Topical Blog Week #5 (Due Wednesday)

My topic for chapter 4 is face recognition. Face recognition is explained in a blue box in the textbook, but not a lot of details are provided. I am interested in this because as we all know, technology is improving very fast every day; and before we know it, everything will involve face recognition (if not fingerprint or iris recognition): car, phone, house, work place, school… and so on. Any recognizing systems can bring up the issues of privacy, and I would like to know how facial recognition can invade the problems of privacy. I also want to know more about how face recognition work, and thus catch a glimpse of the future.

Face recognition is a technology that identifies a person using a digital image of them. The system measures the overall features of the face, including the distances between every feature presented, before pulling out the matching features from the data base. Matching features from the data base are obtained by initial enrollment, where individuals take several high quality pictures of themselves, from different angles and under different lightnings, with their hair pinned up, as well as pictures of both with glasses and without glasses. Facial movements should be eliminated since too much movement can distort a face, and hence less accurate face recognition systems. The enrollment does not have to be a still image of an individual; it can also be a moving, behavioral sample to be stored in the database of the facial recognition systems. Many more enrollments should be done as time pass by, since facial features change (hair grows longer or hair style change, or someone decides to grow a full beard), to ensure the most accurate possible analysis to be done.

After the initial facial or behavioral enrollment, the computer analyzes the features, and comes up with some measurements of the features; such as the width of the eyes, the distance between eye brows and the jaws, the length of the face… etc. There is also another new trend emerging, analysis of skin texture, where the computer takes into account of the condition of the skin, under different lightning as well as the spots and lines on the face. This information is stored until a surveillance camera (say, in a lobby of a big business company) captures an image of someone walking into the building. The computer will then run through all the data stored until a match comes up. When the new sample is matched with the enrollment sample, the computer will also pulls up the information regarding the visitor. The receptionist will recognize the visitor and greet her in an appropriate manner, or even direct her to the office before any question is being asked.

To match up the data with the new sample captured, hard ware and software are both required. Hard ware such as surveillance camera and computer are definitely needed, as well as software to store all the data, calculate measurements, process and analyze facial features, and matching up the new sample. It is best if the hardware and software are the same models. It is also recommended that the better the resolution of the camera is, the more accurate analysis will be done on the software. This is one downside of the face cognition systems: pricier tools.

This technology can be very useful and beneficial because unlike any other biometric recognition, an individual does not have to precisely place his fingers on a scanner, or hold his eyes still for an image to be captured. People do not have to stop for the camera; the camera can follow them and pull out the information without those people even being aware of the system. This can also be a way to prevent identity thief. For other biometric recognition, villain can cut off victim’s hand for fingerprint recognition, or take out the victim’s eyes for iris recognition. It is very hard to not notice some body walking into a business building with a chopped off head in their hand.

There are also some downsides regarding face recognition systems. Privacy issues can emerge, as people may not noticed that before they even introduce themselves, some one behind the computers already know who they are as well as their background information. Also, there are many other factors that can contribute to inaccurate recognition, such as lightning, accessories (sun glasses, hats… etc.), hair change, beard change, and facial expressions (this is why in some countries it is required people to keep a neutral face for their ID photos).

http://www.ex-sight.com/technology.htm

Not too much detailed information is provided on this website, but it gave me a good start. I always find it easier to start with website containing basic knowledge of one topic before moving onto another more complicating information.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Facial_recognition_system
A lot of details provided on Wikipedia, as always. I like this website because both benefits and limitations of this topic is discussed.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mdhvRNYX0PI

This video provides a lot details on how enrollment is done, and how it can be used.

1a) State what your topic is.
Template & Prototype matching
1b) Discuss how the topic relates to the chapter.
This topic is relevant to the chapter because in the book our main concern was object recognition. Template and prototype recognition are two very important ways in which we recognize the objects in our environment.
1c) Discuss why you are interested in it.
While reading the chapter I found many of the topics dealing with object recognition to be interesting but template matching and prototype matching theory were the most interesting. The topic interested me because it seems like we have an infinite number of images in a bank that we can recall at a moment’s notice. While I was reading this section I couldn’t help but think of our brain as the smallest but most densely populated fine cabinet of all time.
2) The template matching theory suggests that pattern recognition occurs when a match is made between sensory stimuli and an internal mental image. Template theory also suggests that we recognize a pattern by comparing it with our set of mental templates or mental images. After comparing the pattern we then choose the exact template that most recognizably matches what we observe. Template matching theory can be useful in fields like facial recognition and medical screenings, some systems have even been developed and used to count the number of faces that walk across part of a bridge within a certain amount of time, this technology will be seen more and more because of marketers and advertisers attempting to tailor their product to a specific customer. While these systems are very useful, in order for our perceptual system to use the template theory we would need mental templates for every possible percept of every stimulus we are trying to recognize. Template theories also fail to explain some aspects of the perception of letters. We are able to recognize letters in almost any variation of size, font, and orientation. However, the template theory suggests that we have a mental template for each possible size, font, and orientation for every letter of the alphabet. What is amazing to me is it seems like an impossible task for us to store and retrieve so many templates let alone create new ones but we seem to have a huge number stored in our brain.
Prototype matching theory occurs when a match is made between a perceived pattern and an abstracted mental pattern. Unlike the template matching this theory is not as precise or exact about matching a pattern. The prototype is highly representative of a pattern and it seems to explain perception of shapes. Humans are able to form prototypes even when we have never seen an exemplar that exactly matches the prototype we are perceiving. One examples of the prototype theory are arrays of dots, a triangle, a diamond, an F, an M, and highly simplified line drawings of faces. Prototypes are usually used for witness identifications situations where a well-defined face is created by the police with sketch artists or ID kits. Prototype matching is all around us, the prototype may even serve as the closest representation our mind can conjure only to unlock the memory.

