Optimising the Use of Synaesthetic Metaphors in Advertising: The Roles of Metaphor Construction and Complexity
subject: Metaphors; Synaesthetic Metaphors; Advertising; Persuasiveness
description: Metaphors are commonly employed in advertising to increase its persuasive effects. Research suggests that metaphors are most effective when conveyed visually, however linguists believe that additionally providing a linguistic cue, designed to help metaphor interpretation, can increase their effectiveness. In addition, metaphors of medium complexity are believed to drive higher effectiveness than simpler or more complex metaphors. This research aims to investigate how these issues relate to synaesthetic metaphors, those that reference two sensory modalities. Participants were presented with print adverts, the visual and linguistic elements of which were adapted to contain literal messages or synaesthetic metaphors. Participants provided ratings of appreciation, purchase intentions, and perceived advert complexity. Synaesthetic metaphors were shown to produce significantly stronger persuasive effects, measured via appreciation and purchase intentions, when conveyed visually and when rated highly on complexity. Implications for advertisers, who wish to incorporate and optimise the use of synaesthetic metaphors in print advertising, are discussed.
creator: Emily Davenport
source: Participants This research recruited 122 participants via opportunistic sampling. Participants were native speakers of English aged 18 or over, with no history of disabilities in any of the sensory domains (sight, hearing, smell, taste and touch). Twelve participants were excluded due to incomplete survey responses and/or ineligibility according to the inclusion criteria, resulting in a sample of 110 participants (88 female, 20 male, 2 other; age: M = 38.11, SD = 18.60) who were randomly assigned to complete one of four surveys (see Design). The demographics per survey are detailed in Table 1. Table 1 The Sample Size and Demographics Per Survey N Gender Age Male Female Other Mean SD Survey 1 28 4 24 - 43.68 18.94 Survey 2 29 7 21 1 32.90 17.77 Survey 3 28 5 22 1 35.07 17.09 Survey 4 25 4 21 - 41.32 19.48 Materials Advert Stimuli The advert stimuli used in this research were gathered and modified by previous researchers at Francesca Citron’s laboratory (Chen, 2019; Pan, 2019). The researchers obtained real adverts containing synaesthetic metaphors from the dataset of Bolognesi and Strik Lievers (2018). These base adverts were labelled 1-8 (see Appendix A). The researchers produced three modified versions of each base advert. They edited the visual and linguistic elements, of product images and slogans respectively, to contain, or not contain, a synaesthetic metaphor, in accordance with the ‘Metaphor Category’ they represented. One version of each base advert conveyed a synaesthetic metaphor in both the visual and linguistic advert elements (Visual-Linguistic SM; labelled “VL”). One version contained a synaesthetic metaphor in the visual, but not linguistic, advert elements (Visual SM Only; labelled “V). One version contained a synaesthetic metaphor in the linguistic, but not visual, advert elements (Linguistic SM Only; labelled “L”). The final version served as a control as a synaesthetic metaphor did not appear in the visual or linguistic advert elements (No SM; lab…
publisher: Lancaster University
date: 06/09/2021
contributor: Malcolm Wong
rights: Open
relation: Follow up on previous research in Francesca Citron's lab
format: Data/Excel.xlsx
language: English
type: Data
coverage: LA1 4YF

Optimising the Use of Synaesthetic Metaphors in Advertising: The Roles of Metaphor Construction and Complexity
subject: Metaphors; Synaesthetic Metaphors; Advertising; Persuasiveness
description: Metaphors are commonly employed in advertising to increase its persuasive effects. Research suggests that metaphors are most effective when conveyed visually, however linguists believe that additionally providing a linguistic cue, designed to help metaphor interpretation, can increase their effectiveness. In addition, metaphors of medium complexity are believed to drive higher effectiveness than simpler or more complex metaphors. This research aims to investigate how these issues relate to synaesthetic metaphors, those that reference two sensory modalities. Participants were presented with print adverts, the visual and linguistic elements of which were adapted to contain literal messages or synaesthetic metaphors. Participants provided ratings of appreciation, purchase intentions, and perceived advert complexity. Synaesthetic metaphors were shown to produce significantly stronger persuasive effects, measured via appreciation and purchase intentions, when conveyed visually and when rated highly on complexity. Implications for advertisers, who wish to incorporate and optimise the use of synaesthetic metaphors in print advertising, are discussed.
