Naming faces: a multidisciplinary and integrated review

Abstract

Naming faces is a common area of study from a wide range of perspectives in social sciences, including cognitive psychology and several branches of cognitive neuroscience. This paper provides a comprehensive review of the cognitive models that have been proposed to explain the diverse aspects of face naming, taking into account face processing and language production models. In addition, a review of the neuroscientific data from event-related potential studies (when) and functional neuroimaging studies (where) is presented. Thus, an integrated view of the cognitive models and the data relating the different processes involved in naming faces to the brain activity is provided.