3).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template_matching
This site helped explain template matching a little better and also gave good examples of it in the real world.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prototype_theory
This site was useful in giving more background information about prototype matching as well as a much broader picture of how it is used today and how it will be implemented in the future.
http://www.cse.psu.edu/~rcollins/CSE486/lecture07.pdf
This site is a pdf that gives tons of examples of different template matching. It also goes in depth about how to distinguish differences in images.

1) For this week’s Topical blog I looked at facial recognition. Facial recognition is talked about in our text book but not a whole lot but we often are hearing more and more about it as our technology is improving very fast these days. I was upset to see that the book didn't go into greater detail about facial recognition and how it is actually apart of life and how we could use it more. Any day now we will have to be recognized by our face if not our finger prints or our eye to gain access to any object as we are gaining more technology. Sometimes this could be a good thing because everyone has different features that are not the exact same as another person and so if we are able to have these facial recognitions to get into our programs and other things like electronics then I feel as long as there are no glitches in the programs then we would have more security with having to use our face to get access. I am personally interested in this topic because I have recently went to a lecture and learned a lot about facial recognition and how it can relate to crime cases.

2) Facial recognition is a device that views or video of a person and compares it to one that is in the database. It often compares the structure shape and proportions of the face; the distance between the eyes nose mouth and jaw. With the facial recognition program several pictures are taken of the subject at different angles with different facial expressions. These facial recognition programs used facial thermography to record heat in the face and would often have the subject blink node their head for security purpose.
Often times we can learn a lot about our brains and facial recognition by looking at a caricature of a person related to a real picture of a person. Our brains start to recognize things such as faces just a few hours after birth and how the fusiform gyrus of the frontal lobe is dedicated to facial recognition. All human faces are all built the same way two eyes above a nose that’s above a mouth but each person has features that vary from person to person. So according to scientists our brains are looking for these outlining features to recognize each person not paying particular attention to specific information from each and every person that we come in contact with.

Often times we are seeing people that are criminal suspects that are being shown on surveillance cameras and other camera equipment that often shows a buried image of the suspect. This does not give us the full detail of the suspect as within the pictures they are actually losing facial expression and their specific facial features that each person has won’t be as visible on these cameras. This makes it hard for us to identify the person that is being convicted of the crime to actually be punished because we are losing their facial features that are specific to that person they may look like a similar person from similar human facial characteristics.

I think that this is something that needs to be worked on and needs to be figured out in much deeper research because if we are not able to tell the unique facial features then how are we doing any good by capturing the video if in reality the video could be of someone who is completely different than the person who is being convicted for the crime.

I found out a lot about facial recognition while doing my research, but there are still something’s that are unknown. I feel that this is something that will continue to grow over time and will continue to gain a stronger and more supportive background and research that supports it and by the end of time we will only be recognized by our facial features and not by passwords and other things like this.

http://www.wired.com/magazine/2011/07/ff_caricature/- this web page taught me a lot about how the brain actually perceives information from the faces that we interact with and how our brain recognizes them.

http://findbiometrics.com/solutions/facial-recognition/- was used to gain information on facial recognition program and how it is used to gain facial recognition and how privacy is used to make sure that the recognition of the face is from those that they are actually screening.

http://www.evidencemagazine.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=605&Itemid=160- this web page gave me information about crime scene video and face’s and how most of the time the faces are distorted and you can no longer see all of the persons facial features and this makes it harder to be able to recognize the person that you are trying to show in the video.

1a) State what your topic is.

I did my research this week on the neural activity of object identification.
1b) Discuss how the topic relates to the chapter.

