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Many contemporary theories of memory assume that everyone automatically stores temporal contextual information about all types of encountered information, yet most studies on this topic have used words and ignored individual differences. Five experiments accumulated evidence that explicit storage of temporal context information does not appear to occur automatically for all people and types of memoranda. We collected judgments of temporal position (memory-for-when) for words (Experiments 1 & 3), faces (Experiments 2A, 3, 4, and 5), and classrooms (Experiments 2B & 3). At the group level, for each of these memoranda memory-for-when was sensitive to the original input position and showed a temporal primacy effect reflecting better memory for position for items near the beginning of the list, indicating some automatic storage of temporal context information. However, memory-for-when was significantly better for words than classrooms, with faces in the middle. Moreover, individuals varied dramatically in their ability to indicate memory-for-when, especially for classrooms where many people performed at or near chance. Taken together, the data suggest that explicit memory-for-when may be dissociable from the more implicit use of temporal contextual information that is theorised to occur during free recall.

It is well established that presurgical neuropsychological assessment can assist in lateralizing and localizing focal epileptogenic regions. However, unlike verbal memory impairment, which is a robust and reliable finding in patients with left temporal lobe epilepsy (LTLE), nonverbal memory deficits are less consistently found among patients with right TLE (RTLE). This study aimed to determine whether memory assessment for spatial location in addition to visual content would differentiate patients with RTLE and LTLE. We compared performances between patients with 25 RTLE and 37 patients with LTLE on the Wechsler Advanced Clinical Solutions-Faces (ACS-F) subscales (Faces I, Faces II, Content, and Spatial), verbal-visual memory asymmetry scores, and intelligence quotient (IQ)-visual memory difference scores. Results revealed no significant differences between patients with RTLE and LTLE for any ACS-F memory score. By contrast, groups demonstrated significant differences in memory asymmetry scores (p = .007) and IQ difference scores (p = .006). Thus, visual memory scores in isolation failed to differentiate groups with RTLE and LTLE; however, within-patient differences between visual memory and other cognitive abilities successfully differentiated the groups. These results highlight the importance of using an intraindividual model of neuropsychological assessment to identify relative weaknesses potentially associated with the epileptogenic region., Competing Interests: Declaration of competing interest None of the authors have any conflict of interest to disclose., (Copyright © 2020 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.)

Face attractiveness can influence memory for previously seen faces. This effect has been shown to differ for young and older perceivers. Two parallel studies examined the moderation of both the age of the face and the age of the perceiver on the relationship between facial attractiveness and face memory. Study 1 comprised 29 young and 31 older participants; Study 2 comprised 25 young and 24 older participants. In both studies, participants completed an incidental face encoding and a surprise old/new recognition test with young and older faces that varied in face attractiveness. Face attractiveness affected memory for young but not older faces. In addition, young but not older perceivers showed a linear effect of facial attractiveness on memory for young faces, while both young and older perceivers showed a quadratic effect on memory for young faces. These findings extend previous work by demonstrating that the effect of facial attractiveness on face memory is a function of both the age of the perceiver and the age of the face. Factors that could account for such moderations of face and perceiver age on the associations between face attractiveness and face memory are discussed (e.g. age differences in social goals and face similarity/distinctiveness).

At the group level, women consistently perform better in face memory tasks than men and also show earlier and larger N170 components of event-related brain potentials (ERP), considered to indicate perceptual structural encoding of faces. Here we investigated sex differences in the relationship between the N170 and face memory performance in 152 men and 141 women at group mean and individual differences levels. ERPs and performance were measured in separate tasks, avoiding statistical dependency between the two. We confirmed previous findings about superior face memory in women and a-sex-independent-negative relationship between N170 latency and face memory. However, whereas in men, better face memory was related to larger N170 components, face memory in women was unrelated with the amplitude or latency of the N170. These data provide solid evidence that individual differences in face memory within men are at least partially related to more intense structural face encoding., (© The Author(s) 2020. Published by Oxford University Press.)

Traditionally, developmental prosopagnosia (DP) has been thought of as an apperceptive condition that hinders individuals' ability to encode face structure. However, several authors have recently raised the possibility that many DPs may be able to form accurate percepts, but be unable to maintain those percepts over time. The present study sought to distinguish these possibilities. In our first experiment 16 DPs and 22 typical controls completed a delayed match-to-sample task with face and car stimuli, with a retention interval of 1-second (low demand) or 6-seconds (high demand). As expected, the participants with DP were worse than the controls at face matching, and were disproportionately impaired at matching faces relative to cars. However, the relative degree of impairment seen in the DPs did not interact with retention interval; they exhibited similar levels of impairment when matching faces with 1- and 6-second delays. Next, we compared the performance of 72 DPs and 54 typical controls on the Cambridge Face Perception Test (CFPT), a task that measures face perception ability in a way that minimises the memory demands. As expected, we found that the DPs were impaired at the group level. This difference was not attributable to a few individuals with an apperceptive profile; rather we found evidence that the distribution of CFPT scores seen in the DP sample was shifted relative to that of typical controls. Some heterogeneity is likely in any neurodevelopmental population, and DP is no different. Generally, however, these findings suggest that selective STFM impairment may be relatively uncommon in this population. Instead, deficits of perceptual encoding may play a larger role in DP than currently acknowledged., (Copyright © 2018 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.)