creator: Emily Davenport
source: Participants This research recruited 122 participants via opportunistic sampling. Participants were native speakers of English aged 18 or over, with no history of disabilities in any of the sensory domains (sight, hearing, smell, taste and touch). Twelve participants were excluded due to incomplete survey responses and/or ineligibility according to the inclusion criteria, resulting in a sample of 110 participants (88 female, 20 male, 2 other; age: M = 38.11, SD = 18.60) who were randomly assigned to complete one of four surveys (see Design). The demographics per survey are detailed in Table 1. Table 1 The Sample Size and Demographics Per Survey N Gender Age Male Female Other Mean SD Survey 1 28 4 24 - 43.68 18.94 Survey 2 29 7 21 1 32.90 17.77 Survey 3 28 5 22 1 35.07 17.09 Survey 4 25 4 21 - 41.32 19.48 Materials Advert Stimuli The advert stimuli used in this research were gathered and modified by previous researchers at Francesca Citron’s laboratory (Chen, 2019; Pan, 2019). The researchers obtained real adverts containing synaesthetic metaphors from the dataset of Bolognesi and Strik Lievers (2018). These base adverts were labelled 1-8 (see Appendix A). The researchers produced three modified versions of each base advert. They edited the visual and linguistic elements, of product images and slogans respectively, to contain, or not contain, a synaesthetic metaphor, in accordance with the ‘Metaphor Category’ they represented. One version of each base advert conveyed a synaesthetic metaphor in both the visual and linguistic advert elements (Visual-Linguistic SM; labelled “VL”). One version contained a synaesthetic metaphor in the visual, but not linguistic, advert elements (Visual SM Only; labelled “V). One version contained a synaesthetic metaphor in the linguistic, but not visual, advert elements (Linguistic SM Only; labelled “L”). The final version served as a control as a synaesthetic metaphor did not appear in the visual or linguistic advert elements (No SM; lab…
publisher: Lancaster University
date: 06/09/2021
contributor: Cameron Hoppu
rights: Open
relation: Follow up on previous research in Francesca Citron's lab
format: Data/Excel.xlsx
language: English
type: Data
coverage: LA1 4YF

An investigation into automatic imitation: Comparing live and video setups, the effect of prior training and the influence on affective empathy
subject: automatic imitation, empathy, imitation training, inhibition training, mirror neuron system, self-other distinction
description: If decreased Automatic Imitation(AI) improves empathetic abilities, then selfother distinction processes are probably the mediating factor between imitation and empathy. But if increased AI improves empathy, then probably imitation is at the core of the socio-cognitive functions. Until now, it was shown that decreased AI improved visual perspective taking, corticospinal empathy and self-reported empathy. Also, the studies until now focus on video AI stimuli. But to understand whether AI has a more direct relation to mimicry, I developed also live paradigm. My research questions were firstly, what effect will imitation training and inhibition training have on AI. Secondly, whether live stimuli AI will have the same effects on AI testing (inhibition versus imitation) and arousal empathy testing. Thirdly, whether the effects are transferable on arousal empathy. As expected, there was a significant decrease of AI in the video inhibition condition in comparison to the video imitation condition. Unexpectedly, a significant, but weak increase in arousal empathy was observed in the video imitation condition and not in the video inhibition group. The difference in AI and arousal empathy between the life imitation group and the life inhibition group were not significant. The results give a new perspective on the topic of AI. If the results can be reproduced by more studies, then probably imitation is more important than self-other distinction processes or maybe arousal empathy is different from other forms of empathy. Finally, the insignificant results in the life imitation versus life inhibition training indicate that there are maybe confounding factors in live AI research or that the video AI designs are more artificial than it is assumed.