The chapter is all about object identification, but they didn’t get into the neural mechanisms involved.
1c) Discuss why you are interested in it.
I am interested in neuroscience, so this is the neuroscience approach to this week’s chapter.
2)
In my brief research this week I learned about many different things relating to the neural workings of object identification, such as agnosia, the Jennifer Aniston neuron, a computational model of object identification, and some theories about what happens in the brain. Its been known that certain parts of the brain are responsible for the recognition of various stimuli. The fusiform face area (FFA) for example, is responsible for the brain recognizing faces, and the parahippocampal place area (PPA) is responsible for recognizing places. This week I read about a study where a neuroscientist tried to stop the activity of seizures in an epileptic patient by removing the area that was causing him problems. While doing so, he stimulated different areas of the brain to identify what specific section was responsible for the seizures. When he stimulated the fusiform gyrus, the patient claimed that his doctor “turned into somebody else.” Since the doctor stimulated this area responsible for the recognition of faces, the patient could no longer recognize people he was seeing, however his mental representations of people were not believed to be distorted. This is the case of people with visual agnosia. People with visual agnosia cannot recognize people that they see, but they have no problem recognizing their voices, so they may think their mother is an imposter when they see her but have no problem talking to her on the phone.

An interesting thing that I found is that although there is an area in the brain specific to faces, there is a particular neuron in the brain dedicated to Jennifer Aniston. The Jennifer Aniston neuron was accidentally found by researchers while doing brain surgeries on conscious patients. The neuron shows activity while looking at pictures of Jennifer Aniston, or even when just thinking about the actress. The really interesting finding was that this neuron was present in every patient they examined. There are also identifiable neurons for other famous faces such as Halle Berry and Kobe Bryant. Researchers can identify the action of the single neuron involved, but are interested in seeing the activity of the neurons in the surrounding neural neighborhood, as the inputs from these other neurons would be helpful in understanding how the brain identifies things and even stores memories.

In the first chapter of our text, it was noted that computer science is helpful in understanding cognitive psychology, because on some level the brain can be thought of as a computer, and understanding computer functions may help us understand brain functions and vice versa. I read an article about a computer model that simulates neural processes in object recognition. They talked about the difficulties a computer faces that seem to be so easy to us, like interpreting subtle changes in illumination, pose, and other variations, like something obscuring the full view. Initially, the computer only mimicked the brain’s immediate object recognition, but they are now including feedback loops similar to those in higher cognitive centers. This simulated cognition allows for context, so if the computer sees a horse it assumes that it is more likely on the ground than in the sky. The article talked about creating representations for objects for the computer to identify them, and I believe they are talking about a type of eigenface for everything. They also talked about how the computer could ‘learn’ based on their correct identifications. In this learning process, it’s possible that the memories involved in consolidating the information could simulate the Jennifer Aniston neuron, as the computer may save information about the actress in a specific part of it’s memory. Researchers are working hard to construct a complete brain map, and although it’s years away, the hope of it is incredible, and the implications would help our understanding of how the brain works exponentially.

http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2007/surveillance.html
This link contained the information about the computer’s ability for object recognition.
http://www.npr.org/blogs/krulwich/2012/03/30/149685880/neuroscientists-battle-furiously-over-jennifer-aniston
This link contained the information about the Jennifer aniston neuron.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/10/24/facial-recognition-brain-fusiform-gyrus_n_2010192.html
This link talked about a case study involving brain surgery and stimulation of the fusiform gyrus.

1a) For this weeks topical blog I wanted to do a little bit more research on face recognition and how it is used in the real world today.

1b) Face recognition was briefly brought up in the chapter on page 128 in one of the blue boxes. The book touched on how good humans are at remembering hundreds of different faces even though it is a very tough cognitive thing to do. It also mentioned how we are able to do this, in part, by the specialized cells located in the inferotemporal cortex. Next it talked about how computers have been designed to recognize faces by reducing facial images into pixel values and then computing these into Eigenfaces using factor analysis, this information is then stored in a computer’s memory along with information on the person. In a matter of seconds, cameras in public places, can process pictures of your face and identify it as being you.

1c) The book mentions how casinos and other public gathering areas have been using this new technology for face recognition, but I wanted to learn about other places and there reason for using this new technology. This topic is interesting because I can see there being somewhat of a controversy on the topic. In a way it seems like it could be an invasion of people’s privacy, but at the same time it is a good way to protect people and locate criminal suspects.

2) A facial recognition system is a computer application that automatically identifies/verifies a person's face from a digital image or video frame captured by a video source by making comparisons. Typically these systems are used in security and the facial recognition can be compared to other things like fingerprints or eye iris recognition. The technique these systems use is very intricate and involves the use of many different algorithms which identify facial features by picking out identifiable landmarks or features from a persons face. They often analyze the relative position, size, and shape of eyes, nose, cheekbones, and jaw. When they enter these features into their database they are matched with faces of similar features. Recognizing features takes a geometric algorithmic approach, whereas photometrics uses statistics to produce values and eliminate variances. The newest type of facial recognition is 3D and is equipt wiht many sophisticated sensors. This type is said to achieve improved accuracies since it is able to identify the face from a range of angles and because it is not affected by changes in lighting. At the same time though, no one can be sure this technique is 100% accurate because it still struggles identifying faces with drastic expressions.

