Are you in or are you out? The importance of group saliency in own-group biases in face recognition

Previous research has demonstrated several own-group biases (OGBs) in face recognition, but why they occur is unclear. Social–cognitive accounts suggest they stem from differential attention and facial processing, following the categorisation of a face as belonging to an “in” or “out” group. Three studies explored whether OGBs can be produced by mere categorisation at encoding and investigated the role of in-group membership saliency on face recognition. Participants saw 40 facial images fictionally grouped according to in-/out-group status. Studies 1 and 2 used university membership as the grouping variable and found no evidence of an OGB, and no relationship between OGB magnitude and salience of group membership. Study 3 used the same design as Study 2, but with a highly salient group characteristic: participants’ stance on the U.K. Referendum (i.e., whether they were “Leave” or “Remain” supporters). In this case, an asymmetrical OGB was found, with only Remain voters demonstrating an OGB. Furthermore, a relationship between OGB magnitude and attitude toward the Referendum result was found. Overall, our results suggest that social categorisation and membership saliency alone may not be enough to moderate in- and out-group face recognition. However, when sufficiently polarised groups are used as in-/out-group categories, OGBs may occur

Disease severity accounts for minimal variance of quality of life in people with dementia and their carers: analyses of cross-sectional data from the MODEM study

Background Due to the progressive nature of dementia, it is important to understand links between disease severity and health-related outcomes. The aim of this study is to explore the relationship between disease severity and the quality of life (QoL) of people with dementia and their family carers using a number of disease-specific and generic measures. Methods In the MODEM cohort study, three-hundred and seven people with clinically diagnosed dementia and their carers were recruited on a quota basis to provide equal numbers of people with mild (standardised Mini-Mental State Examination (sMMSE), n = 110), moderate (sMMSE 10–19, n = 100), and severe (sMMSE 0–9, n = 97) cognitive impairment. A series of multiple regression models were created to understand the associations between dementia severity and the QoL of people with dementia and the QoL of their carers. QoL was measured using self- (DEMQOL, EQ-5D, CASP-19) and proxy-reports (DEMQOL-Proxy, EQ-5D) of disease-specific and generic QoL of the person with dementia. Carer generic QoL was measured by self-report (EQ-5D, SF-12). Results Disease severity, as measured by the sMMSE, was not significantly associated with the QoL of the person with dementia or the carer (p > 0.05), even after controlling for potential confounding variables for self-reported instruments. Proxy measures (rated by the carer) differed systematically in that there were small, but statistically significant proportions of the variance of QoL was explained by severity of cognitive impairment in multiple adjusted models. We also found little in the way of statistically significant relationships between the QoL of people with dementia and that of their carers except between DEMQOL-Proxy scores and the carer EQ-5D scores and carer SF-12 mental sub-scores. Conclusions The data generated supports the somewhat counterintuitive argument that severity of cognitive impairment (and therefore severity of dementia) is not associated with lower QoL for the person with dementia when self-report measures are used. However, in absolute terms, as judged by the variance in the multivariate models, it is clear that the contribution of dementia severity to the QoL of people with dementia is minimal whatever the measurement used, be it self- or proxy-rated, or disease-specific or generic

Spontaneous Gender Categorization in Masking and Priming Studies: Key for Distinguishing Jane from John Doe but Not Madonna from Sinatra

Facial recognition is key to social interaction, however with unfamiliar faces only generic information, in the form of facial stereotypes such as gender and age is available. Therefore is generic information more prominent in unfamiliar versus familiar face processing? In order to address the question we tapped into two relatively disparate stages of face processing. At the early stages of encoding, we employed perceptual masking to reveal that only perception of unfamiliar face targets is affected by the gender of the facial masks. At the semantic end; using a priming paradigm, we found that while to-be-ignored unfamiliar faces prime lexical decisions to gender congruent stereotypic words, familiar faces do not. Our findings indicate that gender is a more salient dimension in unfamiliar relative to familiar face processing, both in early perceptual stages as well as later semantic stages of person construal

Revisiting a social-cognitive explanation of own-group biases in face recognition

Previous research has found that participants are better at recognising faces of their own race compared to those of other races (see Meissner & Brigham, 2001). A similar own-group advantage can be seen with faces of different age groups (Anastasi & Rhodes, 2012). However, exactly why these own-group biases occur is unclear. Two competing theories have been put forward. While the first suggests it is due to differential experience with own- and other- group faces, and increased perceptual expertise for own-group faces; the second demands no experiential component. In this case the bias is thought to be the bought about through the mere act of categorising a face as either an in- or out-group member (the social-cognitive account). Based on previous work by Bernstein et al (2007), two experiments explored whether own-group biases can be brought about by this categorisation process alone. In both cases, participants were shown 40 facial images and asked to group them as either in- or out-group members at encoding. Perceptual expertise for all faces was kept constant. Participants’ recognition for those faces was then tested, and accuracy and reaction times recorded. Results are discussed in terms of the different theories of own-group biases

Carer mentoring: A mixed methods investigation of a carer mentoring service.

Carer mentoring services can be a valuable form of carer support that falls somewhere between formal and informal support. Adopting mixed methods permitted greater understanding of how mentoring may benefit carers and has implications for mentor recruitment and training. The fact that mentoring can be provided by volunteer mentors makes it an attractive, potentially cost-effective means of supporting carers

Automatic Gender Categorization is a Function of Familiarity

Automatic facial categorization along dimensions such as familiarity, gender, race, expression and age facilitates social exchange. Here we focus on familiarity and gender in order to gauge their independence. Previous experiments are equivocal as to whether these dimensions are processed independently or not (Bruce and Young, 1986; Goshen-Gottstein and Ganel, 2000). If familiarity and gender were independent then facilitation or inhibition of one should not affect future performance on the other. Famous and unfamiliar faces were presented in a series of go no-go tasks. External features were removed ensuring that both famousness and gender decisions were based on the internal features of a face. Faces were presented in paired blocks such that a gender block (e.g., go male, no-go female) was followed by a familiarity block (e.g., go famous, no-go unfamiliar) or vice versa. The first block of each pair consisted of five famous males, five famous females, five unfamiliar males, and five unfamiliar females (each presented twice) in a random order. The second block consisted of the previously seen faces from the first block (old) with an additional 20 new faces (five of each type) so that every block contained 20 go and 20 no-go stimuli. An experimental session consisted of 16 counterbalanced block pairs. Results indicate that only unfamiliar faces solicit automatic gender categorization. When observers made a no-go decision on unfamiliar faces based on familiarity they were subsequently slower to determine the gender of those faces compared to previously unseen faces. However, if they made a no-go decision on unfamiliar faces based on gender, subsequently they were faster to determine the unfamiliarity of those faces relative to previously unseen faces. This interaction was not found for famous faces. Since in the present studies familiarity and famousness were correlated, at this juncture it is not clear whether the results will hold for familiar but not famous individuals. We conclude automatic gender categorization is part and parcel of the `identity' of 44 unfamiliar faces. Familiarity results in the differentiation of identity from gender. In others words, unfamiliar individuals are automatically coded as male or female whereas Madonna is not

Experiment 1 trial sequence.

<p>Participants were required to decide if the two targets were the same face or not.</p