creator: Evangelos Baltatzis
source: Participants Sixty(N=60) participants were recruited in a two-by-two factorial design, and divided equally among two between-subject factors. The first factor is Stimulus, whereby AI will be measured in response hand actions performed by an experimenter sat across a table from the participant (Live) or to the actor’s pre-recorded hand-action stimuli presented on a monitor. The second factor is Training, whereby participants will undertake a brief period of imitating the actions of the live or videoed handaction stimuli (IMI) or performing the opposite actions (IMI-IN). The participants were recruited from students of the University of Lancaster. Random selection could not be used, because of practical and logistical difficulties. Hence, most of the participants were Masters students and some were PhD students. The participants were either friends and acquaintances or they had the motivation to win a 10 pounds amazon voucher. In many cases they had the motivation to participate in my study, because they also wanted me to participate in their study. Firstly, we conducted the experiments with the video paradigm (15 participants in the imitation training condition and 15 participants in the inhibition training condition) and then we conducted the experiments of the live paradigm (15 participants in the imitation training condition and 15 participants in the inhibition training condition). We use random assignment for the recruitment in the training condition, thusly, every participant was randomly assigned in either the imitation training or in the inhibition training condition. For instance, we did not conduct first 15 experiments in the imitation training condition and then 15 experiments in the inhibition training condition, but every participant was in a different training condition. Nevertheless, one possible limitation may be that we did not do the same for the stimulus condition, as we conducted first the experiments of the video condition and then the experiment…
publisher: Lancaster University
date: 2017
contributor: Rebecca James
rights: Open
relation: None
format: Data/SPSS.sav
language: English
type: Data
coverage: LA1 4YF

Investigating the effects of dimensionality and referent variability on word learning in autism and typical development.
subject: Dimensionality, referent variability, word learning.
description: The ability to learn words from pictures could give children another forum to develop their lexical understanding and vocabulary. This is particularly important for children with developmental disorders such as Autism. This research investigated how word learning processes (referent selection, retention and generalisation) in autism and typical development are influenced by learning from pictures and objects, including single and multiple exemplars of symbols. The participants in this study were 16 typically developing children, M age=3.68, the TD group was composed of 7 males (43.75%) and 8 females (56.25%). And 16 children diagnosed with ASD, M age=9.37, 8 males (50%) and 8 females (50%). Participants looked at pictorial and object referents. This was to differentiate whether there was a preference in word acquisition and retention, depending on the structure of the stimuli. It was expected that word referent selection, retention and generalisation would be more accurate in the object condition compared to the picture condition, as participants would not be relying of picture-word-associations. Participants also examined words paired with either single or multiple exemplars of referents, to determine whether multiple exemplars of shaped matched referents would promote shape-based generalisation in the ASD group, which has been shown to be impaired (Hartley and Allen, 2014). It was expected that retention would be superior when learning directly from objects in both the ASD and TD groups, which was found in this research. We also anticipated that labelling from multiple exemplars, rather than single exemplars, may scaffold more consistent shape-based generalisation. We found that referent selection was more accurate in both groups in the multiple exemplar condition compared to the single exemplar condition. The implications of this research are that we can further understanding of how symbols or objects benefit word learning, retention and generalisation in ASD or …
creator: Fiona Smith
source: Participants The participants in this study were 16 minimally verbal children with ASD (M age = 10.42 years, SD = 3.29) and 16 typically developing children (M age = 3.64, SD = 1.64). Children with ASD were recruited from the specialist schools Dee Banks School in Chester, and Hinderton School in Ellesmere Port. Typically developing children were recruited via opportunity sampling, via the social media platform Facebook through advertisement. All the children with ASD received their diagnosis from a qualified clinical or educational psychologist. This was obtained using standardised instruments (i.e. Autism Diagnostic Observation Scale and Autism Diagnostic Interview—Revised; (Lord, Rutter & Le Couteur, 1994, Lord, Rutter, DiLavore & Risi, 2002) and expert judgment. Clinical diagnosis was confirmed for children with autism using the Childhood Autism Rating Scale (CARS; Schopler, Van Bourgondien, Wellman & Love, 2010), which was completed by a class teacher (Raw Score M score = 37.26, Raw Score range = 27 – 53.5). The ASD were tested for