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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.

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.

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 R 2 =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., (Copyright © 2017 Elsevier Inc. 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.)

The capacity of visual working memory for faces is extremely limited, but the reasons for these limitations remain unknown. We employed event-related brain potential measures to demonstrate that individual faces have to be focally attended in order to be maintained in working memory, and that attention is allocated to only a single face at a time. When 2 faces have to be memorized simultaneously in a face identity-matching task, the focus of spatial attention during encoding predicts which of these faces can be successfully maintained in working memory and matched to a subsequent test face. We also show that memory representations of attended faces are maintained in a position-dependent fashion. These findings demonstrate that the limited capacity of face memory is directly linked to capacity limits of spatial attention during the encoding and maintenance of individual face representations. We suggest that the capacity and distribution of selective spatial attention is a dynamic resource that constrains the capacity and fidelity of working memory for faces., (© The Author 2015. Published by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved. For Permissions, please e-mail: journals.permissions@oup.com.)

The shared decline in cognitive abilities, sensory functions (e.g., vision and hearing), and physical health with increasing age is well documented with some research attributing this shared age-related decline to a single common cause (e.g., aging brain). We evaluate the extent to which the common cause hypothesis predicts associations between vision and physical health with social cognition abilities specifically face perception and face memory. Based on a sample of 443 adults (17-88 years old), we test a series of structural equation models, including Multiple Indicator Multiple Cause (MIMIC) models, and estimate the extent to which vision and self-reported physical health are related to face perception and face memory through a common factor, before and after controlling for their fluid cognitive component and the linear effects of age. Results suggest significant shared variance amongst these constructs, with a common factor explaining some, but not all, of the shared age-related variance. Also, we found that the relations of face perception, but not face memory, with vision and physical health could be completely explained by fluid cognition. Overall, results suggest that a single common cause explains most, but not all age-related shared variance with domain specific aging mechanisms evident.

In the current research, we extend past work on the effects of ambient darkness and threat to the domain of memory for expressive faces. In one study, we examined the effects of ambient darkness and individual differences in state anxiety on memory of unfamiliar expressive faces. Here, participants were seated in either a dark or light room and encoded a set of unfamiliar faces with angry, happy, and neutral facial expressions. A subsequent recognition task revealed an interactive effect of ambient darkness, anxiety, and target expression. Highly anxious participants in ambient darkness had worse memory for angry faces than did low-anxiety participants. On the other hand, the recognition performance for happy faces was affected neither by the darkness nor state anxiety. The results suggest not only that ambient darkness has its strongest effect on anxious perceivers, but also that person × situation effects should be considered in face recognition research.

Memory of own-race faces is generally better than memory of other-races faces. This other-race effect (ORE) in face memory has been attributed to differences in contact, holistic processing, and motivation to individuate faces. Since most studies demonstrate the ORE with participants learning and recognizing static, single-view faces, it remains unclear whether the ORE can be generalized to different face learning conditions. Using an old/new recognition task, we tested whether face format at encoding modulates the ORE. The results showed a significant ORE when participants learned static, single-view faces (Experiment 1). In contrast, the ORE disappeared when participants learned rigidly moving faces (Experiment 2). Moreover, learning faces displayed from four discrete views produced the same results as learning rigidly moving faces (Experiment 3). Contact with other-race faces was correlated with the magnitude of the ORE. Nonetheless, the absence of the ORE in Experiments 2 and 3 cannot be readily explained by either more frequent contact with other-race faces or stronger motivation to individuate them. These results demonstrate that the ORE is sensitive to face format at encoding, supporting the hypothesis that relative involvement of holistic and featural processing at encoding mediates the ORE observed in face memory., (© 2014 ARVO.)

