Team Effectiveness

Face Recognition Paper

Shantel Gilbert

PSYCH/560

January 14, 2013

Dr. Julie Bruno

As stated in (Rakover & Cahlon (2001), face recognition can develop slowly throughout an individual’s life. Recognizing a face can be a difficult for the individual and also for the brain system that processes. Recognizing an individual’s face can be complex and difficult at times. Face recognition also includes looking at emotional expressions of an individual and then, taking that information and processing it in one’s memory. This process is complicated because the facial recognition process takes that emotional expression and processes the emotions and its content. In this paper, using the research obtained from a literature review, the processes associated with face recognition and their roles or concepts will be explained, as well as identification and classification. It will analyze the encoding and retrieval processes involved with long-term memory and how it affects face recognition. This paper will also discuss two possible errors that can occur with face recognition.

Face Recognition, Identification, & Classification

In order for an individual to recognize a face, they must analyze the person's facial features and the relationship between those features such as emotions (Diamond & Cary, 1986). According to Diamond and Carey, information about the characteristics of the face and how those characteristics are related to one another is needed for an individual recognize the face. This process is called, first-order relational information (Diamond & Cary, 1986). Knowing that the eyes are above the nose is usually not enough in first-order relational information (Diamond & Cary, 1986). To recognize faces second-order relational information is needed; this process involves a comparison to the first-order analysis to what an average face looks like (Diamond & Cary, 1986). This ability to understand what an average face looks like...