There are many advantages and disadvantages to using facial recognition. The main advantage is that it can identify individuals among a crowd, without them being aware of the system. Like I said above, however it does have weaknesses too. Although it can detect with some angles it isn’t quite on point when a person is standing at profile view. Also it has troubles detecting faces in different circumstances like poor lighting, sunglasses, long hair, and low resolution images. Also some more disadvantages are that it creates an issue with citizens expressing concerns about their privacy being taken away which in unlawful to their rights as citizens. Facial recognition can be used to identify an individual and also uncover a lot of personal data associated with them (blog posts, social networking profiles, Internet behavior, travel patterns etc.). Facebook is what creates the most uproar because people have so many pictures of themselves on which are labeled with their names so this could potentially be used by the government in syncing facial recognition photographs along with your name.
Facial recognition systems are being used in a variety of different places. One that has been in the news most recently is at the Winter Olympics in Sochi. These systems have been used at the entry point of airports to protect athletes and world leaders since there has been so many threats by terrorist attacks. This system has been keeping watch on all of the people working at the airport and the people passing through. The system they are using there, has been said to be so accurate, that it could distinguish between identical twins. Scientists show no doubt that one day in the future this system will be used in every airport there is. Which although may be an invasion to our privacy, it will speed up the flight process by a lot. They are also thinking about replacing passports with electronic documents that include our fingerprints, facial recognition, and iris scans. One thing that experts say on this subject is that the use in airports may be a little tricky because it could provide a lot of false-positives and innocent people face the risk of being wrongly accused with no easy way to appeal.
There are many other common ways that this system has been used that we may not even think about: facebook auto tagging us in pictures, digital cameras have face recognition and when someones eyes are closed it takes another picture, google have a facial search engine, smart phones having apps where you can only unlock your phone via face recognition etc. A few of the more outrageous cases I heard it being used in were: online dating website called find your facemate.com which matches people based primarily on facial compatibility;doggleganger.com which is a pet adoption site that matches potential dog owners with pets that look like them; using it on chimps in the wild to make observational studies easier when trying to trace a specific chimp; there is an app that recognizes leaves and can tell you what kind of tree it is from; last, there is a MORIS system that slips over an iPhone and police have been using to take fingerprints, retinal scans, and facial recognition analysis of people’s ID’s.

3)

http://www.mercurynews.com/business/ci_25108220/sochi-airport-uses-silicon-valley-facial-recognition-software
This website provided a lot of relevant information on how facial recognition is being used at airports in Russia to prevent terrorist attacks at the Sochi Olympics. It also gives detailed information on 3-D facial recognition, limitations, other uses, and the privacy issue.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Facial_recognition_system
This website gives a good in depth summary of facial recognition and its counterparts: history, techniques, softward, natable users, advantages and disadvantages, and it also provides information again on the privacy issue.

http://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/how-to/software/8-weird-ways-people-are-using-facial-recognition-software#slide-1
This website provides relevant information on facial recognition and some of the different and unexpected ways it is being used today.

I was interested in art and object recognition. This topic relates to chapter four because chapter four was all about object recognition and the interaction that takes place between sensation, memory, and identification. I am interested in this topic because it’s very interesting how artists were the precursor to psychological research about perception, object recognition, and manipulating our visual systems.

Throughout history, artists have been interested in the visual system and how to manipulate it. Artists have been especially interested in how to use ambiguous images to hold the attention of their audiences. In fact, many artists throughout history have sought to confuse our object recognition systems with the creation of ambiguous images in paintings, drawings, sculptures, etc. The paintings produced by J.M.W. Turner are so ambiguous that art historians assigned his paintings several different names over the course of history because no one could figure out what the paintings depicted. One of Turner’s paintings is clearly the interior of a room but the items in the foreground are so ambiguous that art historians have argued for years about what the objects might be.

Artists and scientists are now teaming up everywhere to uncover more about the visual system. Artists succeeded in captivating audiences with images that are suggestive of a known object but lead to only to further puzzles upon visual inspection. One such artist has worked with several scientists to try to tap into the neurological experience of his viewers by using fMRI scans. Despite no recognizable forms in the artist’s paintings, participants reported seeing a familiar object 36% of the time. Even when visual stimuli do not contain an actual object, our visual system automatically tries to process the input into known objects.

