Research in face recognition has tended to focus on discriminating between individuals, or “telling people apart.” It has recently become clear that it is also necessary to understand how images of the same person can vary, or “telling people together.” Learning a new face, and tracking its representation as it changes from unfamiliar to familiar, involves an abstraction of the variability in different images of that person's face. Here, we present an application of principal components analysis computed across different photos (...) of the same person. We demonstrate that people vary in systematic ways, and that this variability is idiosyncratic—the dimensions of variability in one face do not generalize well to another. Learning a new face therefore entails learning how that face varies. We present evidence for this proposal and suggest that it provides an explanation for various effects in face recognition. We conclude by making a number of testable predictions derived from this framework. (shrink)

This article describes some differences between familiar and unfamiliar face processing. It presents the evidence that unfamiliar face recognition is poor. Since this poor performance has implications both practically and theoretically, it is important to establish the facts. The article analyses reasons that people appear to have little insight into their own poor performance with unfamiliar faces, and some sectors of society seem so keen to use faces as a means of proving identity. It reviews some historical research comparing familiar (...) and unfamiliar face processing. The study shows evidence for the assertion that despite eliminating the memory-load of normal eyewitness situations, it turns out that people are surprisingly bad at matching two images of the same unfamiliar person. Finally, it suggests that the modern tendency to conflate familiar and unfamiliar face processing, and to theorize about “face recognition” in general, lies at the heart of practical failures in this field. (shrink)

Distributed representations can be distributed in very many ways. The specific choice of representation for a specific model is based on considerations unique to the area of study. General statements about the effectiveness of distributed models are therefore of little value. The popularity of these models is discussed, particularly with respect to reporting conventions.

Significant advances have been made in understanding human face recognition. However, a fundamental aspect of this process, how faces are located in our visual environment, is poorly understood and little studied. Here we examine the role of color in human face detection. We demonstrate that detection performance declines when color information is removed from faces, regardless of whether the surrounding scene context is rendered in color. Furthermore, faces rendered in unnatural colors are hard to detect, suggesting a role beyond simple (...) segmentation. When faces are presented such that half the surface is colored appropriately, and half unnaturally, performance declines. This suggests that observers are not simply using the presence of skin color “patches” to detect faces. Rather, our data suggest that detection operates via a face template combining diagnostic color and face‐shape information. These findings are consistent with color‐template approaches used in some computer‐based face detection systems. (shrink)

It is well established that retrieval of names is harder than the retrieval of other identity specific information. This paper offers a review of the more influential accounts put forward as explanations of why names are so difficult to retrieve. A series of five experiments tests a number of these accounts.Experiments One to Three examine the claims that names are hard to recall because they are typically meaningless, or unique. Participants are shown photographs of unfamiliar people or familiar people and (...) given three pieces of information about each: a name, a unique piece of information, and a shared piece of information. Learning follows an incidental procedure, and participants are given a surprise recall test. In each experiment shared information is recalled most often, followed by unique information, followed by name. Experiment Four tests both the `uniqueness' account and an account based on the specificity of the naming response. Participants are presented with famous faces and asked to categorise them by semantic group. Results indicate that less time is needed to perform this task when the group is a subset of a larger semantic category. A final experiment examines the claim that names might take longer to access because they are less often retrieved than other classes of information. Latencies show that participants remain more efficient when categorising faces by their occupation than by their name even when they have received extra practice of naming the faces.We conclude that the explanation best able to account for the data is that names are stored separately from other semantic information and can only be accessed after other identity specific information has been retrieved. However, we also argue that the demands we make of these explanations make it likely that no single theory will be able to account for all existing data. (shrink)

Exponents and critics of semantic presupposition have almost invariably based their discussion on the ('Standard') definition of presupposition implied by Frege and Strawson. In this study Noel Burton-Roberts argues convincingly against this definition, that leads it to a three-valued semantics. He presents a very simple semantic definition which is weaker, more general and leads to a semantics more easily interpreted as two-valued with gaps. The author shows that a wide range of intuitive facts that eluded the Standard definition follow (...) directly from this ('Revised') definition itself: facts about the presuppositions of compound sentences and modal sentences, about presuppositional conflict and about differences in the logical status of simple sentences suffering from presupposition failure. The book includes a detailed argument that an ambiguity of natural language negation, generally assumed to be necessary to the defence of semantic presupposition, is neither possible nor necessary in a presuppositional semantics. Noel Burton-Roberts has made an authoritative contribution to a debate which has involved philosophers and linguists for many years. His command of the issues, his clarity of exposition and his theoretical insight may well serve to change the boundaries of that debate. (shrink)