How people process images is known to affect memory for those images, but these effects have typically been studied using explicit task instructions to vary encoding. Here, we investigate the effects of intrinsic variation in processing on subsequent memory, testing whether recognizing an ambiguous stimulus as meaningful (as a face vs as shape blobs) predicts subsequent visual memory even when matching the perceptual features and the encoding strategy between subsequently remembered and subsequently forgotten items. We show in adult humans of either sex that single trial EEG activity can predict whether participants will subsequently remember an ambiguous Mooney face image (e.g., an image that will sometimes be seen as a face and sometimes not be seen as a face). In addition, we show that a classifier trained only to discriminate between whether participants perceive a face versus non-face can generalize to predict whether an ambiguous image is subsequently remembered. Furthermore, when we examine the N170, an event-related potential index of face processing, we find that images that elicit larger N170s are more likely to be remembered than those that elicit smaller N170s, even when the exact same image elicited larger or smaller N170s across participants. Thus, images processed as meaningful, in this case as a face, during encoding are better remembered than identical images that are not processed as a face. This provides strong evidence that understanding the meaning of a stimulus during encoding plays a critical role in visual memory. SIGNIFICANCE STATEMENT Is visual memory inherently visual or does meaning and other conceptual information necessarily play a role even in memory for detailed visual information? Here we show that it is easier to remember an image when it is processed in a meaningful way, as indexed by the amount of category-specific brain activity it elicits. In particular, we use single-trial EEG activity to predict whether an image will be subsequently remembered, and show that the main driver of this prediction ability is whether or not an image is seen as meaningful or non-meaningful. This shows that the extent to which an image is processed as meaningful can be used to predict subsequent memory even when controlling for perceptual factors and encoding strategies that typically differ across images., (Copyright © 2019 the authors 0270-6474/19/391100-09$15.00/0.)

Rationale: The effect of alcohol intoxication on witness memory and performance has been the subject of research for some time, however, whether intoxication affects facial composite construction has not been investigated., Objectives: Intoxication was predicted to adversely affect facial composite construction., Methods: Thirty-two participants were allocated to one of four beverage conditions consisting of factorial combinations of alcohol or placebo at face encoding, and later construction. Participants viewed a video of a target person and constructed a composite of this target the following day. The resulting images were presented as a full face composite, or a part face consisting of either internal or external facial features to a second sample of participants who provided likeness ratings as a measure of facial composite quality., Results: Intoxication at face encoding had a detrimental impact on the quality of facial composites produced the following day, suggesting that alcohol impaired the encoding of the target faces. The common finding that external compared to internal features are more accurately represented was demonstrated, even following alcohol at encoding. This finding was moderated by alcohol and target face gender such that alcohol at face encoding resulted in reduced likeness of external features for male composite faces only., Conclusions: Moderate alcohol intoxication impairs the quality of facial composites, adding to existing literature demonstrating little effect of alcohol on line-up studies. The impact of intoxication on face perception mechanisms, and the apparent narrowing of processing to external face areas such as hair, is discussed in the context of alcohol myopia theory.

This review focuses on facial recognition abilities in children and adolescents with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). A systematic review, using PRISMA guidelines, was conducted to identify original articles published prior to May 2017 pertaining to memory, face recognition, affect recognition, facial expression recognition and recall of faces in children and adolescents with ADHD. The qualitative synthesis based on different studies shows a particular focus of the research on facial affect recognition without paying similar attention to the structural encoding of facial recognition. In this review, we further investigate facial recognition abilities in children and adolescents with ADHD, providing synthesis of the results observed in the literature, while detecting face recognition tasks used on face processing abilities in ADHD and identifying aspects not yet explored., (Copyright © 2018 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.)

It is often assumed that upright faces are represented in a holistic fashion, while representations of inverted faces are essentially part-based. To assess this hypothesis, we recorded event-related potentials (ERPs) during a sequential face identity matching task where successively presented pairs of upright or inverted faces were either identical or differed with respect to their internal features, their external features, or both. Participants' task was to report on each trial whether the face pair was identical or different. To track the activation of visual face memory representations, we measured N250r components that emerge over posterior face-selective regions during the activation of visual face memory representations by a successful identity match. N250r components to full identity repetitions were smaller and emerged later for inverted as compared to upright faces, demonstrating that image inversion impairs face identity matching processes. For upright faces, N250r components were also elicited by partial repetitions of external or internal features, which suggest that the underlying identity matching processes are not exclusively based on non-decomposable holistic representations. However, the N250r to full identity repetitions was super-additive (i.e., larger than the sum of the two N250r components to partial repetitions of external or internal features) for upright faces, demonstrating that holistic representations were involved in identity matching processes. For inverted faces, N250r components to full and partial identity repetitions were strictly additive, indicating that the identity matching of external and internal features operated in an entirely part-based fashion. These results provide new electrophysiological evidence for qualitative differences between representations of upright and inverted faces in the occipital-temporal face processing system., (Copyright © 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.)