Some scientists have even suggested that looking at abstract art is good for our brains. It has been suggested that looking at abstract art pushes our visual system to its limits. This helps keep neurons healthy and functioning through repeated use. One theory suggests that we enjoy abstract art because it keeps our brains healthy and we have evolved so that it activates the reward center of our brains.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/11/081117082246.htm This was an interesting article about why we enjoy art and how it might relate to the health of our brains.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7SMU5n6WTYA This video depicts how artists and scientists are working together to learn more about the visual system.

http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=3&ved=0CDUQFjAC&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.robertpepperell.com%2Fpapers%2FSPIE%2520paper%2520final%2520published%2520small.pdf&ei=WK37UtTYL6rQ2wW714G4Cg&usg=AFQjCNHjDeAixDdGnYQl1QyXX4sxQppmXA This article discussed the history of artists in the scientific understanding our visual systems and how artists have manipulated our visual systems.

This week I decided to look at facial recognition software. This was talked about a little bit in the book, but I wanted to learn more about it. I am interested in this because I think it is interesting when people try to get computers to do the deep processing that the human brain does.

Each face has different landmarks, about eighty of them, that make it unique. This may be the amount of space between your eyes, the length of your nose, etc. Each person's face is different from anyone else's. These points are translated into a numerical code, called a faceprint that can be used to identify someone.

Facial recognition technology used to be based off of 2D images, but recent 3D technology has allowed for 3 dimensional images to be used.

The first step in facial recognition is detection. This is where an image is scanned to make a 2D representation or video footage is used to create a 3D representation. After a face has been detected from the scanning, the system determines the head's position, size, and pose. The curves of the face are then measured and put into a template. The template is then translated into a code, where each set of numbers represents a facial feature. If the original image is in a different dimension (2D or 3D) than the footage that system will be detecting than an algorithm is used to translate the image. In the final step, the computer image is matched to another image from a database in order to verify the subject and recognize the face.

Retail stores were one of the first groups to use this technology, and now Facebook has picked it up as well. Facebook can now suggest people to tag in your photos based on other photos of them. Government agencies and airports are also using this technology to track criminals. Facial recognition software is now being marketed to consumers. There are some questions, however, as to whether all of this violates a person's civil liberties.

There are weaknesses in current facial recognition software. The closer the image gets to being the profile of a face, the less reliable it becomes. Poor lighting and items obstructing a face, such as masks, sunglasses, and even hair, can also impact the effectiveness of facial recognition. Different programs also vary in their effectiveness.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/02/technology/when-no-one-is-just-a-face-in-the-crowd.html?_r=0

This article talks about the future implications and current issues involved with facial recognition software.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Facial_recognition_system

This website talks about the uses of facial recognition as well as the weaknesses of it.

http://electronics.howstuffworks.com/gadgets/high-tech-gadgets/facial-recognition2.htm

This article explains how facial recognition software works.

1) My topic is face recognition. It was briefly talked about in a small box, and I am interested in learning more about it, because it talked about both human and computer face recognition, and with technology growing we can do some crazy things. According to the text, humans already are good at remembering “hundreds if not thousands of faces.” I want to know what it all can be used for and how it can be beneficial in today’s world. The first thing that pops in my head when thinking about facial recognition is on the crime television shows that I watch where they are running faces that security cameras have picked up through their criminal database on their computers.
2) There are facial recognition systems in technology today. How this is done is by comparing selected facial features with an image of a person’s face or from a facial database. These features can be matched by checking the size and shape of a person’s: eyes, nose, cheekbones, and jaw.
A newer system that has come about is a 3 dimensional recognition system. This system uses sensors of the face 3D which allows it to track the shape of the face as well. It also can detect facial features from different angles rather than a face forward shot or a profile view. With this system, there does not need to be an actual direct contact with the person like there would need to be with finger printing or signature. One of the downsides is, it is more expensive than using locks, identity cards, and passwords for security purposes.
There are different uses for facial recognition systems. They are used in security systems, sometimes at big events they are used to look into people who may be potential criminals or terrorists at the event. According to the Wikipedia site, it was used at the Super Bowl in 2001, and there were 19 people who were identified there with a minor criminal background. Apparently the Mexican government has also used it to prevent voter fraud in their presidential elections. What they found was people were registering under several different names when they were voting; duplicate faces were detected from incoming voters who had previously voted under a different name. There are also many different potential uses that have been looked into for using this, such as, security usage at ATM’s and to unlock software and a person’s mobile devices. I have noticed that Facebook has a facial recognition system when pictures are uploaded and you go to tag a person, most of the time it will pop up with the right person’s name. Technology seems to be growing so fast.
Other ways I found that this system is used besides in crime situations is, to help problem gamblers at casinos. Ontario Lottery and Gaming Cooperation has installed this new technology on their slots machines. This records who their regular gamblers are and who may help with a gambling addiction that has been developed. Shockingly there was one hotel who actually bought one so that they could recognize their hotel guest when going to greet them when they came in the building. The next one seems a little odd to me, but according to CBN news, it is also used on a dating website to help find your soul mate, apparently people tend to be attracted to people who have similar facial features. This made me think about if I have any similarities with my significant other, and not that I can visually see, I thought this was a very interesting one. A community college in the UK uses facial recognition to take attendance of their students. By doing so I feel that the professors wouldn’t get to know their students as well as they do in other schools, because when taking attendance they are not physically doing it themselves. I wonder if they know the names of the students who attend their classes, like so many professors here at UNI do. I just feel like this is really impersonal. But the article told that the students and teachers seem to like how it was working so far. Another use that has come about for those who are underage and have attempted to buy alcohol from stores, there is a chain of stores that is now using this system to recognize those underage who have attempted to buy alcohol under the age in the past.
Overall there are some great uses for facial recognition, and there are some odd ones, like the dating website, and to take class attendance, there still needs to be improvement on this new technology, but technology grows so fast it seems in today’s world, where some of the flaws can be fixed. When I first thought of the facial recognition technology, the first thing that came to mind was how it is used in criminal cases; I did not realize that there are actually quite a few uses out there that it is used for.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Facial_recognition_system
I chose this website, because it told how face recognition works, as well as where these systems are actually used.
http://wiki.answers.com/Q/What_are_the_advantages_and_disadvantages_of_face_recognition_system?#slide=13
I used this website, because it talked about the advantages and disadvantages of using the facial recognition system.
http://www.cbsnews.com/pictures/7-surprising-ways-facial-recognition-is-used/
I chose this website, because it told different ways that this software is used.

