same way in both children and adults and indicate that children do not represent knowledge for familiar people differently from adults. The implications of these results for current models of name retrieval difficulties are discussed.

Metacognitive errors contribute to the difficulty in remembering proper names

While prior research has shown that proper names are more challenging to learn and remember than other types of information (e.g., occupations), little research has explored the role of metacognitive factors in proper name learning. Thus in four experiments participants learned, made predictions, and were tested on their memory for common nouns (i.e., occupations) and proper nouns (i.e., names). Results showed that memory predictions were consistently overconfident for names, whereas the discrepancy between predictions and performance was smaller for occupations. With experience, participants were able to modify predictions and, critically, Experiment 4 showed that improvements in the accuracy of memory predictions led participants to allocate more study time to names and thus improved memory for names. Such data suggest that theories of proper name learning should make provisions for deficits in metacognitive awareness.

How are 'Barack Obama' and 'President Elect' differentially stored in the brain? An ERP investigation on the processing of proper and common noun pairs

Background

One of the most debated issues in the cognitive neuroscience of language is whether distinct semantic domains are differentially represented in the brain. Clinical studies described several anomic dissociations with no clear neuroanatomical correlate. Neuroimaging studies have shown that memory retrieval is more demanding for proper than common nouns in that the former are purely arbitrary referential expressions. In this study a semantic relatedness paradigm was devised to investigate neural processing of proper and common nouns.

Methodology/Principal Findings

780 words (arranged in pairs of Italian nouns/adjectives and the first/last names of well known persons) were presented. Half pairs were semantically related (“Woody Allen” or “social security”), while the others were not (“Sigmund Parodi” or “judicial cream”). All items were balanced for length, frequency, familiarity and semantic relatedness. Participants were to decide about the semantic relatedness of the two items in a pair. RTs and N400 data suggest that the task was more demanding for common nouns. The LORETA neural generators for the related-unrelated contrast (for proper names) included the left fusiform gyrus, right medial temporal gyrus, limbic and parahippocampal regions, inferior parietal and inferior frontal areas, which are thought to be involved in the conjoined processing a familiar face with the relevant episodic information. Person name was more emotional and sensory vivid than common noun semantic access.

Conclusions/Significance

When memory retrieval is not required, proper name access (conspecifics knowledge) is not more demanding. The neural generators of N400 to unrelated items (unknown persons and things) did not differ as a function of lexical class, thus suggesting that proper and common nouns are not treated differently as belonging to different grammatical classes.

Feeling of knowing for names in response to faces

Participants were asked to recall the names when shown photographs of faces in both a semantic task (Experiment 1) and an episodic task (Experiments 2 and 3). When recall failed, feeling of knowing (FOK) ratings were solicited. In addition, participants reported on the strategies that they used to make their ratings, whether they could recall other pieces of information (the target-accessibility strategy, e.g., Koriat, A. (1993). How do we know that? The accessibility model of the feeling of knowing. Psychological Review, 100, 609-639) or whether the faces simply looked familiar (the cue-familiarity strategy, e.g., Schwartz, B. L., & Metcalfe, J. (1992). Cue familiarity but not target accessibility enhances feeling of knowing ratings. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 18, 1074-1083). In all experiments, FOK ratings were fairly accurate in that participants were successful in predicting their performance on a subsequent recognition test. More importantly, participants reported using the cue-familiarity strategy more often, although they gave higher FOK ratings when they reported using the target-accessibility strategy. The FOK ratings that were given using the two strategies were equally accurate.

Memory-related ERP components for experimentally learned faces and names: characteristics and parallel-test reliabilities

Previous research with preexperimentally familiar faces and names has identified several memory-related components in the event-related potential (ERP). Here we aimed to characterize these components while controlling the quality of long-term memory with a standardized learning procedure for unfamiliar faces and names. After 1 week, recognition was tested in a repetition priming paradigm. Both early repetition effects (ERE/N250r) and old/new effects had very similar time course and domain-related scalp topographies as has been reported for preexperimentally familiar stimuli. The late repetition effects (LRE/N400) showed domain-specific scalp topographies, possibly reflecting the greater ease of deriving semantic codes from faces. Importantly, parallel-test reliabilities of performance and memory-related ERP components were high, thus demonstrating the utility of face learning for formal assessment procedures in person recognition.

An event-related potentials study of face identification and naming: The tip-of-the-tongue state

With the aim of identifying event-related potential (ERP) correlates of the tip-of-the-tongue (TOT) state, we employed a task involving identification and naming of the faces of famous people with three response categories: KNOW (correct naming), DON'T KNOW (name not known), and TOT. Before 450 ms, no differences are observed between TOT and KNOW conditions in ERPs related to face processing and recognition. The smaller mean amplitude in TOT than in KNOW responses over the 550-750-ms interval and the N-TOT difference wave are correlates of the onset of the TOT state, probably reflecting a division of processing resources and low activation of the lexical-phonological route. The smaller amplitude of a late negative wave (between 1350 and 1550 ms) in TOT than in DON'T KNOW responses, and the P-TOT difference wave, seem to indicate that an important amount of processing resources is engaged in resolving the TOT.

Hemispheric asymmetries in font-specific and abstractive priming of written personal names: Evidence from event-related brain potentials

We assessed hemispheric differences in font-specific and abstractive repetition priming for famous persons' names. Participants performed speeded familiarity judgments for foveally presented famous and unfamiliar names. Famous target names were preceded by primes (150 ms) in the left or right visual field (LVF or RVF). Primes were either the same name as the target written in the same font (font-specific priming), the same name in a different font (abstractive priming), or a different name (unprimed condition). In reaction times, LH superiority was strong for abstractive priming across fonts, but was reduced to insignificance for font-specific priming. We observed 3 different ERP modulations of priming for target names: a small font-specific posterior N200 (160-220 ms), a left temporal N250r (220-300 ms), and an N400 modulation (300-500 ms). The left temporal N250r exhibited large and abstractive priming for RVF primes, but smaller and font-specific priming for LVF primes. N400 effects were observed in all priming conditions. With respect to previous findings that N200, N250r, and N400 reflect facilitation at the levels of font-specific encoding, lexical entries for names, and semantic processing, respectively, these findings suggest that the LH superiority for name processing is particularly pronounced for the access to abstractive lexical entries for written names, a process that may be mediated by the left fusiform cortex.