Accurate face processing skills are pivotal for typical social cognition, and impairments in this ability characterise various clinical conditions (e.g., prosopagnosia). No study to date has investigated whether transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) can causally enhance face processing. In addition, the category- and the process-specificity of tDCS effects, as well as the role of the timing of neuromodulation with respect to the execution of cognitive tasks are still unknown. In this single-blind, sham-controlled study, we examined whether the administration of anodal-tDCS (a-tDCS) over the right occipital cortex of healthy volunteers (N=64) enhances performance on perceptual and memory tasks involving both face and object stimuli. Neuromodulation was delivered in two conditions: online (a-tDCS during task execution) and offline (a-tDCS before task execution). The results demonstrate that offline a-tDCS enhances the perception and memory performance of both faces and objects. There was no effect of online a-tDCS on behaviour. Furthermore, the offline effect was site-specific since a-tDCS over the sensory-motor cortex did not lead to behavioural changes. Our results add relevant information about the breadth of cognitive processes and visual stimuli that can be modulated by tDCS, and about the design of effective neuromodulation protocols, which have implications for advancing theories in cognitive neuroscience and clinical applications., (Copyright © 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.)

Cognitive models propose that face recognition is accomplished through a series of discrete stages, including perceptual representation of facial structure, and encoding and retrieval of facial information. This implies that impaired face recognition can result from failures of face perception, face memory, or both. Studies of acquired prosopagnosia, autism spectrum disorders, and the development of normal face recognition support the idea that face perception and face memory are distinct processes, yet this distinction has received little attention in developmental prosopagnosia (DP). To address this issue, we tested the face perception and face memory of children and adults with DP. By definition, face memory is impaired in DP, so memory deficits were present in all participants. However, we found that all children, but only half of the adults had impaired face perception. Thus, results from adults indicate that face perception and face memory are dissociable, while the results from children provide no evidence for this division. Importantly, our findings raise the possibility that DP is qualitatively different in childhood versus adulthood. We discuss theoretical explanations for this developmental pattern and conclude that longitudinal studies are necessary to better understand the developmental trajectory of face perception and face memory deficits in DP., (Copyright © 2014 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.. All rights reserved.)

Dysmorphic concerns are a core symptom of body dysmorphic disorder (BDD), a mental disorder characterized by a preoccupation with perceived appearance-related flaws. Different cognitive and perceptual biases are associated with dysmorphic concern or BDD, including object-related short-term memory deficits and superior short-term memory performance for facial features. A face-related long-term memory bias might explain the feature of perceiving flaws and why individuals with BDD experience adverse outcomes of cosmetic surgery. The present study aimed at investigating long-term memory (LTM) performance for different facial stimuli. 62 participants completed an online experiment (30 with low and 32 with high dysmorphic concern; 39 without and 23 with self-reported BDD). The experiment consisted of two consecutive old/new recognition tasks, testing memory performance of whole faces and facial features. LTM performance was higher for whole faces than for facial features across groups. Neither significant differences between the low and high dysmorphic concern groups nor an interaction of group x stimulus type were found. Post hoc exploratory analyses revealed lower long-term memory performance in individuals with versus without self-reported BDD. The results indicate that memory performance might be only affected in BDD rather than non-clinical or non–BDD-specific dysmorphic concerns. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Multiple psychological processes are required in order for a face to be recognised from memory. However, when testing face memory using tasks such as the Cambridge Face Memory Task (CFMT), it is rare for studies to attempt to account for individual differences in face perception and face matching in order to isolate variance in face memory specifically. In Study 1, the Oxford Face Matching Test (OFMT) was used to assess face matching and face perception in a large sample of participants (N = 1,112). Results revealed independent contributions of face perception and matching to CFMT performance, and these results replicated with the Glasgow Face Matching Test. In Study 2, the same procedure was used to test face perception, face matching and face memory in a group of 57 autistic adults and a matched neurotypical control group. Results revealed impaired face perception and memory in the individuals with autism, but intact face matching. Face perception may therefore act as a potential intervention target for individuals with autism who exhibit face recognition impairments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Tip-of-the-tongue states are subjective experiences that unrecalled target words will be remembered. This study investigates if the visual fluency of familiar faces affects the likelihood of tip-of-the-tongue experiences (TOTs) as well as name recall and name recognition. To manipulate visual fluency, three levels of clarity for 396 celebrity faces were set: high, medium, and low clarity. Four hundred and twenty-nine participants were asked to recall the last names of the celebrities for all clarity levels, and, if they did not recall, to indicate if they experienced a TOT. Following the TOT question, they performed a name recognition test. Results showed that higher-clarity faces resulted in higher TOT rates than lower-clarity faces for unrecalled faces. Name recall was also higher for clearer faces. However, clarity level did not affect the correct answer rate on the name recognition test. These results support the view that perceptual cue-based factors influence TOT experiences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Many Western people enjoy sunshine, and through the sun's stimulated increase in melanin, the skin tone or skin complexion will darken (and lighten again during winter). Although the initial salience of such a new look is remarkable – especially in the face – we seem to adapt to this new look relatively quickly. Research on face adaptation in general repeatedly showed that the inspection of manipulated versions of faces (so-called adaptor faces) leads to a change of the perception of subsequently presented faces. The present study investigates face adaptation to very natural changes in faces such as changes in complexion. Methods: During the adaptation phase in the present study, participants saw faces with either strongly increased or decreased complexion. After a pause of 5 min, participants had to identify the veridical (non-manipulated) face out of two faces (a face slightly manipulated in complexion combined with the non-manipulated face) during a test phase. Results: Results show strong adaptation effects to decreased complexion intensities. Discussion: It seems that we are