The topic I am going to be researching more on is pseudomemory or better known as false memories. In the chapter we had to read for our assignment there was a small section that talked about pseudomemory. The book did not go into much detail dealing with pseudomemory, but I find this area of memory to be really fascinating. The reason I find it fascinating is because when I had taken psy law in the past as a class we discussed about pseudomemory, and how it can screw up a person's life because someone remembered something about a crime even if it did not happen.

Pseudomemories are memories that we may believe them to be true, but they did not actually happen. There is not just one type of pseudomemories there are different types for different situations. The reason for pseudomemories is because our memory works by taking bits and pieces of experience, which may include several different places, and bringing it all together into what we think is a recollection, but is actually a collection of different memories. When we have to recall this collection of memories over and over it becomes unwittingly placed into our memories as being true. In a brain imagining study done in 2010, the neural patters were similar for true and false memories. Even our brain doesn’t classify our true and false memories differently!

One may think that pseudomemories are something they could never experience, but experts say that almost 50% of people, when put in memory recall situations, can be made to believe they remember something that never happened. Over the course of 200 experiments with 20,000 participants, time after time the research discovered that people would recall things that were never in the simulations. Suggestions can be a very powerful form of persuasion on our memories, as even if you have a clear memory, and the misinformation can make you doubt and or change the initial memory you had.

In the 1990s, the idea of false childhood memories became fairly popular. Adults and children, after seeing a therapist, would suddenly accuse family members, friends, or other individuals close to them of sexual abuse. This practice, of repressed memory therapy, was a popular form of psychotherapy. This type of therapy may include hypnosis, guided imagery, as well as sedative hypnotic drugs. As was mentioned earlier, the power of suggestion is extremely powerful, therefore, many of the horrible things recollected during therapy never happened at all.

Elizabeth Loftus is a leading researcher in the field of false memories, and she conducted an experiment to see what the power of suggestion could produce in her participants. To begin, she had her participants try to remember childhood events that were recollected by participant’s family or close friends. They then gave the participants three paragraphs on a piece of paper, each with two real memories, and one false one-in which as a child, the participant was lost in a shopping mall. Each false paragraph about the mall was the same for each participant. After they each read their paragraphs and then in follow up interviews, were asked details about these events. 30% of the participants remembered fully the false events immediately after and 25% remembered it 6 months later. This was just one study done illustrating that people can be persuaded into remembering something that never happened.

False memories are also seen in the criminal justice field, especially when it applies to eye witness testimony. In 2009, nearly 300 people had been exonerated of their crimes after DNA analyzing has become much more readily used. 75% of those cases involved an eyewitness that pinpointed the individual. The criminal lineup can be an issue, as most victims and/or witnesses believe that the person that committed the crime has to be in that lineup. Therefore, they are already looking for comparisons or trying to recall memories of what they saw, based on the faces before them. When the real perpetrator isn’t in the lineup, the individuals are looking for someone that is very similar, as well. Also, if the victim/witness is searching too long for the perpetrator, this also leads to more error, as recognition memory is a fast process. If given a photo lineup and then another lineup, they are highly likely to pick the person in the second lineup, believing that is the guy. Memories are already altered.