non-verbal vocabulary using the British Picture Vocabulary Scale (BPVS; Dunn, Dunn, Whetton, & Burley, 1997), which was conducted by the experimenter. Mean receptive vocabulary of children with autism was years 2.84 (range = 6 years – 2 years 4 months). Some of the children diagnosed with ASD who participated in this study were current PECS-users with impaired expressive language skills. Most of the children with ASD who participated in this study were functionally non-verbal (no spoken words), although, some produced speech of 1–2 words in length (however, much of this was echolalia) and one child could speak some short phrases over three words in length. Therefore, the sample was linguistically representative of children with ASD who receive and may benefit from picture-based communication interventions. Participants had 1–6 years’ experience of using PECS. When recruiting the children diagnosed with ASD, the experimenter emailed s…
publisher: Lancaster University
date: 2015
contributor: Rebecca James
rights: Open
relation: None
format: Data/SPSS.sav
language: English
type: Data
coverage: LA1 4YF

Accessing Cortical Hyperexcitatbility and Its Predisposition Using Two Types of Measurements
description: This study aimed to explore in depth about the cortex hyperexcitability. In order to do so, the study will use the pattern glare task and three questionnaires. These three questionnaires include the Cortex Hyperexcitability Index II, Cardiff Anomalous Perceptions scale, and the Multi-Modality Unusual Sensory Experiences Questionnaire. The pattern glare task induces on-spot hallucinations and distortions, while the questionnaires measure the long-term daily unusual sensory experiences one may have experienced. In this study, both the questionnaires and the task measured the same underlying factor, the cortex hyperexcitability. In the sense that it was hypothesized that the predisposition of seizure-like hallucinations and distortions and of daily-based hallucinations and anomalous experiences should be associated in a particular way. The pattern glare task had two blocks in the experiment, one with a blindfold and the other without. They were presented to participants in different orders to counterbalance the order effect. In between the two blocks, the participants answered the three questionnaires. The result of the study showed no significant effect of the blindfold, suggesting that wearing the blindfold for five minutes neither increased the sensitivity of the eyes nor the visual cortex. Most of the relationships between the pattern glare and questionnaires failed to be significant. The investigation on the association between the predispositions of the two types of hallucinations also failed to show any significance, only MUSEQ and pattern glare has a significant correlation. The migraine and migraine with aura groups appeared to be more sensitive to the phosphene phenomena. Their sensitivity, though the results were not significant, could be clearly observed through descriptive statistics. Although the results and findings failed to prove the research hypothesis, probably due to the main limitation of the poorly presented stimuli, the current study to some exte…
creator: Flora Zuo
source: Along with the pattern glare task, there were three more questionnaires used in the study, these are MUSEQ (Mitchell et al., 2017), CAPS (Bell et al., 2006), and CHI II (Fong et al., in press). This study has been ethically approved by the Department of Psychology in Lancaster University on 11th May 2018. Participants The current study screened participants before they could take part in the experiment, the screening standard is whether they have been diagnosed with photosensitive epilepsy, epilepsy, or that they recently had a brain or eye surgery. This criterion was created as the viewing of the striped pattern of particular spatial frequencies may induce seizures in patients with photosensitive epilepsy (Wilkins et al., 1984). It turned out none were excluded due to disease or had a history of diseases. There was a total of 43 participants who took part in the study. Among them, 15 were males and 28 were females. The age ranged from 19 to 36, with a standard deviation of 2.92, and around half of the participants were native English speakers. The six participants who self-reported having a migraine or a migraine with aura were noted before the study, as the pattern glare task may induce or intensify their symptoms, which can cause visual discomfort, visual distortions, or a headache. Among the six participants who reported they had migraineur, three of them were migraineurs with aura. Stimuli and Procedure The current study used stimuli that were printed onto cards, and the stimuli were presented to the participants from around 50 cm away at eye level. The patterns were the same size at 20mm * 15 mm, all in black and white, and with the shape of the ellipse. According to the given conditions, the visual angle was calculated to be 12.84 degrees. The three questionnaires were all printed on paper, and the participants were asked to read aloud their answers instead of writing it down. The plain black blindfold which participants were asked to wear during the study wa…
publisher: Lancaster University
date: 2015
contributor: Ellie Ball
rights: Open
relation: None
format: data/SPSS.sav data/.JASP
language: English
type: Data
coverage: LA1 4YF

N1 Adaptation: Exploring the Neuronal Basis of the Interaction Between Auditory Sensory Memory and Attention