updating our facial representations in memory quite quickly (i.e., optimizing our processing through adaptation) and seem to sustain those new representations over a certain timespan (at least 5 min). Our results demonstrate that changes in complexion draw our attention for deeper analysis (at least with decreased complexion). However, it loses its informative quality quickly via fast and relatively sustainable adaptation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Virtual faces have been found to be rated less human-like and remembered worse than photographic images of humans. What it is in virtual faces that yields reduced memory has so far remained unclear. The current study investigated face memory in the context of virtual agent faces and human faces, real and manipulated, considering two factors of predicted influence, i.e., corneal reflections and skin contrast. Corneal reflections referred to the bright points in each eye that occur when the ambient light reflects from the surface of the cornea. Skin contrast referred to the degree to which skin surface is rough versus smooth. We conducted two memory experiments, one with high-quality virtual agent faces (Experiment 1) and the other with the photographs of human faces that were manipulated (Experiment 2). Experiment 1 showed better memory for virtual faces with increased corneal reflections and skin contrast (rougher rather than smoother skin). Experiment 2 replicated these findings, showing that removing the corneal reflections and smoothening the skin reduced memory recognition of manipulated faces, with a stronger effect exerted by the eyes than the skin. This study highlights specific features of the eyes and skin that can help explain memory discrepancies between real and virtual faces and in turn elucidates the factors that play a role in the cognitive processing of faces. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Previous research has explored how emotional valence (positive or negative) affected face-context associative memory, while little is known about how arousing stimuli that share the same valence but differ in emotionality are bound together and retained in memory. In this study, we manipulated the emotional similarity between the target face and the face associated with the context emotion (i.e., congruent, high similarity, and low similarity), and examined the effect of emotional similarity of negative emotion (i.e., disgust, anger, and fear) on face-context associative memory. Our results showed that the greater the emotional similarity between the faces, the better the face memory and face-context associative memory were. These findings suggest that the processing of facial expression and its associated context may benefit from taking into account the emotional similarity between the faces. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It has been argued that autistic individuals have difficulties with face memory but typical face perception. However, only one previous study has examined both face memory and face perception in the same individuals, and this study was conducted with a small group of autistic children. Here, face recognition was examined with a group of autistic adults using two face perception tasks (including one designed to avoid a neurotypical bias) and a standard test of face memory. Self-reported face recognition difficulties in everyday life were also recorded. The group of adults with autism scored lower than a matched neurotypical control group on all face tasks and reported more problems with face recognition in everyday life. On the whole, results suggest difficulties with both face perception and face memory in autistic adults, although it should be noted that a wide range of scores were recorded from the autistic individuals, with some scoring in the neurotypical range. It is well known that some people with autism have difficulties recognizing faces. It is generally thought that this is not because autistic individuals cannot perceive faces, but because autistic individuals have greater problems than people without autism in remembering faces. Here, we worked with a group of autistic adults and a group of non-autistic adults to test their ability to perceive and remember faces. We also asked each person to report any difficulties that they have with recognizing faces in everyday life. We find that, as a group, people with autism have difficulties with both remembering and perceiving faces, and report more problems recognizing faces in everyday life. However, it is worth noting that we observed a wide range of scores in the group of people with autism, with some autistic participants scoring as well as the group of people without autism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recognizing familiar faces requires a comparison of the incoming perceptual information with mental face representations stored in memory. Mounting evidence indicates that these representations adapt quickly to recently perceived facial changes. This becomes apparent in face adaptation studies where exposure to a strongly manipulated face alters the perception of subsequent face stimuli: original, non-manipulated face images then appear to be manipulated, while images similar to the adaptor are perceived as "normal." The face adaptation paradigm serves as a good tool for investigating the information stored in facial memory. So far, most of the face adaptation studies focused on configural (second-order relationship) face information, mainly neglecting non-configural face information (i.e., that does not affect spatial face relations), such as color, although several (non-adaptation) studies were able to demonstrate the importance of color information in face perception and identification. The present study therefore focuses on adaptation effects on saturation color information and compares the results with previous findings on brightness. The study reveals differences in the effect pattern and robustness, indicating that adaptation effects vary considerably even within the same class of non-configural face information. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Face memory is critical for social functioning. Our study examined whether children and adolescents with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) have a face memory deficit relative to those with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), another commonly occurring neurodevelopmental condition that is associated with socio-emotional and cognitive deficits. Children and adolescents with ASD and ADHD as well as typically developing (TD) peers were divided into two face-looking time conditions to determine the effect of the duration of looking time on memory for faces. Our goal was to determine whether children and adolescents with ASD would demonstrate poorer face memory skills than their ADHD and TD counterparts, and whether increased face-looking time would improve face memory in children and adolescents in these three diagnostic categories. Results revealed that children and adolescents with ASD exhibit a face memory deficit compared to their ADHD and TD peers that does not improve even after increasing the duration of time spent looking at faces. