Recognition memory for realistic synthetic faces

A series of experiments examined short-term recognition memory for trios of briefly presented, synthetic human faces derived from three real human faces. The stimuli were a graded series of faces, which differed by varying known amounts from the face of the average female. Faces based on each of the three real faces were transformed so as to lie along orthogonal axes in a 3-D face space. Experiment 1 showed that the synthetic faces' perceptual similarity structure strongly influenced recognition memory. Results were fit by a noisy exemplar model (NEMO) of perceptual recognition memory. The fits revealed thatrecognition memory was influenced both by the similarity of the probe to the series items and by the similarities among the series items themselves. Nonmetric multidimensional scaling (MDS) showed that the faces' perceptual representations largely preserved the 3-D space in which the face stimuli were arrayed. NEMO gave a better account of the results when similarity was defined as perceptual MDS similarity, rather than as the physical proximity of one face to another. Experiment 2 confirmed the importance of within-list homogeneity directly, without mediation of a model. We discuss the affinities and differences between visual memory for synthetic faces and memory for simpler stimuli.     

Recognition memory for typical and unusual faces

In four studies, recognition memory for faces rated as similar to a prototype was found to be inferior to memory for faces rated as unusual in appearance. This result was obtained under both incidental and intentional learning conditions, at presentation rates ranging from 3 to 15 sec, and with retention intervals from 3 to 24 hr. A fifth experiment established interitem similarity as the structural basis of this typicality effect in recognition memory. Difficulties in interpreting the findings in terms of some current models for classification learning, depth of processing models, or present models of the word frequency effect are discussed.     

Recognition memory for faces with and without spectacles

23 students were tested for memory on 40 faces, half of which were bespectacled. 20 photographs were shown for 1 sec., then mixed with the 20 others for testing. Recognition was poorer for faces with than without glasses, and women generally performed relatively better on females' faces.     

Effects of diversity versus segregation on automatic approach and avoidance behavior towards own and other ethnic groups

We present the results of a study in which we measured automatic intergroup behavior and evaluations in ethnic majority and minority group members. We focus our attention on the level of segregation and diversity of immediate life contexts as indicators of outgroup exposure. Specifically, Dutch ethnic minority and majority students enrolled at ethnically segregated and diverse schools completed a measure of automatic approach and avoidance behavior and reported explicit intergroup attitudes. The research is framed into prevailing theories in the field: Social Identity Theory and System Justification Theory. Results of our study suggest that segregation of minority group members' immediate life context may be an important moderator of evaluations as well as approach and avoidance behavior toward ingroup and outgroup. In particular, minority members in segregated schools showed an approach bias towards their ingroup, whereas minority members in diverse schools showed an approach bias towards the majority outgroup.     

Recognition memory for faces: When familiarity supports associative recognition judgments

Recognition memory for single items can be dissociated from recognition memory for the associations between items. For example, recognition tests for single words produce curvilinear receiver operating characteristics (ROCs), but associative recognition tests for word pairs produce linear ROCs. These dissociations are consistent with dual-process theories of recognition and suggest that associative recognition relies on recollection but that item recognition relies on a combination of recollection and assessments of familiarity. In the present study, we examined associative recognition ROCs for facial stimuli by manipulating the central and external features, in order to determine whether linear ROCs would be observed for stimuli other than arbitrary word pairs. When the faces were presented upright, familiarity estimates were significantly above zero, and the associative ROCs were curvilinear, suggesting that familiarity contributed to associative judgments. However, presenting the faces upside down effectively eliminated the contribution of familiarity to associative recognition, and the ROCs were linear. The results suggest that familiarity can support associative recognition judgments, if the associated components are encoded as a coherent gestalt, as in upright faces.     

Recognition memory for colors and faces in profoundly retarded young children

Visual recognition memory was examined in a group of profoundly retarded young children whose visual-motor developmental level was estimated to be below one year. The children were tested for recognition of a previously shown face photo or a previously exposed color either immediately or following a short-term delay by observing the distribution of their visual fixation responses to novel stimuli when paired with previously seen targets. During a study or “familiarization” period the profoundly retarded children devoted voted approximately the same amount of attention to photos of faces as they did to colored, abstract patterns, and individual differences in overall looking time proved to be reliable. During the recognition testing phase the profoundly retarded children demonstrated immediate recognition memory for both faces and colors, preferring a novel to a previously exposed target, but responsiveness to novelty declined abruptly over a short-term delay, providing little evidence for delayed recognition.     