Extensive research has supported the existence of a specialized face-processing network that is distinct from the visual processing areas used for general object recognition. The majority of this work has been aimed at characterizing the response properties of the fusiform face area (FFA) and the occipital face area (OFA), which together are thought to constitute the core network of brain areas responsible for facial identification. Although accruing evidence has shown that face-selective patches in the ventral anterior temporal lobes (vATLs) are interconnected with the FFA and OFA, and that they play a role in facial identification, the relative contribution of these brain areas to the core face-processing network has remained unarticulated. Here we review recent research critically implicating the vATLs in face perception and memory. We propose that current models of face processing should be revised such that the ventral anterior temporal lobes serve a centralized role in the visual face-processing network. We speculate that a hierarchically organized system of face processing areas extends bilaterally from the inferior occipital gyri to the vATLs, with facial representations becoming increasingly complex and abstracted from low-level perceptual features as they move forward along this network. The anterior temporal face areas may serve as the apex of this hierarchy, instantiating the final stages of face recognition. We further argue that the anterior temporal face areas are ideally suited to serve as an interface between face perception and face memory, linking perceptual representations of individual identity with person-specific semantic knowledge., (Copyright © 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.)

Many people have experienced the inability to recognize a familiar face in a changed context, a phenomenon known as the "butcher-on-the-bus" effect. Whether this context effect is a facilitation of memory by old contexts or a disturbance of memory by novel contexts is of great debate. Here, we investigated how two types of contextual information associated with target faces influence the recognition performance of the faces using meaningful (scene) or meaningless (scrambled scene) backgrounds. The results showed two different effects of contexts: (1) disturbance on face recognition by changes of scene backgrounds and (2) weak facilitation of face recognition by the re-presentation of the same backgrounds, be it scene or scrambled. The results indicate that the facilitation and disturbance of context effects are actually caused by two different subcomponents of the background information: semantic information available from scene backgrounds and visual array information commonly included in a scene and its scrambled picture. This view suggests visual working memory system can control such context information, so that it switches the way to deal with the contexts information; inhibiting it as a distracter or activating it as a cue for recognizing the current target.

Previous research suggests specific deficits in face perception and memory in older adults, which could reflect a dedifferentiation in the context of a general broadening of cognitive architecture with advanced age. Such dedifferentiation could manifest in a less specialized face processing system. A promising tool to investigate the fine-tuning of face processing in older age is the own-race bias (ORB), a phenomenon reflecting more accurate memory for own-relative to other-race faces, which is related to an expertise-based specialization of early perceptual stages. To investigate whether poor face memory in older age is accompanied by reduced expertise-based specialization of face processing, we assessed event-related brain potential correlates of the ORB in high- vs. low-performing older adults (mean age = 69 years; N = 24 per group). Intriguingly, both older groups demonstrated an equivalent pattern of a behavioral ORB, and a parallel increase in N170 for other-race faces, reflecting less efficient early perceptual processing for this face category. Group differences only emerged independent of face ethnicity: whereas low-performers exhibited a right-lateralized N170, high-performers showed a more bilateral response. This finding may suggest a compensatory mechanism counteracting age-related decline in face perception enabling more efficient encoding into memory in high performers. Overall, our results demonstrate that even a less efficient face processing system in older adults can exhibit preserved expertise-related specialization toward own-race faces.

Background: Children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) show impairment in reciprocal social communication, which includes deficits in social cognition and behavior. Since social cognition and social behavior are considered to be interdependent, it is valuable to examine social processes on multiple levels of analysis. Neuropsychological measures of face processing often reveal deficits in social cognition in ASD including the ability to identify and remember facial information. However, the extent to which neuropsychological measures are associated with or predictive of real-world social behavior is unclear., Methods: The study investigated 66 children (ASD 34, typically developing (TD) 32) using neuropsychological measures of face processing (identity, affect, and memory). Children also participated in a peer interaction paradigm, which allowed observation and coding of natural social interaction behaviors during play with peers (e.g., Self-Play, Cooperative Play, Verbal Bout). ANCOVA, regression, and correlation models analyzed between-group differences, the ability of neuropsychological measures to predict social behavior, and the strength of the associations., Results: Between-group differences were shown on Memory for Faces Delayed and the peer interaction variables Self-Play and Verbal Bout. Regression models indicated that Memory for Faces Delayed predicted the amount of Self-Play, Equipment use alone, and Cooperative Play with peers on the playground. Autism symptomology only predicted verbal exchange with peers., Conclusions: Face memory strongly predicts relevant social engagement patterns in both children with and without ASD. Impairment in facial memory is associated with reduced 'real-world' social interaction and more self-play, whereas higher performance in face memory predicts more cooperative play. Results highlight the strong connection between face memory and reciprocal social interaction, suggesting that improvement in one may benefit the other.