http://faculty.washington.edu/eloftus/Articles/sciam.htm
This link provided information on some of Elizabeth Loftus's research. Much of the information seemed to be fairly easy to understand, and was easy to read.

http://host.madison.com/news/local/crime_and_courts/memories-on-trial-parents-say-therapists-gave-daughter-false-memories/article_56549e30-0c89-11e0-a44f-001cc4c03286.html
This is a link to an article that discusses the issue of suppressed memories of child abuse. The article discusses specific cases in which parents were wrongly accused of horrible abuse.

http://www.cbsnews.com/news/eyewitness-how-accurate-is-visual-memory/
This video clip is about a man wrongfully accused for a crime. Ronald Cotton, a man accused of raping a woman and sent to prison for 11 years. This video gave the point of view of both Ronald and the woman that accused him.

I picked pseudomemory as my topic for this week. This deals with how people make up something that they believe is true as called false memory syndrome. In the first paragraph the said that “Solso and McCarthy (1981b) found that participants falsely recognized the prototype as a previously seen figure with greater confidence than they identified previously see figures.” I find this very interesting that people can be more confident about things that are completely made up. In the study from the book they had participants pick out faces from a set of three faces. Of the faces three were prototypes, which were from the faces of model people. They then had people pick out faces that were in the previous set of people. The rates of the prototypes as a previously seen were higher.
When looking for more information I came across recovered memory therapy. This is believed to create false memories and false memory syndrome. Information called memory consolidation becomes stored in the brain even if it is made up. People who try to find lost memories are more likely to have false memory. They brought up when studying a list of related words about candy that a person when asked to recall words were putting in words like sweet instead.
There was a study done on 133 children who attended a school which had a sniper shooting.They interviewed these children and some that were not even in class that day. Of the children that were not in class that day, the psychologists discovered that they had personal recollections of the attack happening. They believe the children created these false memories because they were exposed to the stories. Jean piaget was also brought up as creating a false memory. When he was little was a botched kidnapped that his nurse claimed she fended off the kidnapper. The nurses story never actually happened, but because he had heard it as a child he made a false memory and believed he remembers seeing his nurse being attacked.
In the interview with Elizabeth Loftus who is a false memory expert tells about her experiences in studying false memory. One of her first examples was of Mitt Romney. He believed he had attended an event that happened 9 months before he was born. As I stated before he was taking bits and pieces of other stories and putting them together to make his own. She also brings up the point that you cannot suppress a memory it is a false memory instead. Elizabeth said that you can’t keep a memory like that without thinking about it. After you suppress it for that long and not think about it. She believes you can’t go to therapy again and have it reappear.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_memory_syndrome
This website gave me lots of examples and why false memory happens.

http://serendip.brynmawr.edu/bb/neuro/neuro03/web2/kflannery.html
This was a good website because it gave me plenty of instances in which false memory has occured.

http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/new_scientist/2013/09/elizabeth_loftus_interview_false_memory_research_on_eyewitnesses_child_abuse.html
This is an interview with Elizabeth Loftus she gives good information on her studies of the subject.

1a)--My topic is the role of pattern recognition and other cognitive aspects in the game of chess and the role this plays in an individual’s success in the game.
1b)--It relates to the chapter directly because the chapter even had a small section on the increased ability of expert chess players to recognize patterns compared to more novice players. For decades researchers have studied and attempted to link success in chess with certain mental abilities.
1c)--The topic interests me because I have always enjoyed the game of chess and played since I was young, but have never been all that good at the game. The way some people are such prodigies of the game (Bobby Fischer for example) and can play multiple games against skilled adults and defeat them all just blows my mind. What is it that separates some of these elite players from the grandmasters? It could very well be pattern recognition.

