Essay On Facial Recognition

Everyday we encounter new and familiar faces. We are able to distinguish our mother’s face from a stranger’s face due to the facial recognition processes that we have stored in our brains. Facial recognition is one of the many processes of object-recognition. Many of us are not aware of the brain’s role in facial recognition because it is a process that we are not consciously doing. Face recognition differs from object recognition in a few ways. That is why those who suffer from prosopagnosia are still able to recognize and distinguish everyday objects like a fork from a spoon. An idea proposed by Diamond and Carey states that in order to recognize objects we need first-order relational information. First-order relational information is information about the

Second-order relational information involves comparing the first-order analysis to facial features of a “typical” or “average face.” Therefore, because second-order relational information involves the aspect of comparison, it is heavily influenced by experience. The idea of the “typical” or “average face” is built up through out our lifetime and affected by our own experiences (p.122). Once again, this idea seems like a similar concept known as top-down processing which is also used in object recognition. Top-down processing is also influenced by our experience and is a faster way of recognizing objects compared to bottom-up processing. Another unique characteristic of facial recognition is that it is processed holistically. This was proven by the fact that when a face is inverted it negatively affects our ability to effectively recognize the face (p.122). For us to be able to recognize a face we must be able to see it in its original and whole pattern, which would be an upright position. This is not the case with object recognition, we are able to turn an object upside and still be able to recognize