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Self-relevant stimuli (i.e. meaningful/important to the observer and related to the self) are typically remembered better than other-relevant stimuli. However, whether a self-relevance memory benefit could be conferred to a novel neutral face, remains to be seen. Recent studies have shown that emotional responses to neutral faces can be altered by using a preceding sentence as context that varies in terms of self-relevance (self/other-relevant) and valence (positive/negative; e.g. "S/he thinks your comment is dumb/smart"). We adapted this paradigm to investigate whether the context conferred by the preceding sentence also impacts memorability of the subsequently presented face. Participants saw faces primed with contextual sentences and rated how aroused, and how positive or negative, the faces made them feel. Later incidental recognition accuracy for the faces was greater when these had been preceded by self-relevant compared to other-relevant sentences. Faces preceded by self-relevant contexts were also rated as more arousing. There was no impact of sentence valence on arousal ratings or on recognition memory for faces. Sentence self-relevance and valence interacted to affect participants' ratings of how positive or negative the faces made them feel during encoding, but did not interact to impact later recognition. Our results indicate that initial social encounters can have a lasting effect on one's memory of another person, producing an enhanced memory trace of that individual. We propose that the effect is driven by an arousal-based mechanism, elicited by faces perceived to be self-relevant. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The own‐age bias (OAB) is suggested to be caused by perceptual‐expertise and/or social‐cognitive mechanisms. Bryce and Dodson (2013, Psychology and Aging, 28, 87, Exp 2) provided support for the social‐cognitive account, demonstrating an OAB for participants who encountered a mixed‐list of own‐ and other‐age faces, but not for participants who encountered a pure‐list of only own‐ or other‐age faces. They proposed that own‐age/other‐age categorization, and the resulting OAB, only emerge when age is made salient in the mixed‐list condition. Our study aimed to replicate this finding using methods typically used to investigate the OAB to examine their robustness and contribution to our understanding of how the OAB forms. Across three experiments that removed theoretically unimportant components of the original paradigm, varied face sex, and included background scenes, the OAB emerged under both mixed‐list and pure‐list conditions. These results are more consistent with a perceptual‐expertise than social‐cognitive account of the OAB, but may suggest that manipulating age salience using mixed‐list and pure‐list presentations is not sufficient to alter categorization processes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objectives: Patients with Parkinson's disease (PD) exhibit impaired semantic and socioemotional processes, which are thought to be related to dysfunctions in the fronto-striatal circuit. However, little is known about how the memory enhancement by these processes was reduced in PD. The present study investigated this issue. Methods: The retrieval performance of face memories encoded by semantic and socioemotional processes was compared between 24 PD patients and 24 age-matched healthy controls (HC). During encoding, participants were presented with unfamiliar faces and made judgment about them in three encoding conditions of semantic judgment (Semantics), attractiveness judgment (Attractiveness), and form judgment (Form). In Semantics, participants rated to what degree each face looked like an office worker, whereas in Attractiveness, participants rated how attractive each face was. The Form condition as a control required participants to judge the shape of each face. During retrieval after encoding, participants made old or new judgment for target and distracter faces. Results: In HC, the retrieval of faces encoded by Semantics and Attractiveness was significantly more accurate than that encoded by Form, whereas this memory enhancement was not identified in PD. In addition, individual scores in frontal lobe function and long-term memory correlated with the retrieval performance of memories encoded in Semantics and Attractiveness but not Form. Conclusions: These findings suggest that the processing of semantic and socioemotional signals conveyed from faces could be impaired in PD and that the impairment of these processes could decrease the enhancement of face memories by semantic and socioemotional elaborations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Forgetting someone's name is a common failure of memory, and often occurs despite being able to recognise that person's face. This gives rise to the widespread view that memory for names is generally worse than memory for faces. However, this everyday error confounds stimulus class (faces vs. names) with memory task: recognition versus recall. Here we compare memory for faces and names when both are tested in the same recognition memory framework. Contrary to the common view, we find a clear advantage for names over faces. Across three experiments, we show that recognition of previously unfamiliar names exceeds recognition of previously unfamiliar faces. This advantage persists, even when the same face pictures are repeated at learning and test—a picture-memory task known to produce high levels of performance. Differential performance between names and faces disappears in recognition memory for familiar people. The results are discussed with reference to representational complexity and everyday memory errors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Highlights • The kernel of truth hypothesis suggests face shape supports personality judgments. • Thus, those who have better memory for faces could be better judges of personality. • We find no evidence of this in a large sample (n = 792). • We replicate previous relationships between trait extraversion and face memory. • We find evidence of target person's age being important in accurate trait judgment. Abstract It is suggested that accurate personality judgments of faces are driven by a morphological 'kernel of truth' from face shape. We hypothesised that this relationship could lead to those with better face identification ability being better at personality judgments. We investigated the relationship between face memory, face matching, Big Five personality traits, and accuracy in recognising Big Five personality traits from 50 photographs of unknown faces. In our sample (n = 792) there was overall good (but varying) face memory and personality judgment accuracy. However, there was convincing evidence that these two skills do not correlate (all r < 0.06). We also replicate the known relationship between extraversion and face memory ability in the largest sample to date. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• A recent behavioral study found that participants made fewer "old" responses to highly similar faces than less similar faces. • The current fMRI study sought to determine if these results reflected memory inhibition. • Correct rejection of highly similar faces was associated with increased activity in the right prefrontal cortex. • Negative functional connectivity was found between the prefrontal cortex and regions associated with face processing and memory retrieval. • These results suggest that prefrontal cortex-mediated inhibition supports face recognition. Inhibitory processes are thought to be important for memory function. A recent behavioral study that employed a face recognition paradigm reported that participants made fewer "old" responses to highly similar faces than less similar faces, providing evidence that memory for faces may rely on related-item inhibition. However, these results could also be explained by a non-inhibitory recall-to-reject process. The current study sought to use fMRI connectivity analysis to distinguish between these hypotheses. Although both hypotheses predict correct rejection of highly similar faces will produce activity in