Abstract
The other-race effect was examined in a series of experiments and simulations that looked at the relationships among observer ratings of typicality, familiarity, attractiveness, memorability, and the performance variables ofd’ and criterion. Experiment 1 replicated the other-race effect with our Caucasian and Japanese stimuli for both Caucasian and Asian observers. In Experiment 2, we collected ratings from Caucasian observers on the faces used in the recognition task. A Varimax-rotated principal components analysis on the rating and performance data for the Caucasian faces replicated Vokey and Read’s (1992) finding that typicality is composed of two orthogonal components, dissociable via their independent relationships to: (1) attractiveness and familiarity ratings and (2) memorahility ratings. For Japanese faces, however, we fond that typicality was related only to memorahility. Where performance measures were concerned, two additional principal components dominated by criterion and byd’ emerged for Caucasian faces. For the Japanese faces, however, the performance measures ofd’ and criterion merged into a single component that represented a second component of typicality, one orthogonal to thememorability-dominated component. A measure offace representation quality extracted from an autoassociative neural network trained with a majority of Caucasian faces and a minority of Japanese faces was incorporated into the principal components analysis. For both Caucasian and Japanese faces, the neural network measure related both to memorability ratings and to human accuracy measures. Combined, the human data and simulation results indicate that the memorahility component of typicality may be related to small, local, distinctive features, whereas the attractiveness/familiarity component may be more related to the global, shape-based properties of the face.
Article PDF
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Bartlett, J. C., Hurry, S., &Thorley, W. (1984). Typicality and familiarity of faces.Memory & Cognition,12, 219–228.
Bothwell, R. K., Brigham, J. C., &Malpass, R. S. (1989). Cross-racial identification.Personality & Social Psychology Bulletin,15, 19–25.
Bruce, V. (1988).Recognizing faces. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.
Bruce, V., &Young, A. W. (1986). Understanding face recognition.British Journal of Psychology,77, 305–327.
Cohen, M. E., &Carr, W. J. (1975). Facial recognition and the von Restorff effect.Bulletin of the Psychonomk Society,6, 383–384.
Deffenbacher, K. A., &Loftus, E. F. (1982). Do jurors share a common understanding concerning eyewitness behavior?Law & Human Behavior,6, 15–30.
Feingold, C. A. (1914). The influence of environment on identification of persons and things.Journal of Criminal Law & Police Science,5, 39–51.
Going, M., &Read, J. D. (1974), The effect of uniqueness, sex of subject and sex of photograph on facial recognition.Perceptual & Motor Skills,39, 109–110.
Jackson, J. E. (1991).A user’s guide to principal components analysis. New York: Wiley.
Jordan, M. I. (1986). An introduction to linear algebra in parallel distributed processing. In D. E. Rumelhart & J. L. McClelland (Eds.),Parallel distributed processing: Vol. I. Foundations (pp. 365–421). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Kirby, M., &Sirovich, L. (1990). Application of the Karhunen-Loève procedure for the characterization of human faces.IEEE Transactions on Pattern Analysis & Machine Intelligence,12, 103–108.
Kshirsagar, A. M. (1972).Multivariate analysis. New York: Marcel Dekker.
Light, L. L., Kayra-Stuart, F., &Hollander, S. (1979). Recognition memory for typical and unusual faces.Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Learning & Memory.5, 212–228.
Otoole, A. J., &Abdi, H. (1989). Connectionist approaches to visually based feature extraction. In G. Tiberghien (Ed.),Advances in cognitive psychology (Vol. 2, pp. 1–13). London: Wiley.
Otoole, A. J., Abdi, H., Deffenbacher, K. A., &Bartlett, J. C. (1991). Classifying faces by race and sex using an autoassociative memory trained for recognition. In K. J. Hammond & D. Gentner (Eds.),Proceedings of the Thirteenth Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society (pp. 847–851). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.
Otoole, A. J., Abdi, H., Deffenbacher, K. A., &Valentin, D. (1993). Low-dimensional representation of faces in higher dimensions of the face space.Journal of the Optical Society of America A,10, 405–410.
Otoole, A. J., Deffenbacher, K. A., Abdi, H., &Bartlett, J. C. (1991). Simulating the “other-race” effect as a problem in perceptual learning.Connection Science: Journal of Neural Computing, Artificial Intelligence, & Cognitive Research,3, 163–178.
Otooik A. J. &Ihompson J. L. (1993) An X Windows tool for synthesizing face eigenvectors from eigenvectors Behavior Research Methods,Instruments & Computers25, 41–47
Shahiro P N &Penrod, S D (1986) Meta-analysis of face identification studiesPsychological Bulletin,100, 139–156
Shepherd, J W (1981) Social factors m face recognition In G M Davies H D Fills. & J W Shepherd (Eds)Percening and rememhering fates (pp 55–79) London Academic Press
Sirovich L. &Kirby, M (1987) Low-dimensional procedure for the characterization of human facesJournal of the Optical Society of America A3 519–524
Snodgrass, J G &Corwin, J (1988) Pragirutics of recognition mernory Applications to dementia and amnesiaJournal of Experimental Psychology General,117 34–50
Valentine, T &Bruce, V (1986) Recognizing familiar faces The role of distinetaveness and familiarityCanadian Journal of Psychology40, 300–305
Valentine, T. &Endo, M (1992) Towards an exemplar model of face processing. The effects of race and distinctiveness.Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology.44A, 671–703
Valentine, T. &Ferrara, A. (1991) Typicality in categorization, recognition and identification Evidence from face recognitionBritish Journal of Psychology,82, 87–102
Vokey, J R &Read, J D (1988) Typicality, familiarity and the recognition of male and female facesCanadian Journal of Psychology,42, 489–495
Vokey, J R &Read, J D (1992). Familiarity, memorability, and the effect of typicality on the recognition of facesMemory & Cognition.20, 291–302
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Additional information
—Accepted by previous editor Margaret Jean Intons-Peterson
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
O’toole, A.J., Deffenbacher, K.A., Valentin, D. et al. Structural aspects of face recognition and the other-race effect. Memory & Cognition 22, 208–224 (1994). https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03208892
Received:
Accepted:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03208892