subject: neuropsychology, attention, auditory sensory memory, N1 adaptation, sensory processing, neural responses
description: The aim was to explore whether voluntarily focusing on repetitive auditory stimuli influences the lifetime of N1 adaptation, which indexes the lifetime of auditory sensory memory. Twenty-six neurotypical participants with self-reported normal hearing were recruited from Lancaster University. Electroencephalogram (EEG) recording took place in a sound-attenuated laboratory. A two-by-two factorial design was employed, where one factor manipulated the presence or absence of attention, whereas the other factor manipulated the stimulus-onset interval (SOI), which primarily served to calculate the lifetime of adaptation. Three different amplitude measurement methods were used to calculate the N1 amplitude, therefore three sets of statistical analyses were performed for each investigation. For the preliminary investigation, two-way ANOVAs were conducted to evaluate the impact of attentional focus (presence or absence) and SOI (short or long) on the amplitude of N1. For the primary investigation, paired-samples t-tests were conducted to evaluate whether the presence or absence of attention influences the N1 adaptation lifetime. The preliminary results indicated no significant difference in N1 amplitude between the presence and absence of attentional focus. There was also no significant difference in the SOI, except for one of the amplitude measurement methods, which showed greater N1 amplitudes in the Long SOI condition. The primary results indicated that whether attention was present or not showed no significant effect on the adaptation lifetime across all three amplitude measurement methods. However, the study suffered from low statistical power and possible issues with the methodological design due to the combined use of visual and auditory modalities to manipulate attentional focus. Therefore, it is inappropriate to draw conclusions from the findings of this study. Methodological improvements and theoretical implications were discussed.
creator: Gengjie Jack Ho
source: Methods Section: Participants Twenty-six neurotypical participants with self-reported normal hearing (9 males, 16 females, 1 prefer not to say), all of whom were students from Lancaster University, were recruited using opportunity sampling via advertising on social media platforms and SONA. The age range of the participants spanned from 18 to 34 years (M = 22.85, SD = 2.55). Sixteen participants were excluded due to excessive electric noise, resulting in a remaining pool of 10 participants. All participants provided written consent and volunteered to participate in the experiment. The study received ethical approval from Lancaster University’s Department of Psychology. Stimuli The experiment employed the oddball paradigm to elicit auditory responses. The standards were presented at a constant rate of 210 repetitions per condition, while the deviants appeared unpredictably at a 5% probability (10 deviants per condition). The sequence of standards and deviants remained consistent across all conditions. The standards were presented as a 500-Hz pure tone, while the deviants were a 503-Hz pure tone. The duration of each tone was 100 milliseconds, with 10 milliseconds of linear onset and offset ramps. All tones were presented at a consistent and comfortable volume level (28% volume on Windows 10). The auditory stimuli were programmed and delivered using MATLAB. Design The study followed a two-by-two factorial design (see Figure 1). It included two attention conditions: Active and Passive. In the Active condition, participants were presented with a stream of standards and deviants while focusing on a fixation cross. Their objective was to count the occurrences of deviants. In the Passive condition, participants viewed a nature documentary displayed on a smartphone screen. Their objective was to count the number of animal species featured in the documentary while ignoring the stream of auditory stimuli playing simultaneously in the background. Both the fixation cross and th…
publisher: Lancaster University
date: 2023
contributor: Sharon Boyd
rights: Open
relation: None
format: Data/SPSS.sav
language: English
type: Data
coverage: LA1 4YF

Testing the Heat Hypothesis: The Relationship between Temperature and Violent Crime Rates
subject: None
description: This paper explored the relationship between temperature and behaviour. In particular the effect heat has on violent crimes. The heat hypothesis states that increased ambient temperatures can cause increased aggressive motives and behaviours. The current study was longitudinal and archival. Data was collated from four different countries: U.S., Japan, Jamaica and Finland over a period of 40 years. Data was collected from reliable online sources for: Temperature in degrees Celsius (℃), rainfall in millimetres (mm), intentional homicide rates, assault rates, rape rates and burglary rates. Rainfall and burglary were control variables. Analyses revealed a significant and positive relationship between temperature and intentional homicide, assault and rape rates. Temperature and burglary were not significantly related. Such results provide support for the heat hypothesis. The relationship between heat and violent crime should be investigated further; as the effects of global warming increase, so may violent crime rates worldwide.
