Biomedical subjects

Andrea R Kilgour

Publications and source records attributed to Andrea R Kilgour.

6 recordsLinked to original sources

PubMed2006

The influence of familiarity on brain activation during haptic exploration of 3-D facemasks.

Little is known about the neural substrates that underlie difficult haptic discrimination of 3-D within-class object stimuli. Recent work [A.R. Kilgour, R. Kitada, P. Servos, T.W. James, S.J. Lederman, Haptic face identification activates ventral occipital and temporal areas: an fMRI study, Brain Cogn. (in press)] suggests that the left fusiform gyrus may contribute to the identification of facemasks that are haptically explored in the absence of vision. Here, we extend this line of research to investigate the influence of familiarity. Subjects were trained extensively to individuate a set of facemasks in the absence of vision using only haptic exploration. Brain activation was then measured using fMRI while subjects performed a haptic face recognition task on familiar and unfamiliar facemasks. A group analysis contrasting familiar and unfamiliar facemasks found that the left fusiform gyrus produced greater activation with familiar facemasks.

Adult↗

PubMed2006

A haptic face-inversion effect.

We examined whether a face-inversion effect occurs when participants explore faces by touch. We used a haptic version of the inversion paradigm with 3-D clay facemasks and non-face control objects (teapots) moulded from real objects. Young, neurologically intact, blindfolded participants performed a temporally unconstrained haptic same/different task in each of four stimulus conditions: upright facemasks, inverted facemasks, upright teapots, and inverted teapots. There was a significant inversion effect for faces in terms of accuracy, but none for teapots. The results are considered in terms of the consequences of sequential manual exploration for haptic face processing.

Adult↗

PubMed2005

Haptic face identification activates ventral occipital and temporal areas: an fMRI study.

Many studies in visual face recognition have supported a special role for the right fusiform gyrus. Despite the fact that faces can also be recognized haptically, little is known about the neural correlates of haptic face recognition. In the current fMRI study, neurologically intact participants were intensively trained to identify specific facemasks (molded from live faces) and specific control objects. When these stimuli were presented in the scanner, facemasks activated left fusiform and right hippocampal/parahippocampal areas (and other regions) more than control objects, whereas the latter produced no activity greater than the facemasks. We conclude that these ventral occipital and temporal areas may play an important role in the haptic identification of faces at the subordinate level. We further speculate that left fusiform gyrus may be recruited more for facemasks than for control objects because of the increased need for sequential processing by the haptic system.

Adult↗

PubMed2004

Haptic face recognition and prosopagnosia.

Cases of cross-modal influence have been observed since the beginning of psychological science. Yet some abilities like face recognition are traditionally only investigated in the visual domain. People with normal visual face-recognition capacities identify inverted faces more poorly than upright faces. An abnormal pattern of performance with inverted faces by prosopagnosic individuals is characteristically interpreted as evidence for a deficit in configural processing essential for normal face recognition. We investigated whether such problems are unique to vision by examining face processing by hand in a prosopagnosic individual. We used the haptic equivalent of the visual-inversion paradigm to investigate haptic face recognition. If face processing is specific to vision, our participant should not show difficulty processing faces haptically and should perform with the same ease as normal controls. Instead, we show that a prosopagnosic individual cannot haptically recognize faces. Moreover, he shows similar abnormal inversion effects by hand and eye. These results suggest that face-processing deficits can be found across different input modalities. Our findings also extend the notion of configural processing to haptic face and object recognition.

Discrimination, Psychological↗

PubMed2002

Face recognition by hand.

We investigated participants' ability to identify and represent faces by hand. In Experiment 1, participants proved surprisingly capable of identifying unfamiliar live human faces using only their sense of touch. To evaluate the contribution of geometric and material information more directly, we biased participants toward encoding faces more in terms of geometric than material properties, by varying the exploration condition. When participants explored the faces both visually and tactually, identification accuracy did not improve relative to touch alone. When participants explored masks of the faces, thereby eliminating material cues, matching accuracy declined substantially relative to tactual identification of live faces. In Experiment 2, we explored intersensory transfer of face information between vision and touch. The findings are discussed in terms of their relevance to haptic object processing and to the face-processing literature in general.

Adolescent↗

PubMed2000

Conflicts and missed signals in psychoanalysis, behaviorism, and Gestalt psychology.

At the turn of the 20th century, European psychologists found themselves in conflict situations with respect to the role that private mental states should play in a scientific psychology. Out of this conflict arose 3 of the best-known schools of the 20th century: psychoanalysis, behaviorism, and Gestalt psychology. Each of these schools is discussed with respect to two characteristics. First, the authors discuss the attitude of each school on the meaning of the word unconscious as it was understood around 1900. Second, the authors discuss the influence of each school on the reception accorded to books written around 1900 espousing viewpoints that did not cohere with the school's beliefs. Such books may be considered "missed signals" in the history of psychology. "Hits" associated with each school are also highlighted.

Behaviorism↗