Differential emotion attribution to neutral faces of own and other races

Past research has demonstrated differential recognition of emotion on faces of different races. This paper reports the first study to explore differential emotion attribution to neutral faces of different races. Chinese and Caucasian adults viewed a series of Chinese and Caucasian neutral faces and judged their outward facial expression: neutral, positive, or negative. The results showed that both Chinese and Caucasian viewers perceived more Chinese faces than Caucasian faces as neutral. Nevertheless, Chinese viewers attributed positive emotion to Caucasian faces more than to Chinese faces, whereas Caucasian viewers attributed negative emotion to Caucasian faces more than to Chinese faces. Moreover, Chinese viewers attributed negative and neutral emotion to the faces of both races without significant difference in frequency, whereas Caucasian viewers mostly attributed neutral emotion to the faces. These differences between Chinese and Caucasian viewers may be due to differential visual experience, culture, racial stereotype, or expectation of the experiment. We also used eye tracking among the Chinese participants to explore the relationship between face-processing strategy and emotion attribution to neutral faces. The results showed that the interaction between emotion attribution and face race was significant on face-processing strategy, such as fixation proportion on eyes and saccade amplitude. Additionally, pupil size during processing Caucasian faces was larger than during processing Chinese faces.     

Recognition memory for distractor faces depends on attentional load at exposure

Incidental recognition memory for faces previously exposed as task-irrelevant distractors was assessed as a function of the attentional load of an unrelated task performed on superimposed letter strings at exposure. In Experiment 1, subjects were told to ignore the faces and either to judge the color of the letters (low load) or to search for an angular target letter among other angular letters (high load). A surprise recognition memory test revealed that despite the irrelevance of all faces at exposure, those exposed under low-load conditions were later recognized, but those exposed under high-load conditions were not. Experiment 2 found a similar pattern when both the high- and low-load tasks required shape judgments for the letters but made differing attentional demands. Finally, Experiment 3 showed that high load in a nonface task can significantly reduce even immediate recognition of a fixated face from the preceding trial. These results demonstrate that load in a nonface domain (e.g., letter shape) can reduce face recognition, in accord with Lavie’s load theory. In addition to their theoretical impact, these results may have practical implications for eyewitness testimony.     

Achievement motivation and memory: achievement goals differentially influence immediate and delayed remember-know recognition memory

Little research has been conducted on achievement motivation and memory and, more specifically, on achievement goals and memory. In the present research, the authors conducted two experiments designed to examine the influence of mastery-approach and performance-approach goals on immediate and delayed remember-know recognition memory. The experiments revealed differential effects for achievement goals over time: Performance-approach goals showed higher correct remember responding on an immediate recognition test, whereas mastery-approach goals showed higher correct remember responding on a delayed recognition test. Achievement goals had no influence on overall recognition memory and no consistent influence on know responding across experiments. These findings indicate that it is important to consider quality, not just quantity, in both motivation and memory, when studying relations between these constructs.     

Recognizing faces from ethnic in‐groups and out‐groups: Importance of outer face features and effects of retention interval

People recognize faces from their own ethnic group more accurately than faces from other ethnic groups. White German (WG) and Turkish participants living in Germany performed an old/new recognition test with faces from several ethnic groups. The presence or absence of external features (hair, face contour) and retention interval (immediate versus 3 weeks) were manipulated. Own‐ethnicity effects (OEEs) were found, with recognition accuracy and response bias varying across the different stimulus sets. The 3‐week retention interval reduced accuracy for in‐group faces but not for out‐group faces, while the removal of outer features was more harmful to out‐group faces than to in‐group faces. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

A visual short-term memory advantage for faces

What determines how much can be stored in visual short-term memory (VSTM)? Studies of VSTM have focused largely on stimulus-based properties such as the number or complexity of the items stored. Recent work also suggests that capacity is severely reduced for items within the same category. However, the importance for VSTM capacity of more qualitative differences in processing for different categories has not been investigated. For example, faces are processed more holistically than other objects. In Experiments 1 and 2, we show that the processing of faces, objects that are crucial socially and for which we possess considerable expertise, overcomes these limitations. More faces can be stored in VSTM than objects from other complex nonface categories. As in prior studies, at short encoding durations we found that capacity for faces was less than that for other categories. However, at longer encoding durations, capacity for faces exceeded that for nonface objects, and this advantage was specific to upright faces. Because inversion reduces holistic processing, the interaction of orientation with VSTM capacity—which occurred for faces but not objects in Experiment 3—suggests that it is holistic processing that confers an advantage for face VSTM when sufficient encoding time is allowed.     

