PhD York Interview 2 Flashcards
- What is the title of your project?
‘Using Naturalistic Viewing Paradigm to Explore the Role of Conceptual Knowledge in Face Recognition’
- What is the proposed research question you are addressing?
The main question that I am trying to address is how conceptual knowledge helps in familiar face recognition and where in the brain this knowledge is represented.
- How do you hope to investigate this proposed research question you are addressing? = Methodology - (4)
We will utilise the Life on Mars naturalistic viewing paradigm (see Noad and Andrews, 2023). However, participants will initially view either the Original or Scrambled version of the movie outside the scanner which they are unfamiliar with. And they are tested on narrative using structured questions of key events of movie and write a detailed narrative.
Participants in both the Original and Scrambled groups
will have the same perceptual information but will acquire different conceptual knowledge.
The neural response will then be measured in participants from both groups using fMRI. They will view a movie containing excerpts from previously unseen episodes of Life on Mars.
Participants from both groups will then be scanned after a delay of 4 weeks. On this occasion, they will view a new movie containing excerpts from previously unseen episodes of Life on Mars.
- What is rationale of conducting your PhD project? - (8)
There has been limited research that have tried to answer how conceptual knowledge helps in face recognition and where is it represented in brain but has a number of limitations
The main being that the paradigm used lacks ecological validity as static facial stimuli associated with artificial conceptual info like name/occupation, perceptual and conceptual in these paradigms are assumed to be separated which does not happen in real life.
To overcome this limitation, task-free naturalistic paradigms have been developed
where participants are watching a engaging movie in a MRI scanner.
The naturalistic viewing paradigm is nice from the ecological perspective, but the
problem is how to separate the conceptual from perceptual.
A recently collected behavioural data of Noads and Andrews using naturalistic paradigm has shown that conceptual information helps in recognition of faces after a delay period.
In this paradigm, there are two groups of participants. One group watches a movie in its original order and the other watches a scrambled version of the movie. The idea is that the Original group will be able to construct a narrative where as the
scramble group will not be able to. After watching the movie, subjects perform a face recognition task to identify actors in the movie.
Interestingly, immediately after watching the movie, performance of both the original and scrambled version did not differ indicating that both groups are using perceptual features for face recognition. However, after a delay of 4-week, the original group performs better than scrambled indicating use of conceptual knowledge in face recognition after delay. There has yet a study investigating the brain mechanisms behind this.
In this current we will use MVPA and ISC to identify the brain network for conceptual information representation and how the perceptual and conceptual network interacts using dynamic causal modelling.
- Are you using within or between subject?
It is a mixed design between subject (original and scrambled) and within subject as both groups watching the movie immediately and after 4 week delay.
- What is the practical applications of your PhD project? - (7)
The practical applications of the PhD project on face recognition has major practical applications as
- The ability to recognize faces is fundamental to our social and emotional development.
- Therefore, understanding face recognition in humans is valuable in the context of mental health, as difficulties in recognizing faces can be indicative of certain neurological or psychological conditions.
The findings may also have relevance to face recognition technology.
Efficient and accurate face recognition systems can aid in identifying and tracking individuals fo public safety and crime prevention.
So, understanding how humans recognize faces can have applications in forensic science, aiding in the identification of individuals from facial features in criminal investigations or missing persons cases.
- How many participants are you expected to recruit?
Recruit participants from local population and given sensitivity analyses from similar studies, we estimate that we will need 20-25 participants per condition
- Why is this program of research doing in PhD necessary and why the research problem identified needs addressing? - (4)
I believe the research that will be conducted in the PhD is necessary as it will advance the field of face recognition.
Existing neuroimaging research on face recognition presents faces in controlled experimental settings and focusses mainly on the importance of perceptual experience.
This gap limits the understanding of the cognitive process of familiar face recognition.
Using natural-viewing conditions to investigate the role of conceptual knowledge in face recognition overcomes these limitations as well as advancing its theoretical frameworks.
- Why is recognising faces so important? - (2)
The recognition of familiar faces is fundamental for social interactions.
For example, recognizing whether a face is someone you know or a stranger dictates how you are going to interact with them.
- What are the differences between familiar and unfamiliar faces?
There is a difference between familiar and unfamiliar faces as they require less effort in recognition despite their changes in appearance are detected faster are processed more automatically and can held in working memory more accurately
- What are some of the behavioural methodologies showing differences between familiar vs unfamiliar faces? - e.g., Gobbini study showing familiar faces are detected much faster than unfamiliar faces - (4)
o In an experiment doing continuous flash suppression (CFS) task, participants viewed pairs of rapidly alternating images one containing familiar/unfamiliar face and other a house, one image in each pair rendered invisible through CFS making it unconscious
o Task: Participants reported which image (face or house) they “felt” present, even though they couldn’t consciously see it.
o Finding: Participants were significantly faster at detecting the invisible familiar face compared to the invisible unfamiliar face. This suggests that familiar faces can be processed preconsciously, influencing early stages of visual perception.
o Prioritize detection of personally familiar faces even without conscious awareness
- What are the theoretical models behind familiar and unfamiliar face recognition? - (3)
Models of face processing suggest that image-invariant representations of familiar faces are constructed and stored over time (Bruce and Young, 1986)
These representations then act as a template to which an incoming face image is matched.
With repeated exposure of face, template of familiar face becomes refined and specific containing consistent facial features leading faster and accurate recognition
- What is conceptual information of a face?
The conceptual information refers to person-specific details such as what is someone’s name, occupation, what are they like as a person, their personality traits are they introverted or extroverted.