Bill Wall makes an interesting note in his article on chessmaniac.com that women represent fewer than 5% of all tournament chess players, and only 1% of all grandmasters. This is not to say women cannot be elite chess players, but in an experiment where women played against an unknown partner (male or female) they performed much better than they did when they thought they were playing against a male counterpart. Their “chess-specific self-esteem” is lowered when playing against men. The experiment also showed that while men tend to score equally well in tournaments and on individual tests of chess skill, women perform worse in tournaments compared to individual tests, likely another self-esteem issue. Wall listed the 10 most important things for a chess player to possess earlier in the article, and he rated self-confidence as #7, but from this data I would think this would be higher. But what other factors are at play besides gender?
Most cognitive psychologists who have conducted research on the difference between elite and amateur chess players agree the ability of the elite to quickly decipher patterns in the game is the key to their success. The popular notion that the best chess players think “many moves ahead” is not necessarily true. Research has shown that expert and beginner players differ very little in this area. However, when presented with an in-progress game, expert players can within seconds decipher what pieces are in danger and where the best available move is, whereas this can take amateur players 15 minutes or more and they still may not find the best move. This is because most chess players have such a large database of past games and experience that they are able to quickly draw on this previous knowledge and recognize where the strong moves are to be made (pattern recognition). Novice players do not have this database of games and must go through a more methodical piece-by-piece sequence to determine their best move. This is also why experts often perform better in high stakes, timed matches because they don’t need more than a few seconds to decipher the board and make a move.
But what does this increased pattern recognition and memory bode for expert players outside of the chess realm? In his book “Moonwalking with Einstein”, Joshua Foer describes most grandmaster chess players as having average cognitive skills and memory for all matters outside of the chess realm. This suggests that expertise in chess is likely more a result of passion, obsession, and hard-work, rather than superior analytical or cognitive skill. Foer notes that this shows the importance of context in memory. While they can recreate an actual game board easily from memory, expert players are no better than amateurs when trying to recreate a chess board of randomly selected pieces (the example used in the book by Chase and Simon). These random pieces have no context, no similar boards to compare it to in their mental database, no way to chunk it. Foer also notes that studies show that higher-rated chess players have more activity in the frontal and parietal cortices of the brain, which indicates they are recalling long-term memory information, whereas lower-ranked players show increased temporal lobe activity, indicating they are encoding brand new information.
So to sum up, it is not entirely clear whether gender makes one more predisposed to chess success, although women perform more poorly against men than other women. Also, a high ability in chess does not necessarily deem that person any smarter than average or of a higher cognitive level. Chess players are able to use their vast knowledge of and experience in the game to quickly determine the most opportune move. But this does not make them any quicker at other games or other aspects of cognitive functioning (except maybe checkers). All in all, expert chess players are experts in chess, and pretty much average most other ways.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rWuJqCwfjjc
This video shows two-time US Chess Champion Patrick Wolff performing a chess position reconstruction task similar to the one used by Chase & Simon (1973) that is described in the book. Wolff describes his use of chunking the board into several areas based on where the most dominant pieces are to help him remember which piece is supposed to go where.
http://www.chessmaniac.com/index.php/2012/06/29/chess-and-cognitive-psychology/
This article gave me a lot of information synthesized from previous studies on the processing used by chess players during a game. It details the intricacies that separate skilled from novice players and also showed the disparity between male and female players.
http://www.openwriting.com/archives/2011/06/chess_grand_mas.php
The book excerpt showed the important of context in memory, that chess players can retain thousands of chess boards draw upon this former knowledge to help in a previous game. But this high cognitive functioning has no carry over to the real world.

1a. My topic is canonic perspective.
1b. Canonic perspective relates to the chapter because it is a way in which we view objects. This whole chapter focuses on object recognition and how we interpret visual information. This perspective sheds light on how we think about objects in the human mind.
1c. I find this topic interesting because of the visual example they showed in the book. Whenever something is visual it catches my attention a lot quicker, as did this example. Also the fact that all humans seem to view objects in their mind the same way is interesting in itself.
2a. Canonic perspective is a view that yields the most information for us. Most people seem to see objects the same way when conjuring an image of it in their mind as they did when physically viewing it. The minds view of objects is slightly elevated and to the side, almost as if we are physically seeing an object from our standing position. So instead of conjuring an image of a blender from a bird’s eye view we see it in our minds as if we are looking at it as it sits on a table from a front view. This suggests that we see things the way we experience them. This interesting fact was found out by Palmer, a researcher who went to many people of different cultures and backgrounds and asked them to draw a teacup on a dish. Interestingly almost everyone drew the exact same picture, and it was shown that they were all from what is now deemed the canonic perspective. Tar and Pinker’s explanation for this phenomena is that after repeated views of an object our brain encodes that view of the object and so every time we envision an object that view of it Is readily encoded. Further research done with camera angles also shows that pictures are more readily identified when they are captured from our canonic perspective. Also, it has been shown that it is not just viewing the object itself that sets up our perspective, but also the context in which we see the object. For instance, if the object is at ground level on the floor or far above us in a tree. We may be unable to recognize an ant, for instance, from a face level view, but will readily recognize it if it is shown from a bird’s eye view because that is how we typically see the ant.
3. http://courses.washington.edu/hypertxt/cgi-bin/book/pmontage/canonperspec.html
This website elaborates on the canoncic perspective and tells us that it is not just the image that sets up this perspective but also the context in which it is present.
http://www.citelighter.com/science/science/knowledgecards/the-canonical-perspective
This website introduces some newer research on this perspective, and also tries to explain why we view images from the canonic perspective.
http://www.blog.theteamw.com/2009/10/29/100-things-you-should-know-about-people-4-the-canonical-perspective/
This website reinforces all the information from both the book and the previous websites and put consensus on just what the canonic perspective consists of.