The effect of tDCS on recognition depends on stimulus generalization: Neuro-stimulation can predictably enhance or reduce the face inversion effect
Civile, C; Cooke, A; Liu, X; et al.McLaren, R; Elchlepp, H; Lavric, A; Milton, F; McLaren, I
Date: 28 October 2019
Article
Journal
Journal of Experimental Psychology: Animal Learning and Cognition
Publisher
American Psychological Association
Publisher DOI
Abstract
This paper reports results from three experiments that investigate how a particular neurostimulation procedure is able, in certain circumstances, to selectively increase the face inversion
effect by enhancing recognition for upright faces, and argues that these effects can be understood
in terms of the MKM theory of stimulus ...
This paper reports results from three experiments that investigate how a particular neurostimulation procedure is able, in certain circumstances, to selectively increase the face inversion
effect by enhancing recognition for upright faces, and argues that these effects can be understood
in terms of the MKM theory of stimulus representation. We demonstrate how a specific
transcranial Direct Current Stimulation (tDCS) methodology can improve performance in
circumstances where error-based salience modulation is making face recognition harder. The
three experiments used an old/new recognition task involving sets of normal vs Thatcherised
faces. The main characteristic of Thatcherised faces is that the eyes and the mouth are upside
down, thus emphasizing features that tend to be common to other Thatcherised faces and so
leading to stronger generalization making recognition worse. Experiment 1 combined a
behavioural and ERP study looking at the N170 peak component, which helped us to calibrate
the set of face stimuli needed for subsequent experiments. In Experiment 2 we used our tDCS
procedure (between-subjects and double-blind) in an attempt to reduce the negative effects
induced by error-based modulation of salience on recognition of upright Thatcherised faces.
Results largely confirmed our predictions. In addition, they showed a significant improvement on
recognition performance for upright normal faces. Experiment 3 provides the first direct
evidence in a single study that the same tDCS procedure is able to both enhance performance
when normal faces are presented with Thatcherised faces, and to reduce performance when
normal faces are presented with other normal faces (i.e. male vs female faces). We interpret our
results by analyzing how salience modulation influences generalization between similar
categories of stimuli.
Psychology - old structure
Collections of Former Colleges
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