Biomedical subjects

Anna Stone

Publications and source records attributed to Anna Stone.

7 recordsLinked to original sources

PubMed2006

The categorical structure of knowledge for famous people (and a novel application of Centre-Surround theory).

Knowledge of familiar people is essential to guide social interaction, yet there is uncertainty about whether semantic knowledge for people is stored in a categorical structure as for objects. Four priming experiments using hard-to-perceive primes investigated whether occupation forms a category connecting famous persons in semantic memory. Primes were famous faces exposed for 17ms with masking, resulting in severely restricted awareness and thus precluding expectancy-based priming effects. Targets were consciously perceptible famous faces (Experiments 1-3), famous names (Experiment 3), or occupations (Experiment 4) representing either the same or different occupation to the prime. Significant priming demonstrated the operation of automatic processes, including spreading activation, among persons sharing a common occupation; this supports the categorical view. The direction of priming (faster/slower responses to same-occupation than different-occupation targets) was dependent on prime-target stimulus onset asynchrony (Experiments 1-3) and type of target (Experiment 4). This pattern of results is attributed to the Centre-Surround mechanism proposed by Carr and Dagenbach [Carr, T. H., & Dagenbach, D. (1990). Semantic priming and repetition priming from masked words: evidence for a centre-surround attentional mechanism in perceptual recognition. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory and Cognition, 16, 341-350]. These results support (a) the categorical structure of semantic knowledge for famous people and (b) the application of the Centre-Surround mechanism to the domain of person recognition.

Adolescent↗

PubMed2006

A "neglected part of the curriculum" or "of limited use"? Views on genetics training by nongenetics medical trainees and implications for delivery.

PURPOSE: Although the importance of genetics education for health care professionals is increasingly recognized worldwide, little is known about the needs and views of nongenetics postgraduate medical trainees. METHODS: Data on the views of 143 learners from four specialties (family practice, neurology, cardiology, and dermatology) in two regions in England (West Midlands and South Western) were collected using focus groups, questionnaires, and interviews. RESULTS: Low levels of genetics training were reported by both trainee family practitioners and trainee hospital consultant specialists. Responses to attitude statements indicate that the majority of trainee family practitioners believed genetics was important but thought that they were underprepared in this area. Focus groups with specialty trainees revealed general consensus that there was not enough formal postgraduate genetics training, although some cardiologists disagreed and trainees in all three specialties thought that the existing curriculum was overcrowded. Trainees stressed the importance of tailoring genetics education to be directly relevant to their daily practice. Trainee family practitioners prioritized topics related to the identification and referral of patients, and the subsequent implication of results. In contrast, specialty trainees prioritized topics related to the genetics and management of particular diseases. CONCLUSION: There is still work to be done before trainees in nongenetics specialties recognize how genetics can be relevant to their practice. Involvement of specialty trainers in the development and delivery of genetics education may help to address this issue.

Attitude of Health Personnel↗

PubMed2005

Accuracy of familiarity decisions to famous faces perceived without awareness depends on attitude to the target person and on response latency.

Stone and Valentine (2004) presented masked 17 ms faces in simultaneous pairs of one famous and one unfamiliar face. Accuracy in selecting the famous face was higher when the famous person was regarded as "good" or liked than when regarded as "evil" or disliked. Experiment 1 attempted to replicate this phenomenon, but produced a different pattern of results. Experiment 2 investigated alternative explanations and found evidence supporting only the effect of response latency: responses made soon after stimulus onset were more accurate to liked than to disliked faces, whereas responses made after a longer delay were equally accurate to disliked faces. It appears that the effect of negative valence was corrected within the space of a few hundred milliseconds. Experiment 3, using an affective priming paradigm, supported the concept that an early-arising effect of valence is corrected if it is misleading to the directed task.

Adolescent↗

PubMed2005

Strength of visual percept generated by famous faces perceived without awareness: effects of affective valence, response latency, and visual field.

Participants who were unable to detect familiarity from masked 17 ms faces (Stone and Valentine, 2004 and Stone and Valentine, in press-b) did report a vague, partial visual percept. Two experiments investigated the relative strength of the visual percept generated by famous and unfamiliar faces, using masked 17 ms exposure. Each trial presented simultaneously a famous and an unfamiliar face, one face in LVF and the other in RVF. In one task, participants responded according to which of the faces generated the stronger visual percept, and in the other task, they attempted an explicit familiarity decision. The relative strength of the visual percept of the famous face compared to the unfamiliar face was moderated by response latency and participants' attitude towards the famous person. There was also an interaction of visual field with response latency, suggesting that the right hemisphere can generate a visual percept differentiating famous from unfamiliar faces more rapidly than the left hemisphere. Participants were at chance in the explicit familiarity decision, confirming the absence of awareness of facial familiarity.

Adult↗

PubMed2004

Better the devil you know? Nonconscious processing of identity and affect of famous faces.

The nonconscious recognition of facial identity was investigated in two experiments featuring brief (17-msec) masked stimulus presentation to prevent conscious recognition. Faces were presented in simultaneous pairs of one famous face and one unfamiliar face, and participants attempted to select the famous face. Subsequently, participants rated the famous persons as "good" or "evil" (Experiment 1) or liked or disliked (Experiment 2). In Experiments 1 and 2, responses were less accurate to faces of persons rated evil/disliked than to faces of persons rated good/liked, and faces of persons rated evil/disliked were selected significantly below chance. Experiment 2 showed the effect in a within-items analysis: A famous face was selected less often by participants who disliked the person than by participants who liked the person, and the former were selected below chance accuracy. The within-items analysis rules out possible confounding factors based on variations in physical characteristics of the stimulus faces and confirms that the effects are due to participants' attitudes toward the famous persons. The results suggest that facial identity is recognized preconsciously, and that responses may be based on affect rather than familiarity.

Adult↗

PubMed2003

Perspectives on prosopagnosia and models of face recognition.

The two papers by Bobes et al. (2003, this issue) and by Sperber and Spinnler (2003, this issue) add to the large body of literature demonstrating covert face recognition in prosopagnosia. This viewpoint will offer some perspectives on this interesting phenomenon. First, a re-analysis of the empirical literature will indicate an important misconception concerning the preserved abilities of prosopagnosics. The second section will briefly assess the contribution of Bobes et al. (2003, this issue) and Sperber and Spinnler (2003, this issue) to the debate about the locus, in cognitive terms, of the underlying causal deficit in prosopagnosia with covert face recognition. Both papers make reference to the two main models seeking to explain this phenomenon: the model proposed by Burton and colleagues (Burton et al., 1991; Burton and Young, 1999; Young and Burton, 1999) and that proposed by Farah and colleagues (Farah et al., 1993; O'Reilly and Farah, 1999). Finally, an observation will be offered concerning representations of faces in the Burton et al. (1991) model.

Face↗

PubMed2002

Ms not Dr.

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Humans↗