Silence has gained a prominent role in the field of psychotherapy because of its potential to facilitate a plethora of therapeutically beneficial processes within patients’ inner dynamics. This study examined the phenomenon from a conversation analytical perspective in order to investigate how silence emerges as an interactional accomplishment and how it attains interactional meaning by the speakers’ adjacent turns. We restricted our attention to one particular sequential context in which a patient’s turn comes to a point of possible completion and (...) receives a continuer by the therapist upon which a substantial silence follows. The data collection consisted of 74 instances of such post-continuer silences. The analysis revealed that silence can retroactively become part of a topic closure sequence, can become shaped as an intra-topic silence, and can be explicitly characterized as an activity in itself that is relevant for the therapy in process. Only in this last case, the absence of talk is actually treated as disruptive to the ongoing talk. Although silence is often seen as a therapeutic instrument that can be implemented intentionally and purposefully, our analysis demonstrated how it is co-constructed by speakers and indexically obtains meaning by adjacent turns of talk. In the ensuing turns, silence indeed shows to facilitate access to the patient’s subjective experience at unconscious levels. (shrink)

Notwithstanding its obvious educational importance, the idea of an ethics of belief has been little explored by educational philosophers. The notion turns out to be more complex and to involve more difficulties than is usually supposed. Exploring these complexities and difficulties opens up many avenues of philosophical and educational inquiry. These in turn can enrich our reflections on contemporary educational developments and on ethical aspects of teaching. In particular they alert us to the need for educational theorists to give overdue (...) attention to the intellectual virtues. (shrink)

The unknown southern continent is perhaps one of the most puzzling aspects of Gerardus Mercator's otherwise strikingly modern cartography. This paper is an attempt to reconsider it in view of Renaissance cosmology and to outline two factors that led Mercator to engage with the mythical terra australis over decades: his socio-professional status as an artisan and the desire to be a philosopher, on the one hand, and the harsh business of mapmaking in the Low Countries on the other. The resulting (...) unknown southern continent was intimately connected to the classical tradition and geocentric cosmology but also to the specific social niche Mercator was trying to establish for himself. (shrink)

The unknown southern continent is perhaps one of the most puzzling aspects of Gerardus Mercator's otherwise strikingly modern cartography. This paper is an attempt to reconsider it in view of Renaissance cosmology and to outline two factors that led Mercator to engage with the mythical terra australis over decades: his socio-professional status as an artisan and the desire to be a philosopher, on the one hand, and the harsh business of mapmaking in the Low Countries on the other. The resulting (...) unknown southern continent was intimately connected to the classical tradition and geocentric cosmology but also to the specific social niche Mercator was trying to establish for himself. (shrink)

This article seeks to explain the variable implementation of gender mainstreaming as a `policy frame' over time and across various international organisations (I.O.s). In the years since the U.N. Fourth World Women's Conference in Beijing (1995),mainstreaming has been endorsed and adopted by a wide range of international organisations, and we compare the adoption and implementation of mainstreaming in four specific I.O.s: the World Bank, the United Nations Development Programme, the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe, and the European Union. (...) The rhetorical acceptance of mainstreaming by various international organisations, however, obscures considerable variation in both the timing and the nature of the mainstreaming process within and among organisations. This variation, in turn, can be explained in terms of the categories of political opportunity, mobilising structures and strategic framing, which have been put forward by social movement theorists. (shrink)

Stoffregen & Bardy suggest that the global array provides the specification that is lacking when senses are considered in isolation. This seems to beg the question of the minimum number of senses in a global array. Individuals with sensory loss manage with fewer senses, and humans manage with fewer than electric fish; so specification, if it exists, cannot require all possible senses.

This paper explores the psychological foundations of the 'Willingness to Pay/Willingness to Accept' discrepancy. Using a qualitative approach we find that the two response modes appear to invoke different strategies for completion. An examination of the heuristics used by respondents to answer questions concerning the buying and selling of the chance to play a straightforward lottery shows that only some could be taken as supporting current theories which aim to explain the discrepancy.

ABSTRACTPeople often use metaphors to discuss their financial prospects – for example, finding a fortune or searching for wealth. The purpose of the present research was to utilize conceptual metap...

A middle-aged woman had a massive stroke and would be dead within hours. The husband was in the ER waiting room. I took him aside and explained the grim prognosis. He paused, his expression blank, his lips searching for something to say. Finally, he blurted out, “I think I’ll go home and take a shower.”.

While window-shopping for his wife’s birthday, a businessman was struck by a speeding taxi that jumped the curb at 55th and Madison. In the few minutes it took the ambulance to reach the University emergency room, he had lapsed into a coma. Brain imaging revealed a large blood clot compressing the brain. The only hope for his survival was immediate drainage of the clot.