Evidence map›Paper›PMID 32586632›Full record

ArticleCognition2021

Computational insights into human perceptual expertise for familiar and unfamiliar face recognition.

Nicholas M Blauch, Marlene Behrmann, David C Plaut

Abstract read
In one paragraph

Article in Cognition, 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 30 papers.

0numbers the graph read from it
0cells of the map it votes in
30citing papers in PubMed
–field-weighted citation impact
1 · What the graph read from it

What it found

Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.

The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.

2 · The registry

The trial behind it

Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.

Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.

3 · Its place in the literature

Who cites it

30 citing papers in PubMed.

  1. The state of modelling face processing in humans with deep learning.British journal of psychology (London, England : 1953) · 2026
    Review
  2. Article
  3. Frequency-tagged EEG reveals category-selective responses to face race.Social cognitive and affective neuroscience · 2026
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  15. Behavioral signatures of face perception emerge in deep neural networks optimized for face recognition.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2023
    Article
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4 · The record

Corrections and comments

PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.

5 · Who and what money

Authors and funding

3 authors.

Nicholas M BlauchProgram in Neural Computation, Carnegie Mellon University, United States of America; Neuroscience Institute, Carnegie Mellon University, United States of America. Electronic address: blauch@cmu.edu.
Marlene BehrmannNeuroscience Institute, Carnegie Mellon University, United States of America; Department of Psychology, Carnegie Mellon University, United States of America.
David C PlautNeuroscience Institute, Carnegie Mellon University, United States of America; Department of Psychology, Carnegie Mellon University, United States of America.

Funding

REORGANIZATION OF VISUAL FUNCTION IN PATIENTS WITH POSTERIOR CORTICAL RESECTION: SELECTIVITY AND PLASTICITYR01EY027018 · NEI · UNIVERSITY OF PITTSBURGH AT PITTSBURGH · PI Marlene Behrmann · 2017 to 2026
$3.2M
INTERDISCIPLINARY TRAINING IN COMPUTATIONAL NEUROSCIENCET90DA022762 · NIDA · CARNEGIE-MELLON UNIVERSITY · PI KASS, ROBERT E, RUBIN, JONATHAN E. · 2006 to 2020
$2.0M
Behavioral quantification through active learning and multidimensional physiological monitoringR34DA059509 · NIDA · CARNEGIE-MELLON UNIVERSITY · PI GROVER, PULKIT, KUANG, ZHENG · 2024 to 2025
$663k
NEI NIH HHS R01 EY027018NIDA NIH HHS R34 DA059509NIDA NIH HHS T90 DA022762
6 · The paper itself

Abstract

Humans are generally thought to be experts at face recognition, and yet identity perception for unfamiliar faces is surprisingly poor compared to that for familiar faces. Prior theoretical work has argued that unfamiliar face identity perception suffers because the majority of identity-invariant visual variability is idiosyncratic to each identity, and thus, each face identity must be learned essentially from scratch. Using a high-performing deep convolutional neural network, we evaluate this claim by examining the effects of visual experience in untrained, object-expert and face-expert networks. We found that only face training led to substantial generalization in an identity verification task of novel unfamiliar identities. Moreover, generalization increased with the number of previously learned identities, highlighting the generality of identity-invariant information in face images. To better understand how familiarity builds upon generic face representations, we simulated familiarization with face identities by fine-tuning the network on images of the previously unfamiliar identities. Familiarization produced a sharp boost in verification, but only approached ceiling performance in the networks that were highly trained on faces. Moreover, in these face-expert networks, the sharp familiarity benefit was seen only at the identity-based output probability layer, and did not depend on changes to perceptual representations; rather, familiarity effects required learning only at the level of identity readout from a fixed expert representation. Our results thus reconcile the existence of a large familiar face advantage with claims that both familiar and unfamiliar face identity processing depend on shared expert perceptual representations.

Indexed as

Facial RecognitionHumansLearningPattern Recognition, VisualRecognition, PsychologyDeep convolutional neural networkExpertiseFace recognitionFamiliarityInvariance

Identifiers

PMID32586632
PMCPMC9944378

What OpenQuestion holds

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LicenceCC BY-NC-ND
Read underepoch 390

Registered trials

None linked

Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.