the prefrontal cortex, the inhibition hypothesis predicts negative connectivity between the prefrontal cortex and regions associated with memory retrieval and face processing, whereas the recall-to-reject hypothesis predicts positive connectivity between these regions. During the study phase, participants were presented with male and female faces. During the test phase, they viewed old faces, related face morphs (20–80% similar to old faces), and new faces, and made "old"–"new" judgements. Correct rejection of highly similar face morphs was associated with increased activity in the right lateral prefrontal cortex and negative connectivity between this region and regions associated with face processing and memory retrieval. These results indicate that prefrontal cortex-mediated memory inhibition supports face recognition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and autism-like traits are associated with deficits in face memory ability, although it is not yet clear whether this deficit reflects a specific aspect of the ASD/autism-like phenotype. We addressed this issue using a neurotypical sample of adolescent twins (Ncomplete pairs = 782) drawn from the Twins Early Development Study who were assessed on face and object memory performance alongside two core aspects of autism-like traits: (i) difficulties with social behavior/interactions, and (ii) attention to detail. We observed a negative association between face memory ability and difficulties with social behavior/interactions. This association reflected an overlapping genetic etiology: heritable influences acting on face memory ability are associated with the social difficulties aspects of autism-like traits. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The reported experiment investigated memory of unfamiliar faces and how it is influenced by race, facial expression, direction of gaze and observers’ level of social anxiety. In total, 87 Japanese participants initially memorized images of Oriental and Caucasian faces displaying either happy or angry expressions with direct or averted gaze. They then saw the previously seen faces and additional distractor faces displaying neutral expressions and judged whether they had seen them before. Their level of social anxiety was measured with a questionnaire. Regardless of gaze or race of the faces, recognition for faces studied with happy expressions was more accurate than for those studied with angry expressions (happiness advantage), but this tendency weakened for people with higher levels of social anxiety, possibly due to their increased anxiety for positive feedback regarding social interactions. Interestingly, the reduction in the happiness advantage observed for the highly anxious participants was more prominent for the own-race faces than for the other-race faces. The results suggest that angry expression disrupts processing of identity-relevant features of the faces, but the memory for happy faces is affected by the social anxiety traits, and the magnitude of the impact may depend on the importance of the face. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Within memory processing, feature and conjunction effects refer to higher false alarms (incorrectly naming items as previously seen) for stimuli with partial/all features taken from different previously studied versus novel items. In this study, we compared feature--conjunction effects in the memory tasks of both item recognition and source retrieval, using faces as stimuli. We found greater feature--conjunction effects on source retrieval versus item recognition tasks, though participants gave slower responses on source retrieval versus item recognition. Thus, our data were consistent with dual-process memory theory in which familiarity contributes to high false alarms in compound faces even while feature--conjunction effects enhance recollection in source retrieval. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Aim of this study was to investigate the preferential looking behaviour, subsequent to a familiarization task (8-min) with a previously responsive or motionless face, before and after a sleep cycle. Moreover, the role of the active sleep in memory consolidation of the responsive or motionless faces was explored. Hypotheses were that the newborns undergoing a motionless familiarization will exhibit a novelty effect (preference for the novel face) whereas the newborns undergoing a responsive familiarization will show a familiarity effect (preference for the known face) before and after the sleep cycle; moreover, the amount of active sleep will be associated with the looking time at the known face after a sleep cycle. Forty-five healthy full-term newborns were randomly assigned to two groups (group 1: motionless-familiarization and group 2: responsive-familiarization); in both groups newborns were video-recorded during four post-familiarization face-preference tasks, two of them performed before and two after a sleep cycle. During the pre-sleep-trials, there was not a significant preference for one face in both groups. During the post-sleep trials, the newborns showed a clear preference for the novel face. This effect was more evident in group 1. Only in group 2 there was a significant positive correlation between the active sleep duration and the looking duration at the known-face during the post-sleep trials (r=0.41; p=0.040). Multiple regression confirmed that only in the group 2 the total duration of the active sleep was associated with the looking duration at the known-face during the post-sleep trials (Adjusted R2=0.13; β=0.41; t=2.2; p=0.040). Findings showed that in newborns the face representation can be recalled after a sleep cycle. Moreover, the amount of the active sleep predicted the post-sleep looking toward the known-face only in the newborns who interactively familiarized with the face. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Face perception is characterized by configural processing, which depends on visual information in the low spatial frequency (LSF) ranges. However, it is unclear whether LSF content is equally important for face memory. The present study investigated how face information in the low and high SF range plays a role in the configural encoding of faces for short-term and long-term recall. Moreover, we examined how SF-dependent face memorization develops in female adolescence, by comparing children (9–10-year-olds), adolescents (12–13-year-olds and 15–16-year-olds), and young adults (21–32-year-olds). Results show that similar to face perception, delayed face recognition was consistently facilitated by LSF content. However, only adults were able to adequately employ configural LSF cues for short-term recall, analogous to the slow maturation of LSF-driven configural face perception reported by previous studies. Moreover, the insensitivity to face inversion of early adolescents revealed their inadequate use of configural face cues regardless of SF availability, corroborating previous reports on an adolescent “dip” in face recognition. Like face perception, face recognition has a protracted maturational course. In (female) adolescence, sensitivity to configural LSF cues is developed, which aids not only configural face perception but also face memorization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The other-race effect in face identification has been reported in many situations and by many different ethnicities, yet it remains poorly understood. One reason for this lack of clarity may be a limitation in the methodologies that have been used to test it. Experiments typically use an old–new recognition task to demonstrate the existence of the other-race effect, but such tasks are susceptible to different social and perceptual influences, particularly in terms of the extent to which all faces are equally individuated at study. In this paper we report an experiment in which we used a face learning methodology to measure the other-race effect. We obtained naturalistic photographs of Chinese and Caucasian individuals, which allowed us to test the ability of participants to generalize their learning to new ecologically valid exemplars of a face identity. We show a strong own-race advantage in face learning, such that participants required many fewer trials to learn names of own-race individuals than those of other-race individuals and were better able to identify learned own-race individuals in novel naturalistic stimuli. Since our methodology requires individuation of all faces, and generalization over large image changes, our finding of an other-race effect can be attributed to a specific deficit in the sensitivity of perceptual and memory processes to other-race faces. