The Theory on Faces and Object Recognition
Danielle Robinson
B9780444
Are faces special in terms of how we process and recognize them? Critically discuss with reference to theoretical models of recognition?
Recognition is a process which involves us using basic sensory descriptions of an object and turning it into a 3D description, this description must then match stored representations of what we have seen before, irrespective of the angle its seen from. The process has 3 stages, Converting, Comparing and Identifying. An object model of recognition we will look at is Marr and Nisihara’s special process used to generate an object centered 3D description, and a facial recognition model we will compare this too will be the Connectionist model in which there is a structure which taps into the next resource of information available to the viewer. Recognizing faces and objects are considered separate processes and there has been debate over which process this is, if its innate or if its learned. The debate stems from the question as to whether recognizing faces is a special process and takes separate neurological pathways than that of recognizing an object. Theories of expertise recognition suggest that we have a specified skill in recognizing faces which are different from the recognition of objects due to the exposure and social determents that faces have on us, using people in a field of another skilled recognition, e.g. dog show judges to test if there is a difference between faces and just other expertise objects. In objection of this idea is the theory of Domain specificity, which indicates that the reason faces are processed differently is because of the different neural structure the brain uses to process a face than that of an object, using fMRI scan from Prosognasia (the inability to recognize faces) patients and Capgrass delusion (patients who do not recognize objects) to further their argument that the process happens in two different regions of the brain, not just because we are more
B9780444
Are faces special in terms of how we process and recognize them? Critically discuss with reference to theoretical models of recognition?
Recognition is a process which involves us using basic sensory descriptions of an object and turning it into a 3D description, this description must then match stored representations of what we have seen before, irrespective of the angle its seen from. The process has 3 stages, Converting, Comparing and Identifying. An object model of recognition we will look at is Marr and Nisihara’s special process used to generate an object centered 3D description, and a facial recognition model we will compare this too will be the Connectionist model in which there is a structure which taps into the next resource of information available to the viewer. Recognizing faces and objects are considered separate processes and there has been debate over which process this is, if its innate or if its learned. The debate stems from the question as to whether recognizing faces is a special process and takes separate neurological pathways than that of recognizing an object. Theories of expertise recognition suggest that we have a specified skill in recognizing faces which are different from the recognition of objects due to the exposure and social determents that faces have on us, using people in a field of another skilled recognition, e.g. dog show judges to test if there is a difference between faces and just other expertise objects. In objection of this idea is the theory of Domain specificity, which indicates that the reason faces are processed differently is because of the different neural structure the brain uses to process a face than that of an object, using fMRI scan from Prosognasia (the inability to recognize faces) patients and Capgrass delusion (patients who do not recognize objects) to further their argument that the process happens in two different regions of the brain, not just because we are more