RUI: Collaborative Research on the Neural Basis of Perceptual Learning and Expertise

Oberlin College, Oberlin OH

Investigators

Abstract

The goal of the research is to investigate a neural mechanism linking the processes of expert object recognition and face recognition. Previous research using event-related potentials (ERPs) have shown that an enhanced negative potential (N1) is elicited when participants view faces relative to non-face stimuli. An open question is whether the enhanced N1 is attributale to a unique structural property associated with faces or to a special cognitive operation used in face processing. One explanation is that the enhanced N1 reveals a specialized perceptual process that is reserved for the recognition of ecologically imprtant objects, such as faces. Preliminary data suggest that the enhnced N1 reflects a relatively early visual process that is rectuited in everyday face recognition, but is also employed in more specialized forms of expert object recognition, such as bird watching. The experiments in the current project explore the behvioral and neuro-physiological bases of object expertise as evidenced by real-world experts and normal adults when recognizing faces. These experiments will focus on questions related to the acquisition of expertise by recording ERPs of participants as they undergo extensive training in the visual recognition of articicial stimuli or birds. By testing its sensitivity to orientation, exposure duration, lateral presentation and typicality effects, the functional properties of the enhanced N1 will be examined in a series of follow-up experiments. Studying the behavioral and neurological parallels between expert object recognition and everyday face recognition provides a method for developing a general framework of object expertise.