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research on eye witness memory in older children and adults revealed that verbally describing unfamiliar faces impairs later recognition of these faces, known as the “verbal overshadowing effect”. The aim of this study was to investigate whether a verbal overshadowing effect occurs in 4- to 6-year olds, too, and whether visualization (i.e., drawing the seen face) might elicit a visual overshadowing effect. Instead of a verbal overshadowing effect, a verbal facilitation effect was revealed with verbal intelligence being a significant predictor for recognition accuracy in the verbalization group but not in the control group. No effect of visualization was observed on recognition accuracy. Potential explanations for the results are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

It is a common research finding that conscious thought helps people to avoid racial discrimination. These three experiments, however, illustrate that conscious thought may increase biased face memory, which leads to increased judgment bias (i.e., preferring White to Black individuals). In Experiments 1 and 2, university students formed impressions of Black and White housemate candidates. They judged the candidates either immediately (immediate decision condition), thought about their judgments for a few minutes (conscious thought condition), or performed an unrelated task for a few minutes (unconscious thought condition). Conscious thinkers and immediate decision-makers showed a stronger face memory bias than unconscious thinkers, and this mediated increased judgment bias, although not all results were significant. Experiment 3 used a new, different paradigm and showed that a Black male was remembered as darker after a period of conscious thought than after a period of unconscious thought. Implications for racial prejudice are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Observers interact with artificial faces in a range of different settings and in many cases must remember and identify computer-generated faces. In general, however, most adults have heavily biased experience favoring real faces over synthetic faces. It is well known that face recognition abilities are affected by experience such that faces belonging to “out-groups” defined by race or age are more poorly remembered and harder to discriminate from one another than faces belonging to the “in-group”. Here, we examine the extent to which artificial faces form an “out-group” in this sense when other perceptual categories are matched. We rendered synthetic faces using photographs of real human faces and compared performance in a memory task and a discrimination task across real and artificial versions of the same faces. We found that real faces were easier to remember, but only slightly more discriminable than artificial faces. Artificial faces were also equally susceptible to the well-known face inversion effect, suggesting that while these patterns are still processed by the human visual system in a face-like manner, artificial appearance does compromise the efficiency of face processing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There are many ways to assess face perception skills. In this study, we describe a novel task battery FEAST (Facial Expressive Action Stimulus Test) developed to test recognition of identity and expressions of human faces as well as stimulus control categories. The FEAST consists of a neutral and emotional face memory task, a face and shoe identity matching task, a face and house part-to-whole matching task, and a human and animal facial expression matching task. The identity and part-to-whole matching tasks contain both upright and inverted conditions. The results provide reference data of a healthy sample of controls in two age groups for future users of the FEAST. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Past research shows that adults often display poor memory for racially ambiguous and racial outgroup faces, with both face types remembered worse than own-race faces. In the present study, the authors examined whether children also show this pattern of results. They also examined whether emerging essentialist thinking about race predicts children's memory for faces. Seventy-four White children (ages 4-9 years) completed a face-memory task comprising White, Black, and racially ambiguous Black- White faces. Essentialist thinking about race was also assessed (i.e., thinking of race as immutable and biologically based). White children who used essentialist thinking showed the same bias as White adults: They remembered White faces significantly better than they remembered ambiguous and Black faces. However, children who did not use essentialist thinking remembered both White and racially ambiguous faces significantly better than they remembered Black faces. This finding suggests a specific shift in racial thinking wherein the boundaries between racial groups become more discrete, highlighting the importance of how race is conceptualized in judgments of racially ambiguous individuals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Although there is abundant evidence for female superiority in Face Cognition (FC), a number of questions regarding sex differences remain to be addressed. Here we report a reanalysis of data on the level of latent factors, modeled on the basis of an extensive test battery applied to three samples of over 800 adults in all. In independent samples the measurement structure of FC was invariant for both sexes, indicating that the measurement of the construct does not depend on the context variable sex, and investigating mean performance differences will not be biased by measurement issues — a neglected aspect in previous studies. We confirmed female superiority for face perception (FP) and face memory (FM). For the first time we could show that these sex differences prevailed after accounting for sex differences in broadly measured general cognitive functioning and in object perception. Across adult age, sex differences in FM increased due to the rapid decline of this ability in men, whereas performance in women remained stable across adult age. Self-reported social involvement and things-oriented activities moderated sex-differences in FM. Results show that sex differences are salient at the level of specific FC constructs and that they can be partially explained by social involvement. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: Previous studies revealed consistently enhanced recognition memory for same- as compared to other-age faces (own-age bias, OAB) in young adults, but inconsistent results in elderly participants. To resolve these discrepancies, we examined recognition memory and event-related potentials (ERPs) for young and old faces in young participants and two elderly groups, who either reported high or low degrees of daily contact with elderly relative to younger persons. As expected, young adults showed more accurate memory for young versus old faces. While no OAB was found in old/low contact participants, old/high contact participants were more accurate with old versus young faces. ERPs in young adults revealed a parietal old/new effect from 500 to 800ms (hits>correct rejections) for young but not old faces. Whereas no old/new effect was seen in the old/low contact group, the old/high contact participants exhibited a prominent reversed old/new effect (hits

