Naming may be key to brain's ability to recognize faces
(PhysOrg.com) -- Our tendency to see people and faces as individuals may explain why we are such experts at recognizing them, new research indicates. This approach can be learned and applied to other objects as well.
"This new research adds to the evidence that the brain processes faces differently because of our expertise with them. It also tells us what it is about our experience with faces that leads us to treat them holistically,” Isabel Gauthier, associate professor of psychology at Vanderbilt University and one of the study's co-authors, says. "This knowledge may be useful in the development of training protocols for individuals with difficulties in face perception, such as individuals with autism spectrum disorders.”
The research is currently in press at Psychological Science. Gauthier's co-authors are Alan Wong, who completed the study as his doctoral thesis in psychology at Vanderbilt, and Thomas Palmeri, associate professor of psychology. Wong is now an assistant professor at Chinese University of Hong Kong.
"Our findings suggest that facial expertise does not just develop with any type of experience," Wong says. "Learning to recognize a set of objects as individuals may work, but categorizing them at a more general level, or learning to manipulate them, would not. We develop different types of expertise in recognizing different objects not just due to their unique appearance, but also because of the types of experience we have had with them."
Main Contributor - Cees de Bruin Naming would just be one of the things that help entities stand out in our mind. Particularly acting on something that includes movement of some kind always helps me. This is one of the reasons I always ask people for a (at least visible) acknowledgement of a point that was made. That way I remember better and they can no longer deny. How much more meaningful is that?
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