Melissa Lea, visiting assistant professor at Union College, N.Y. and a former Miami graduate student, and Aaron Bell and Nathan Lamkin, former undergraduates with research scholarships, worked with Thomas through various steps of establishing the face-name association. Their article on this research has been accepted for publication in the Psychonomic Society’s journal Psychonomic Bulletin & Review.

Mixed gender groups of college students participated in the study, which used men’s names that appear with equal frequency among that age group. Only white male faces with the same hairstyle were used, as gender and race have large impacts on perception and researchers were looking for subtly perceived differences among mostly homogeneous faces.

Participants were asked to create faces appropriate for 15 specific names using face construction software, similar to programs used by the police in eyewitness identification. A second group of participants generally endorsed the faces as fitting the names: Most predictable name-face matches were Bob, Bill, Brian and Jason. “These prototype faces that seem to exist for different names are not just idly occupying space in our mind, but have implications for how easily one learns the names of individuals,” says Thomas.

In a third study, the authors demonstrate that if the name fits the face, with ‘fit’ being defined by the previous matching study, participants can more easily learn the face-name pairing, but when the name doesn’t fit, people have more difficulty learning to name the faces.

“People choose names for their babies not knowing how they will look later in life, but it seems society has an idea of what people’s names might be merely by looking at them,” says Thomas.

Thomas and colleagues have two directions in mind for more research. One is to try to identify why people seem to have particular types of faces in mind for some names. One hypothesis that has some support is that the sound of the name crosses over to the visual representation. For example, ‘Bob’ is a round sounding name and many participants produced a relatively round face for the name ‘Bob’. Evidence from a recent study supports this possibility.

A second direction of their research is to examine if there are any top-down consequences on face perception of having face-name prototypes in our heads. “That is, if I tell you the fellow you will be meeting this afternoon is named ‘Bob’ will you perceive his face rounder than it actually is? Or if I tell you that his name is ‘Tim’, will you perceive him to be thinner than he actually is?” asks Thomas. “These types of effects of category labels on lower-level perception are becoming a concern for researchers in cognitive and social psychology because their existence suggest that we may not ever be able to see what’s actually there but will always be influenced by what we expect to be there.”

Note: This story has been adapted from a news release issued by Miami University.

Spiderman 3 is not just all fun and games, you know. Look a bit closer and Sam Raimi and co. are really making very acute social observations about life, love and sand.

WARNING! SPOILERS AHEAD!

1. EMOs are a product of alien symbiosis

2. If you find yourself running from the law, no problem! Just hop over the gate that says ‘DANGER! Particle Physics Experiment in progress’ and you’re in the clear.

3. If your girlfriend is hanging from the roof of a demolished skyscraper, never fear. Nonchalantly take some pictures and introduce yourself to her father, who also doesn’t seem to give a shit.

4. Flipping omelette and listening to vintage dance songs will only lead to adultery.

5. Black is the new red. And alien goo is the new cotton.

6. If you ever find yourself battling a giant sand person and a jagged-toothed photographer alongside your best friend who just tried to kill you, be sure that you and him exchange ‘witty’ banter at every opportunity. “I’m a little busy over here, buddy.” “I’d love to help you, but I’ve got my hands full, buddy” and so on.

7. If you want to kill someone real bad, then go to church and pray and maybe, if you’re lucky, God will provide you with an alien suit made of pure evil.

8. Sufferers of amnesia just can’t help smiling ridiculously and eating ice-cream. Oh life is good when you can’t remember anything.

9. Bad boys eat cookies, drink milk and mimic their lecturers down the phone in a hilarious manner.

10. Is your girlfriend feeling down? No problem, make her feel better by passionately upside-down kissing some really hot chick in front of her.

Unsurprisingly, perhaps, the latest stats show that Gmail users skew younger and richer than those on Yahoo Mail and Hotmail.

Gmail opened up to all comers in February, with Gmail’s market share of US visits climbing 17% from February 2007 to April 2007. However, Yahoo Mail and Hotmail are still much bigger by comparison, says Hitwise: Yahoo had 13x the market share, and Hotmail had 6x the marketshare of Gmail.

The good news, if you’re a Gmail user, is that you may be part of the elite: while Yahoo and Hotmail users are decidedly average, Gmail users tend to be young, have a high income, and be early adopters of technology. 54% of users are between 18 and 34, while 18% have an average annual household income between $100,000 and $149,999 (compared to 15% for Hotmail and 13% for Yahoo Mail). Another stat, probably related to the young age of GMail users: they’re more likely to be Facebook users than those on the other services.

As for performance in the bedroom - well, we kinda lied. In fact, the stats show that solitary Gmail users are far more likely to Google themselves.

So the gang met for café del mar… but later decided against that place as it might be too young and noisy for old fogeys like us. So headed up to Altivo instead. Gorgeous looking place, but rather dark I have to say… the gang was pretty depleted as Ms ‘New Job’ Fanny had to be at her new job and jamine was overseas.. but wat was pretty amazing was that everybody was late… and hence nobody had to really wait for anybody? Everyone has to do something about their sense of punctuality.. especially someone… if you’re reading this I hope you know who u are.. I’m being nice and refraining from announcing.. it was all fun and relax at Altivo. haven been so unstressed for a long time. and i hope that next year's holiday plans will be able to pan out as planned.