creator: Georgia Fifer
source: Data In accord with Anderson et al’s., (1997) methods, data of the following crimes were collected: intentional homicide, assault, rape and burglary within a specified 40 years. This crime data was sampled from the following countries databases: U.S., Japan, Jamaica and Finland. The inclusion criteria were to include the countries which had the most available data on crime. There were no data exclusions as the current study was retrospective, meaning all data had already been collected. The 40 years analysed within each country differed depending on data availability. Crime rates were collected in the U.S. between the years 1960 and 2000. Crime rates were collected in Japan between the years 1975 and 2015. Crime rates were collected in Jamaica between the years 1970 and 2010. Crime rates were collected in Finland between the years 1976 and 2016. Therefore there would have been 160 full observations of intentional homicide, assault, rape and robbery. However, due to limited data available there were gaps in the data. For the U.S., 40 full observations of intentional homicide, assault, rape and robbery were obtained. For Japan, 23 full observations were obtained and 17 partial. For Jamaica, 11 full observations were obtained and 29 partial. For Finland, 22 full observations were obtained and 18 partial. The crime data was police reported and per 100,000 of the population, as smaller figures were easier to manage. Crime data was collected from the following reliable online resources: Bourne et al., (2015), Burns (2013), (Knoema, 2011), (Nation Master, 2003), (Statista, n.d.), (Uniform Crime Reporting, 1930), (United Nations World Surveys, 2006), (UNODC Statistics, 1997). Websites were considered reliable if they were established official government data repositories. Temperature (℃) and rainfall (mm) data were also collected. This data was obtained from an online climate data portal (Climate Change Knowledge Portal, n.d.). Rainfall was included as a control variable to…
publisher: Lancaster University
date: 2015
contributor: Rebecca James
rights: Open
relation: None
format: Data/Excel.xslx
language: English
type: Data
coverage: LA1 4YF

Do trustworthiness judgements help people to recognise synthetic faces?
subject: StyleGAN, synthetic face, trustworthiness perception, facial trustworthiness
description: Recent advances in digital image generative models have allowed for artificial creation of fake imagery such as synthesising highly photorealistic human faces. Style-based Generative Adversarial Networks (StyleGAN) is one of the most state-of-the-art generative models in this field, and has been widely used on facial image generation. However, with the increasing ease of using such image generative models, the security in many domains, such as forensic, border control and mass media, is vulnerable in front of the potential threats resulted from the misuse of image generative technologies. To date there has only been limited empirical research into the facial characteristics of StyleGAN-generated faces to support the design of detection methods against such synthetic faces. This study used StyleGAN2 (an improved version of StyleGAN) to generate faces and invited people to complete two facial image evaluation tasks, 1) Discrimination task, 2) Trustworthiness rating task. The study results demonstrated that, in the discrimination task, subjects had trouble recognising synthetic faces by direct/explicit judgement; while in the trustworthiness rating task, subjects perceived the synthetic faces as significantly more trustworthy than real faces. The study further analysed gender bias and ethnicity bias on the perception of facial trustworthiness, with results showing some differences between different levels of gender and ethnicity. In conclusion, people’s ability to recognise synthetic faces is poor, but it is possible that people rely on the perception of facial trustworthiness to discriminate synthetic from real faces. The findings in this study have implications for the development of detection methods against digitally generated faces.
