Familiarity with faces can greatly affect how we recognize them. This is because our brains store faces in a sort of mental "face space. " When we see a face often, it changes how we see it and how we compare it to other faces. But how exactly does this happen?  Researchers looked into this by conducting three different studies.

In the first study, participants were shown pairs of celebrity photos. They had to judge if the photos were of the same person or not. The results showed that the more familiar a person's face was, the more likely the participant was to think two photos were of the same person. However, this also made them less likely to see two different people as similar.  This is interesting because it shows that familiarity can make us better at recognizing faces, but it can also make us worse at telling faces apart.

The second study wanted to see if this effect happened with new faces too. Participants watched short videos of new faces and then judged pairs of photos. The results were similar to the first study. Familiarity increased the perceived similarity of the same person's photos, but decreased it for different people's photos.  This suggests that our brains adjust how we see faces based on how well we know them.

The third study used a computer model to see if these effects could be replicated. The model was trained with thousands of photos of different people. Then, it was shown new faces and had to judge their similarity. The results matched the human studies. This shows that the effects of familiarity on face recognition might be a general rule, not just something that happens in our brains.

The key takeaway is that familiarity changes how we see faces. It makes us better at recognizing familiar faces, but it can also make us worse at telling similar faces apart. This is important to keep in mind, especially in situations where face recognition is crucial, like in security or law enforcement.  It's also a reminder that our brains are always learning and adapting, even in ways we might not expect.

FACE FAMILIARITY AND SIMILARITY

How Learning Changes How We See Faces

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