Think! Evidence

Towards a unified account of face (and maybe object) processing

Show simple item record

dc.contributor Tomaso A. Poggio.
dc.contributor Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Dept. of Brain and Cognitive Sciences.
dc.contributor Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Dept. of Brain and Cognitive Sciences.
dc.creator Tan, Cheston Y.-C. (Cheston Yin-Chet)
dc.date 2012-10-10T14:53:39Z
dc.date 2012-10-10T14:53:39Z
dc.date 2012
dc.date 2012
dc.identifier http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/73696
dc.identifier 810143379
dc.description Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, 2012.
dc.description This electronic version was submitted by the student author. The certified thesis is available in the Institute Archives and Special Collections.
dc.description Cataloged from student-submitted PDF version of thesis.
dc.description Includes bibliographical references (p. 191-197).
dc.description Faces are an important class of visual stimuli, and are thought to be processed differently from objects by the human visual system. Going beyond the false dichotomy of same versus different processing, it is more important to understand how exactly faces are processed similarly or differently from objects. However, even by itself, face processing is poorly understood. Various aspects of face processing, such as holistic, configural, and face-space processing, are investigated in relative isolation, and the relationships between these are unclear. Furthermore, face processing is characteristically affected by various stimulus transformations such as inversion, contrast reversal and spatial frequency filtering, but how or why is unclear. Most importantly, we do not understand even the basic mechanisms of face processing. We hypothesize that what makes face processing distinctive is the existence of large, coarse face templates. We test our hypothesis by modifying an existing model of object processing to utilize such templates, and find that our model can account for many face-related phenomena. Using small, fine face templates as a control, we find that our model displays object-like processing characteristics instead. Overall, we believe that we may have made the first steps towards achieving a unified account of face processing. In addition, results from our control suggest that face and object processing share fundamental computational mechanisms. Coupled with recent advances in brain recording techniques, our results mean that face recognition could form the "tip of the spear" for attacking and solving the problem of visual recognition.
dc.description by Cheston Y.-C. Tan.
dc.description Ph.D.
dc.format 197 p.
dc.format application/pdf
dc.language eng
dc.publisher Massachusetts Institute of Technology
dc.rights M.I.T. theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed from this source for any purpose, but reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission. See provided URL for inquiries about permission.
dc.rights http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582
dc.subject Brain and Cognitive Sciences.
dc.title Towards a unified account of face (and maybe object) processing
dc.type Thesis


Files in this item

Files Size Format View
810143379-MIT.pdf 10.33Mb application/pdf View/Open

Files in this item

Files Size Format View
810143379-MIT.pdf 10.33Mb application/pdf View/Open

Files in this item

Files Size Format View
810143379-MIT.pdf 10.33Mb application/pdf View/Open

This item appears in the following Collection(s)

Show simple item record

Search Think! Evidence


Browse

My Account