Effect of symmetry on recognition of unfamiliar faces

Download
2010
Yıldırım, Gülsen
In the literature, there exist several studies on recognition memory performance for faces and related facial characteristics such as distinctiveness, typicality, attractiveness. In our study, we examined the relationship between symmetry and human face recognition for the first time. In order to have symmetry as the only manipulated factor in our stimuli, we constructed a unique face database, METUFaceTwo, which contains standardized symmetric and asymmetric face images without facial textures. In our study, we assumed that faces and related features such as symmetry are perceived holistically, and defined facial symmetry with two different measures: entropy calculations and perceived symmetry values. Our fundamental finding is that symmetry increases recognition performance. This increase seems to be due to the additional study time or additional effort spent for symmetric face images during the recall period rather than the encoding period. More studies need to be performed in order to isolate the causes of this surprising finding.

Suggestions

Quantification of the effect of symmetry in face perception
Dövencioğlu, N. Dicle; Gökçay, Didem; Department of Cognitive Sciences (2008)
Facial symmetry has been a central component in many studies on face perception. The relationship between bilateral symmetry and subjective judgments on faces is still arguable in the literature. In this study, a database of natural looking face images with different levels of symmetry is constructed using several digital preprocessing and morphing methods. Our aim is to investigate the correlations between quantified asymmetry, perceived symmetry and a subjective judgment: ‘attractiveness’. Images in the M...
Effects of ammonium ion, acetate and aerobic conditions on hydrogen production and expression levels of nitrogenase genes in Rhodobacter sphaeroides OU001
Akkose, Sevilay; Gündüz, Ufuk; Yucel, Meral; Eroglu, Inci (2009-11-01)
In the present study, expression levels of nitrogenase encoding nifH and control genes nifA and prrA were examined at different physiological conditions in Rhodobacter sphaeroides O.U.001. In addition to variations in expression levels, changes in hydrogen production and growth were also investigated in response to different concentrations of ammonium source, acetate and aerobic conditions.
Effects of perceptual fluency on autobiographical memories
İnan, Aslı Bahar; Tekman, Hasan Gürkan; Department of Cognitive Sciences (2009)
The aim of this study was to find if manipulating fluency, that is, the ease of processing, could affect confidence ratings about whether an event occurred in the respondents’ past. To test the familiarity misattribution hypothesis, which states that familiarity caused by fluent processing can be misattributed to past experience if the source of fluency cannot be identified, two methods were used: a revelation task, which was anagram solving and repetition priming. In the revelation task the familiarity mis...
Investigation of the Effect of Face Regions on Local Shape Descriptor Based 3D Face Recognition
İNAN, TOLGA; Halıcı, Uğur (2013-04-26)
In this study, the effect of face regions on local shape descriptor based 3D face recognition was investigated. Our approach starts with calculation of the SIFT descriptors on the shape maps of the 3D faces. In the next phase, SIFT descriptors in the selected regions are concatenated to form feature vectors. Then these feature vectors are fed into linear discriminant analysis (LDA) for face recognition. In this study, faces are segmented into 47 regions and the descriptors in one or more regions are concate...
The Role of symmetry and facial expressions of emotions in evaluation of attractiveness and perceived symmetry : an eye tracking study
Hepsomalı, Pırıl; Gökçay, Didem; Department of Cognitive Sciences (2013)
In social interaction, faces convey plenty of information such as gender, age, attractiveness and expressions of emotions. Amongst these cues, attractiveness and facial expressions of emotions are considered more substantial, since processing and evaluation of such information rapidly has adaptive relevance in order to avoid or approach. One of the indicators of attractiveness, symmetry, is preferred by many species and it is known that symmetrical faces are rated as more attractive by humans. Moreover, fac...
Citation Formats
G. Yıldırım, “Effect of symmetry on recognition of unfamiliar faces,” M.S. - Master of Science, Middle East Technical University, 2010.