Browsing by Author "Koca, Yaren"

Now showing 1 - 3 of 3

Open Access
Anchoring has little effect when forming first impressions of facial attractiveness
(SAGE Publications, 2024-09-25) Kramer, Robin S.; Koca, Yaren; Mireku, Michael O.; Oriet, Chris
First impressions based on facial appearance affect our behaviour towards others. Since the same face will appear different across images, over time, and so on, our impressions may not be equally weighted across exposures but are instead disproportionately influenced by earlier or later instances. Here, we followed up on previous work which identified an anchoring effect, whereby higher attractiveness ratings were given to a person after viewing naturally varying images of their face presented in descending (high-to-low), rather than ascending (low-to-high), order of attractiveness of these images. In Experiment 1 ( n = 301), we compared these ‘descending’ and ‘ascending’ conditions for unfamiliar identities by presenting six-image sequences. Although we found higher attractiveness ratings for the ‘descending’ condition, this small effect equated to only 0.22 points on a 1–7 response scale. In Experiment 2 ( n = 307), we presented these six-image sequences in a random order and found no difference in attractiveness ratings given to these randomly ordered sequences when compared with those resulting from both our ‘descending’ and ‘ascending’ conditions. Further, we failed to detect an influence of the earlier images in these random sequences on attractiveness ratings. Taken together, we found no compelling evidence that anchoring could have an effect on real-world impression formation.
Open Access
From Pictures to the People in Them: Averaging Within-Person Variability Leads to Face Familiarization
(SAGE Publications, 2022-12-05) Koca, Yaren; Oriet, Chris
Familiar faces can be confidently recognized despite sometimes radical changes in their appearance. Exposure to within-person variability—differences in facial characteristics over successive encounters—contributes to face familiarization. Research also suggests that viewers create mental averages of the different views of faces they encounter while learning them. Averaging over within-person variability is thus a promising mechanism for face familiarization. In Experiment 1, 153 Canadian undergraduates (88 female; age: M = 21 years, SD = 5.24) learned six target identities from eight different photos of each target interspersed among 32 distractor identities. Face-matching accuracy improved similarly irrespective of awareness of the target’s identity, confirming that target faces presented among distractors can be learned incidentally. In Experiment 2, 170 Canadian undergraduates (125 female; age: M = 22.6 years, SD = 6.02) were tested using a novel indirect measure of learning. The results show that viewers update a mental average of a person’s face as it becomes learned. Our findings are the first to show how averaging within-person variability over time leads to face familiarization.
Open Access
Statistical Summary Representations in Identity Learning: Exemplar-Independent Incidental Recognition
(Faculty of Graduate Studies and Research, University of Regina, 2021-08) Koca, Yaren; Oriet, Chris; Loucks, Jeff; Smith, Austen; Kramer, Robin
The literature suggests that ensemble coding (i.e., the ability to represent the gist of sets) may be an underlying mechanism for becoming familiar with newly encountered faces. I tested the plausibility of this suggestion using a new paradigm that involves incidental learning of target identities interspersed among distractors. The participants were trained on unfamiliar targets that were presented among intervening distractors while rating the attractiveness of the faces. The participants were then given a test to measure their familiarity with the targets. The results revealed that recognition of a target’s face was superior when the face was the average of previously encountered exemplars of the target compared to the average of unseen exemplars. However, this effect diminished over time as viewers underwent more training, demonstrating an exemplar-independent recognition that is likely achieved through ensemble coding. The results also revealed that viewers were able to extract and encode properties relevant to identifying the targets among several distractors. This effect was present in viewers that learned the targets incidentally and actively. Taken together, these results suggest that ensemble coding is a viable underlying mechanism for face learning, and faces that are interspersed among distractors can be learned incidentally.