We report data from an experiment that investigated the influence of gaze direction and facial expression on face memory. Participants were shown a set of unfamiliar faces with either happy or angry facial expressions, which were either gazing straight ahead or had their gaze averted to one side. Memory for faces that were initially shown with angry expressions was found to be poorer when these faces had averted as opposed to direct gaze, whereas memory for individuals shown with happy faces was unaffected by gaze direction. We suggest that memory for another individual's face partly depends on an evaluation of the behavioural intention of that individual. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This study addresses two central and controversial issues in developmental prosopagnosia (DP), configuration- versus feature-based face processing and the influence of affective information from either facial or bodily expressions on face recognition. A sample of 10 DPs and 10 controls were tested with a previously developed face and object recognition and memory battery (Facial Expressive Action Stimulus Test, FEAST), a task measuring the influence of emotional faces and bodies on face identity matching (Face–Body Compound task), and an emotionally expressive face memory task (Emotional Face Memory task, FaMe-E). We show that DPs were impaired in upright, but not inverted, face matching but they performed at the level of controls on part-to-whole matching. Second, DPs showed impaired memory for both neutral and emotional faces and scored within the normal range on the Face–Body Compound task. Third, configural perception but not feature-based processing was significantly associated with memory performance. Taken together the results indicate that DPs have a deficit in configural processing at the perception stage that may underlie the memory impairment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Previous research has demonstrated that, presumably as a way to protect one’s current romantic relationship, individuals involved in a heterosexual romantic relationship tend to give lower attractiveness ratings to attractive opposite-sex others as compared to uninvolved individuals (i.e., the derogation effect). The present study importantly extends this research by examining whether romantic relationship status actually biases memory for the facial appearance of attractive (vs. unattractive) mates. To address this issue, we used a reverse-correlation technique (), originally developed to get a visual approximation of an individual’s internal representation of a target category or person. In line with the derogation effect, results demonstrated that romantically involved (vs. uninvolved) individuals indeed held a less attractive memory of a previously encountered attractive mate’s face. Interestingly, they also held a more attractive memory of an unattractive mate’s face as compared to uninvolved individuals. This latter finding may suggest that romantically involved (as compared to uninvolved) individuals differentiate opposite-sex others along the attractiveness dimension less. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Patients with frontal lobe damage and cognitively normal elderly individuals demonstrate increased susceptibility to false facial recognition. In this paper we review neuropsychological evidence consistent with the notion that the common functional impairment underlying face memory distortions in both subject populations is a context recollection/source monitoring deficit, coupled with excessive reliance on relatively preserved facial familiarity signals in recognition decisions. In particular, we suggest that due to the breakdown of strategic memory retrieval, monitoring, and decision operations, individuals with frontal lobe impairment caused by focal damage or age-related functional decline do not have a reliable mechanism for attributing the experience of familiarity to the correct context or source. Memory illusions are mostly apparent under conditions of uncertainty when the face cue does not directly elicit relevant identity-specific contextual information, leaving the source of familiarity unspecified or ambiguous. Based on these findings, we propose that remembering faces is a constructive process that requires dynamic interactions between temporal lobe memory systems that operate in an automatic or bottom-up fashion and frontal executive systems that provide strategic top-down control of recollection. Executive memory control functions implemented by prefrontal cortex play a critical role in suppressing false facial recognition and related source memory misattributions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: This study examined the relationship between individual differences in face memory and eye fixation patterns during face learning. Participants watched short movies of 20 faces and were divided into high and low face memory groups based on their performance in a recognition memory test. No qualitative difference was observed in the eye fixation distribution between high and low groups. Both groups mostly fixed on the internal region of faces, especially the eyes. A difference in the eye fixation pattern by groups was observed in the number of fixations and total fixation time on the eyes, which reflected high face memory participants moving their eyes between the left and right eyes more frequently than low face memory participants. These findings suggest that fixation on the eyes has a functional role in face memory and is related to individual differences in face memory. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Recognizing faces swiftly and accurately is of paramount importance to humans as a social species. Individual differences in the ability to perform these tasks may therefore reflect important aspects of social or emotional intelligence. Although functional models of face cognition based on group and single case studies postulate multiple component processes, little is known about the ability structure underlying individual differences in face cognition. In 2 large individual differences experiments (N = 151 and N = 209), a broad variety of face-cognition tasks were tested and the component abilities of face cognition—face perception, face memory, and the speed of face cognition—were identified and then replicated. Experiment 2 also showed that the 3 face-cognition abilities are clearly distinct from immediate and delayed memory, mental speed, general cognitive ability, and object cognition. These results converge with functional and neuroanatomical models of face cognition by demonstrating the difference between face perception and face memory. The results also underline the importance of distinguishing between speed and accuracy of face cognition. Together our results provide a first step toward establishing face-processing abilities as an independent ability reflecting elements of social intelligence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]