Nicola Brace

Developmental changes in the effect of inversion: Using a picture book to investigate face recognition

A novel child-oriented procedure was used to examine the face-recognition abilities of children as young as 2 years. A recognition task was embedded in a picture book containing a story about two boys and a witch. The story and the task were designed to be entertaining for children of a wide age range. In eight trials, the children were asked to pick out one of the boys from amongst eight distractors as quickly as possible. Response-time data to both upright and inverted conditions were analysed. The results revealed that children aged 6 years onwards showed the classic inversion effect. By contrast, the youngest children, aged 2 to 4 years, were faster at recognising the target face in the inverted condition than in the upright condition. Several possible explanations for this ‘inverted inversion effect’ are discussed.

Identifying composites of famous faces: Investigating memory, language and system issues

Abstract Previous research on composite systems has cast doubt on their potential to produce a good likeness. Poor memory of the targets face and problems in translating a verbal description into a visual mental image were examined as possible reasons for this. A computerized composite system was used to construct facial images of famous individuals. Results indicated that a reasonable number of composites were identified overall. Composites produced directly by the “operators” tended to be more accurate than those produced via “describers”. In addition, composites produced via describers, but not those directly by operators, were less accurate when created from memory than when a photograph was provided. This suggests that verbal descriptions, as well as facial memory, may limit composite accuracy.

Circling around the uncanny valley: design principles for research Into the relation between human likeness and eeriness

The uncanny valley effect (UVE) is a negative emotional response experienced when encountering entities that appear almost human. Research on the UVE typically investigates individual, or collections of, near human entities but may be prone to methodological circularity unless the properties that give rise to the emotional response are appropriately defined and quantified. In addition, many studies do not sufficiently control the variation in human likeness portrayed in stimulus images, meaning that the nature of stimuli that elicit the UVE is also not well defined or quantified. This article describes design criteria for UVE research to overcome the above problems by measuring three variables (human likeness, eeriness, and emotional response) and by using stimuli spanning the artificial to human continuum. These criteria allow results to be plotted and compared with the hypothesized uncanny valley curve and any effect observed can be quantified. The above criteria were applied to the methods used in a subset of existing UVE studies. Although many studies made use of some of the necessary measurements and controls, few used them all. The UVE is discussed in relation to this result and research methodology more broadly.

Eye-Witness Identification Procedures and Stress: A Comparison of Live and Video Identification Parades

Recent amendments to the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984 of England and Wales, allow video identification parades to be employed as the primary mechanism to collect identification evidence. One important difference between the video procedure and the more established live identification parade is that the video procedure does not require the witness to come face to face with the perpetrator, and this may therefore reduce any stress experienced by the witness. A field experiment was conducted to compare the experiences of participant-witnesses attending both a video and a live identification parade. Approximately 70 per cent of participant-witnesses judged attending the live parade to have been more stressful than the video parade. However, analysis of responses to a mood adjective checklist revealed no statistically significant differences in the stress or arousal experienced after attending the live and the video parade. In relation to video parades, participant-witnesses who believed that the perpetrator was not present reported significantly lower levels of stress than those who believed that the perpetrator was present in the parade. There was no such difference in the case of live parades.