Effects of category labels on P300 in facial recognition

Abstract

Gordon and Tanaka (2011) suggested that name labels such as "Joe" facilitated face memory and elicited large P300. However, when name labeling was used in Brain Computer Interface (BCI) by which users can choose people with their faces, preserved P300 response to the previous target might be problematic because of the effect of memory. Our study utilized categorical labels of occupation instead of name labels, and investigated the effects of task-relevancy, face exposure and category labels in face selection task. Participants were required to judge whether each stimulus was a target or not. Results showed that although it was consistent with the name-label situation that P300 was enhanced by task-relevant targets, repeated exposure to previous target didn't increase P300 in category-label situation in contrast to the previous study. These results suggest that categorical labeling is more appropriate for BCIs, because task-relevant target face elicits larger P300 than other faces. © Springer International Publishing 2013.