creator: Haisa Shan
source: Three hundred and fifty-seven subjects (114 males, mean age = 25.2, SD = 5.8; 227 females, mean age = 25.0, SD = 6.3; 10 non-binary, mean age = 23.6, SD = 8.93) were recruited to complete an online survey test delivered on www.qualtrics.com. The responses of subjects who started but did not complete the online survey were eliminated to avoid distorting the research results. We used computer-synthesised facial images in this research as fake faces, mixed with real faces to examine people’s ability to detect fake faces and perceptual differences of trustworthiness between real/fake faces. Subjects did not get rewards for their participation, though they could see the test score of their performances at the end of the survey. The Qualtrics survey was based on a within-subjects design in which all subjects viewed the same two sets of adult facial images and completed each of the two tasks. To eliminate the effect of between-sets difference, the use of each image sets was counterbalanced in the individual test for each subject. Before the survey started, all subjects provided informed consent and completed a demographic questionnaire about their age, gender, ethnicity. In terms of the experimental power of 0.8 and significance level of 0.05, with a small effect, the power calculation indicated that the study needed at least 198 subjects. Stimuli A total of thirty-two human facial images (1024×1024 resolution), including 16 real and 16 synthetic faces, were used as stimuli in the survey. All real faces were taken from a publicly available dataset for high-quality human facial images, Flickr-Faces-HQ (FFHQ), which is created as a benchmark for GAN (see https://github.com/NVlabs/ffhq-dataset), and all synthetic faces were gained from the dataset of the generative image modeling, StyleGAN2 (see https://github.com/NVlabs/stylegan2). To ensure a diverse dataset, in each of the two sets of faces, there were 4 Black, 4 East Asian, 4 South Asian, 4 White, and 2 males and 2 female…
date: 8 September 2021
contributor: Joanne Roe
rights: Open
relation: None
format: data/Excel.csv
language: English
type: Data
identifier: Cognitive, Perception Forensic

Do trustworthiness judgements help people to recognise synthetic faces?
subject: StyleGAN, synthetic face, trustworthiness perception, facial trustworthiness
description: Recent advances in digital image generative models have allowed for artificial creation of fake imagery such as synthesising highly photorealistic human faces. Style-based Generative Adversarial Networks (StyleGAN) is one of the most state-of-the-art generative models in this field, and has been widely used on facial image generation. However, with the increasing ease of using such image generative models, the security in many domains, such as forensic, border control and mass media, is vulnerable in front of the potential threats resulted from the misuse of image generative technologies. To date there has only been limited empirical research into the facial characteristics of StyleGAN-generated faces to support the design of detection methods against such synthetic faces. This study used StyleGAN2 (an improved version of StyleGAN) to generate faces and invited people to complete two facial image evaluation tasks, 1) Discrimination task, 2) Trustworthiness rating task. The study results demonstrated that, in the discrimination task, subjects had trouble recognising synthetic faces by direct/explicit judgement; while in the trustworthiness rating task, subjects perceived the synthetic faces as significantly more trustworthy than real faces. The study further analysed gender bias and ethnicity bias on the perception of facial trustworthiness, with results showing some differences between different levels of gender and ethnicity. In conclusion, people’s ability to recognise synthetic faces is poor, but it is possible that people rely on the perception of facial trustworthiness to discriminate synthetic from real faces. The findings in this study have implications for the development of detection methods against digitally generated faces.
creator: Haisa Shan
source: Subjects and design Three hundred and fifty-seven subjects (114 males, mean age = 25.2, SD = 5.8; 227 females, mean age = 25.0, SD = 6.3; 10 non-binary, mean age = 23.6, SD = 8.93) were recruited to complete an online survey test delivered on www.qualtrics.com. The responses of subjects who started but did not complete the online survey were eliminated to avoid distorting the research results. We used computer-synthesised facial images in this research as fake faces, mixed with real faces to examine people’s ability to detect fake faces and perceptual differences of trustworthiness between real/fake faces. Subjects did not get rewards for their participation, though they could see the test score of their performances at the end of the survey. The Qualtrics survey was based on a within-subjects design in which all subjects viewed the same two sets of adult facial images and completed each of the two tasks. To eliminate the effect of between-sets difference, the use of each image sets was counterbalanced in the individual test for each subject. Before the survey started, all subjects provided informed consent and completed a demographic questionnaire about their age, gender, ethnicity. In terms of the experimental power of 0.8 and significance level of 0.05, with a small effect, the power calculation indicated that the study needed at least 198 subjects. Stimuli A total of thirty-two human facial images (1024×1024 resolution), including 16 real and 16 synthetic faces, were used as stimuli in the survey. All real faces were taken from a publicly available dataset for high-quality human facial images, Flickr-Faces-HQ (FFHQ), which is created as a benchmark for GAN (see https://github.com/NVlabs/ffhq-dataset), and all synthetic faces were gained from the dataset of the generative image modeling, StyleGAN2 (see https://github.com/NVlabs/stylegan2). To ensure a diverse dataset, in each of the two sets of faces, there were 4 Black, 4 East Asian, 4 South Asian, 4 White, and …
publisher: Lancaster University
date: 8 September 2021
contributor: Joanne Roe
rights: Open
relation: None
format: data/Excel.csv
language: English
type: Data
identifier: Cognitive, Perception Forensic
coverage: LA1 4YW

Do trustworthiness judgements help people to recognise synthetic faces?