Attractive memory: High destination memory for attractive faces

Research has demonstrated that destination memory (i.e., the ability to remember to whom information was previously told) can be influenced by characteristics (e.g., emotional expressions and age) of the destination. Building on this literature, we investigated whether destination memory can be influenced by the attractiveness of the destination. We invited participants to give information on attractive faces, unattractive faces, or neither‐attractive‐nor‐unattractive faces. On a recognition test, they were invited to decide to whom each piece of information had been previously told. Results demonstrated higher destination memory (1) for attractive faces than for neither‐attractive‐nor‐unattractive faces, and (2) for unattractive faces than for neither‐attractive‐nor‐unattractive faces. We attribute the higher destination memory for attractive and unattractive destinations to their distinctiveness compared with neutrally attractive destinations. We also provide some attentional explanations for the high memory for attractive and unattractive destinations.     

Recognition memory for emotional faces in amnestic mild cognitive impairment: An event-related potential study

ABSTRACT

This study examined the temporal course of emotional face recognition in amnestic mild cognitive impairment (aMCI). Patients and healthy controls (HC) performed a face recognition task, giving old/new responses to previously studied and novel faces displaying a negative or neutral expression. In aMCI patients, recognition accuracy was preserved for negative faces. Event-related potentials (ERPs) revealed disease-related changes in early perceptual components but not in ERP indices of explicit recognition. Specifically, aMCI patients showed impaired recognition effects for negative faces on the amplitudes of N170 and P2, suggesting deficient memory-related processing of negative faces at the stage of structural encoding and during an early recognition stage at which faces are individuated, respectively. Moreover, while a right-lateralized emotion effect specifically observed for correctly recognized faces on the amplitude of N170 was absent in aMCI, a similar emotion effect for successfully recognized faces on P2 was preserved in the patients, albeit with a different distribution. This suggests that in aMCI facilitated processing of successfully recognized emotional faces starts later in the processing sequence. Nonetheless, an early frontal old/new effect confined to negative faces and a parietal old/new effect unaffected by facial emotion were observed in both groups. This indicates that familiarity and conceptual priming processes may specifically contribute to recognition of negative faces in older adults and that aMCI patients can recruit the same retrieval mechanisms as controls, despite disease-related changes on early perceptual ERP components.     

Aging and memory for faces versus single views of faces

Differences in the ability of young adults and elderly to recognize faces were examined under two conditions. In a standard single-view condition, in which each input face was shown as one photograph, we confirmed prior findings that young adults perform better than the elderly at distinguishing photographs seen before from photographs of new faces. We also found that the elderly had more trouble distinguishing photographs seen before from photographs of(l) old faces changed in facial expression and (2) old faces changed in expression and pose. Yet there were no reliable age differences in distinguishing old-but-changed faces from entirely new faces. In a more naturalistic multi-view condition, in which each input face was shown in four poses and with two expressions, no age differences were found. A second experiment ruled out the possibility that varied repetition, by itself, removes age differences in recognizing faces. These data supported age differences in remembering facial expressions and possibly other details of photographs of faces, but not in remembering faces perse.     

Visual attention to members of own and other groups: Preferences,determinants, and consequences

Many current and past theories of social categorization acknowledge and even underline the critical role that visual processing plays in intergroup misperceptions and biases, yet research that directly measures or manipulates these processes is limited. In the present paper, we reviewed the current literature on visual attention to own and other group faces. First, we explored the development of preferential attention in face processing. Next, we examined these processes in adults and show different patterns of attention for own and other group faces. Although we briefly consider cross‐cultural variations, the focus of this review is on within‐culture differences in visual attention. In particular, we explore preferential attention to specific features on own versus other group faces and to their overall faces. We also discuss potential determinants for differential attention such as experience, threat, individuation and a desire to know in‐groups, and liking. Finally, we explore the implications of differential attention to own and other groups. These consequences range from reduced recognition of other group faces, to impaired identification of emotional expressions, to impeded interaction intentions, and to increased discrimination. Together our analyses provide strong evidence for differences in attention to the faces and eyes of own versus other group members and their role in intergroup biases.     

Aging and memory for pictures of faces

The hypothesis that pictorial aspects of face-recognition memory are lower in old age was tested in 2 studies. Young and elderly Ss viewed 48 face pictures, and then took a test containing identical copies of input faces, pictorially changed versions of input faces, and entirely new faces. Replicating prior findings, Experiment 1 showed that false recognitions of entirely new faces were higher among elderly Ss. However, there were no age differences in distinguishing identical from pictorially changed faces. Using a modified test, Experiment 2 showed that although the elderly Ss had good knowledge that changed faces were changed, they had relatively poor knowledge of how they were changed. There appears to be age differences in analytical matching of pictorial information against information in memory.