Abstracts 2005 - The Psychonomic Society

Friday Morning Papers 28–33
audiovisual speech perception differs critically from auditorily apprehended
speech. Using sine wave synthesis to force perceivers to resolve
phonetic properties dynamically, we tested two conditions of
unimodal asynchrony tolerance. Listeners transcribed sentences at
each degree of asynchrony of the tone analogue of the first or second
formant, relative to the remaining tones of the sentence, ranging from
250-msec lead to 250-msec lag. The results revealed time-critical perceptual
organization of unimodal heard speech. The implications for
amodal principles of the perceptual organization and analysis of
speech are discussed.
9:20–9:35 (28)
Dissociating Uni- From Multimodal Perception in Infants Using
Optical Imaging. HEATHER BORTFELD & ERIC WRUCK, Texas
A&M University, & DAVID BOAS, Harvard Medical School—Nearinfrared
spectroscopy is an optical imaging technique that measures
relative changes in total hemoglobin concentration and oxygenation as
an indicator of neural activation. Recent research suggests that optical
imaging is a viable procedure for assessing the relation between perception
and brain function in human infants. We examined the extent
to which increased neural activation, as measured using optical imaging,
could be observed in a neural area known to be involved in speech
processing, the superior temporal cortex, during exposure to fluent
speech. Infants 6–9 months of age were presented with a visual event
paired with fluent speech (visual + audio) and a visual event without
additional auditory stimuli (visual only). We observed a dissociation
of neural activity during the visual + audio event and the visual-only
event. Results have important implications for research in language development,
developmental neuroscience, and infant perception.
Face Processing
Conference Rooms B&C, Friday Morning, 8:00–10:00
Chaired by Christian Dobel
Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität Münster
8:00–8:15 (29)
Learning of Faces and Objects in Prosopagnosia. CHRISTIAN
DOBEL & JENS BÖLTE, Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität Münster—
We investigated a group of congenital prosopagnosics with a neuropsychological
testing battery. Their performance was characterized by
an impairment in recognizing individual faces. Other aspects of face
processing were affected to a lesser degree. In a subsequent eyetracking
experiment, we studied the ability of these subjects to learn novel
faces, objects with faces, and objects presented in an upright and an
inverted manner. Controls mostly attended central regions of stimuli.
This was done more so for faces than for objects and more strongly expressed
in upright than in inverted stimuli. Prosopagnosics performed
as accurately as controls, but latencies were strongly delayed. In contrast
to controls, they devoted more attention to outer parts of the stimuli.
These studies confirm the assumption that prosopagnosics use a
more feature-based approach to recognize visual stimuli and that configural
processing might be the locus of their impairment.
8:20–8:35 (30)
On the Other Hand: The Concurrence Effect and Self-Recognition.
CLARK G. OHNESORGE, Carleton College, & NICK PALMER,
JUSTIN KALEMKIARIAN, & ANNE SWENSON, Gustavus Adolphus
College (read by Clark G. Ohnesorge)—Several recent studies of
hemispheric specialization for facial self-recognition in which either
visual field or response hand was manipulated have returned contrasting
results. In three studies of self-recognition, we simultaneously
manipulated visual field and response hand and found evidence for a
concurrence effect—that is, an interaction of visual field and response
hand indicating better performance when the “viewing” hemisphere
also controls the hand used for response. The absence of main effects
for either visual field or response hand are evidence against strong
5
claims for hemispheric specialization in self-recognition. We investigated
the generality of the concurrence effect in three further studies
and found that it also occurs for identification of unfamiliar faces but
disappears when a task is chosen (distinguishing circles from ellipses)
that more strongly favors the right hemisphere. The several task- and
stimulus-related performance asymmetries we observed are discussed
in terms of communication and cooperation between the hemispheres.
8:40–8:55 (31)
Environmental Context Effects in Episodic Recognition of Novel
Faces. KERRY A. CHALMERS, University of Newcastle, Australia—
Effects of context on recognition were investigated in three experiments.
During study, novel faces were presented in one of two contexts
created by varying screen position and background color. At test,
old (studied) and new (nonstudied) faces were presented in the same
context as studied faces or in a different context that was either a context
seen at study (Experiments 1 and 3) or a new context (Experiment
2). Participants judged whether faces were “old” (studied) or
“new” (Experiments 1 and 2) or whether they had been studied in the
“same” or “different” context or were “new” faces (Experiment 3).
Match between study and test contexts had no effect on correct recognition
of faces, even when study context was correctly identified at
test. False recognition was higher when the test context was old than
when it was new. Implications for global matching models and dualprocess
accounts of memory are considered.
9:00–9:15 (32)
Processing the Trees and the Forest During Initial Stages of Face
Perception: Electrophysiological Evidence. SHLOMO BENTIN &
YULIA GOLLAND, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, ANASTASIA
FLAVERIS, University of California, Berkeley, LYNN C. ROBERTSON,
Veterans Affairs Medical Center, Martinez, and University of California,
Berkeley, & MORRIS MOSCOVITCH, University of Toronto—Although
global configuration is a hallmark of face processing, most contemporary
models of face perception posit a dual-code view, according
to which face recognition relies on the extraction of featural codes, involving
local analysis of individual face components, as well as on the
extraction of configural codes, involving the components themselves
and computation of the spatial relations among them. We explored the
time course of processing configural and local component information
during face processing by recording the N170, an ERP component that
manifests early perception of physiognomic information. The physiognomic
value of local and global information was manipulated by substituting
objects or faces for eyes in the global configuration of the
schematic face or placing the same stimuli in random positions inside
the global face. The results suggest that the global face configuration
imposes (local) analysis of information in the “eyes” position, which
determines the overall physiognomic value of the global stimulus.
9:20–9:35 (33)
Facial Conjunctions May Block Recollection: ERP Evidence.
KALYAN SHASTRI, JAMES C. BARTLETT, & HERVÉ ABDI, University
of Texas, Dallas (read by James C. Bartlett)—Although conjunctions
of previously viewed faces are sometimes falsely judged as
“old,” they often are correctly rejected as “new.” This could be due to
(1) successful recollection of configural information or (2) low familiarity
and/or failure of recollection. To distinguish these ideas, we
compared ERPs in a recognition test for hits to old faces and correct
rejections of (1) conjunction faces, (2) entirely new faces, and (3) repetitions
of new faces. Focusing on differences in ERP positivity, 400
to 800 msec poststimulus, over midline and left parietal sites (CP3,
CPZ, P3, and PZ), we replicated the “parietal old/new effect” of greater
positively for old faces than for new faces, a difference frequently attributed
to recollection. A comparison of repeated new faces and conjunctions
showed this same effect, and, critically, the ERP functions
for repeated new faces closely matched that for old faces, whereas the
functions for conjunctions closely matched that for new faces.