subject: StyleGAN, synthetic face, trustworthiness perception, facial trustworthiness
description: Recent advances in digital image generative models have allowed for artificial creation of fake imagery such as synthesising highly photorealistic human faces. Style-based Generative Adversarial Networks (StyleGAN) is one of the most state-of-the-art generative models in this field, and has been widely used on facial image generation. However, with the increasing ease of using such image generative models, the security in many domains, such as forensic, border control and mass media, is vulnerable in front of the potential threats resulted from the misuse of image generative technologies. To date there has only been limited empirical research into the facial characteristics of StyleGAN-generated faces to support the design of detection methods against such synthetic faces. This study used StyleGAN2 (an improved version of StyleGAN) to generate faces and invited people to complete two facial image evaluation tasks, 1) Discrimination task, 2) Trustworthiness rating task. The study results demonstrated that, in the discrimination task, subjects had trouble recognising synthetic faces by direct/explicit judgement; while in the trustworthiness rating task, subjects perceived the synthetic faces as significantly more trustworthy than real faces. The study further analysed gender bias and ethnicity bias on the perception of facial trustworthiness, with results showing some differences between different levels of gender and ethnicity. In conclusion, people’s ability to recognise synthetic faces is poor, but it is possible that people rely on the perception of facial trustworthiness to discriminate synthetic from real faces. The findings in this study have implications for the development of detection methods against digitally generated faces.
creator: Haisa Shan
source: Subjects and design Three hundred and fifty-seven subjects (114 males, mean age = 25.2, SD = 5.8; 227 females, mean age = 25.0, SD = 6.3; 10 non-binary, mean age = 23.6, SD = 8.93) were recruited to complete an online survey test delivered on www.qualtrics.com. The responses of subjects who started but did not complete the online survey were eliminated to avoid distorting the research results. We used computer-synthesised facial images in this research as fake faces, mixed with real faces to examine people’s ability to detect fake faces and perceptual differences of trustworthiness between real/fake faces. Subjects did not get rewards for their participation, though they could see the test score of their performances at the end of the survey. The Qualtrics survey was based on a within-subjects design in which all subjects viewed the same two sets of adult facial images and completed each of the two tasks. To eliminate the effect of between-sets difference, the use of each image sets was counterbalanced in the individual test for each subject. Before the survey started, all subjects provided informed consent and completed a demographic questionnaire about their age, gender, ethnicity. In terms of the experimental power of 0.8 and significance level of 0.05, with a small effect, the power calculation indicated that the study needed at least 198 subjects. Stimuli A total of thirty-two human facial images (1024×1024 resolution), including 16 real and 16 synthetic faces, were used as stimuli in the survey. All real faces were taken from a publicly available dataset for high-quality human facial images, Flickr-Faces-HQ (FFHQ), which is created as a benchmark for GAN (see https://github.com/NVlabs/ffhq-dataset), and all synthetic faces were gained from the dataset of the generative image modeling, StyleGAN2 (see https://github.com/NVlabs/stylegan2). To ensure a diverse dataset, in each of the two sets of faces, there were 4 Black, 4 East Asian, 4 South Asian, 4 White, and …
publisher: Haisa Shan
date: 8 September 2021
contributor: Haisa Shan
rights: Open
relation: None
format: data/Excel.csv
language: English
type: Data
coverage: None