The experiments track which part of a two-character name matters most when people match names to faces. By varying timing and order, the researchers show that the final syllable has an outsized influence on whether a face feels like it belongs to a name. That points to how our brains wait to hear a full name before tying it to a visual impression, and it hints at timing and memory processes that guide social perception.
This subject touches on human potential because subtle processes in language and vision shape first impressions, inclusion, and identity recognition. If the last syllable carries more weight in forming face-name links, that finding could inform how names are used in education, technology, and cross-cultural communication. Follow the link to explore the experiments and consider how small features of speech steer how we connect voices to faces.
Abstract
Previous studies show that people believe that a name belongs to a person if the person’s face shape (FS) matches the lip shape formed when pronouncing the name. This represents a cross-modal mapping effect between name pronunciation (NP) and FS. Considering that approximately 84.55% of Chinese people have a two-character name, the present study specifically investigates which character of double-character Chinese names plays a more critical role in the mapping relationship with the FS. We conducted four experiments that used disyllabic names with pronunciations involving contrasting lip shapes. The interval between the pronunciation of the name’s first and final characters was set at either 0 or 1000 ms. Two presentation orders were used: presenting the name before the face image and the face image before the name. We found that the NP–FS mapping persists when the lip shapes of the initial and final syllables of a name differ, while the final syllable determinetavs the mapping. This underscores the significant role of the final syllable in driving NP–FS mapping, which supports the hypothesis that names must be completely encoded for recognition before being integrated with facial perception.
