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We examine the ability of an autoassociative memory trained with faces to classify faces by race and by sex. The model learns a low-level visual coding of Japanese and Caucasian male and female faces. Since recall of a face from the autoassociative memory is equivalent to computing a weighted sum of the eigenvectors of the memory matrix, faces can be represented by these weights and the set of corresponding eigenvectors. W e show that reasonably accurate classification of the faces by race and sex can be achieved using only these weights. Hence, race and sex information can be extracted in the model without explicitly learning the classification itself.

Principal-component analyses of 4 face-recognition studies uncovered 2 independent components. The first component was strongly related to false-alarm errors with new faces as well as to facial "conjunctions" that recombine features of previously studied faces. The second component was strongly related to hits as well as to the conjunction/new difference in false-alarm errors. The pattern of loadings on both components was impressively invariant across the experiments, which differed in age range of participants, stimulus set, list length, facial orientation, and the presence versus absence of familiarized lures along with conjunction and entirely new lures in the recognition test. Taken together, the findings show that neither component was exclusively related to discrimination, criterion, configural processing, featural processing, context recollection, or familiarity. Rather, the data are consistent with a neuropsychological model that distinguishes frontal and occipitotemporal contributions to face recognition memory. Within the framework of the model, findings showed that frontal and occipitotemporal contributions are discernible from the pattern of individual differences in behavioral performance among healthy young adults. (Contains 5 tables, 17 figures, and 9 footnotes.)

Conjunction errors occur when participants incorrectly identify as "old" novel test stimuli created by recombining parts of two study stimuli (parent items). Prior studies have reported that the conjunction error rate is higher when parent items are studied together than when they are studied apart (a parent proximity effect). In several experiments we attempted to obtain parent proximity effects with naturalistic faces or pairs of symbol strings. We also varied the type of facial conjunction (Experiments 1, 3A-3C), the presentation rate during study (Experiment 5), and the study list length across experiments (long lists in Experiments 1, 3A, 3B, and 3C; short lists in Experiments 2, 4, and 5). Conjunction effects, but not parent proximity effects, occurred in each experiment. The results are consistent with familiarity-based explanations of the conjunction effect but fail to support a feature bundling hypothesis.

Principal-component analyses of 4 face-recognition studies uncovered 2 independent components. The first component was strongly related to false-alarm errors with new faces as well as to facial 'conjunctions' that recombine features of previously studied faces. The second component was strongly related to hits as well as to the conjunction/new difference in false-alarm errors. The pattern of loadings on both components was impressively invariant across the experiments, which differed in age range of participants, stimulus set, list length, facial orientation, and the presence versus absence of familiarized lures along with conjunction and entirely new lures in the recognition test. Taken together, the findings show that neither component was exclusively related to discrimination, criterion, configural processing, featural processing, context recollection, or familiarity. Rather, the data are consistent with a neuropsychological model that distinguishes frontal and occipitotemporal contributions to face recognition memory. Within the framework of the model, findings showed that frontal and occipitotemporal contributions are discernible from the pattern of individual differences in behavioral performance among healthy young adults. Keywords: face recognition, false recognition, individual differences, recognition memory, principalcomponents analysis DOI: 10.1037/a0016368

To link to full-text access for this article, visit this link: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jml.2006.01.002 Byline: Todd C. Jones (a), James C. Bartlett (b), Kimberley A. Wade (c) Keywords: Memory; Recognition memory; Face memory; Conjunction errors; Conjunction effect; Familiarity; Features; Configurations; Parent proximity effects Abstract: Conjunction errors occur when participants incorrectly identify as 'old' novel test stimuli created by recombining parts of two study stimuli (parent items). Prior studies have reported that the conjunction error rate is higher when parent items are studied together than when they are studied apart (a parent proximity effect). In several experiments we attempted to obtain parent proximity effects with naturalistic faces or pairs of symbol strings. We also varied the type of facial conjunction (Experiments 1, 3A-3C), the presentation rate during study (Experiment 5), and the study list length across experiments (long lists in Experiments 1, 3A, 3B, and 3C; short lists in Experiments 2, 4, and 5). Conjunction effects, but not parent proximity effects, occurred in each experiment. The results are consistent with familiarity-based explanations of the conjunction effect but fail to support a feature bundling hypothesis. Author Affiliation: (a) School of Psychology, P.O. Box 600, Victoria University of Wellington, Wellington, New Zealand (b) School of Behavioral and Brain Sciences, University of Texas at Dallas, Richardson, TX 75083-0688, USA (c) Department of Psychology, University of Warwick, Coventry CV4 7AL, UK Article History: Received 3 February 2005; Revised 10 January 2006 Article Note: (footnote) [star] We thank M.C. Jones for providing one of his university yearbooks for the photographs and the University of Iowa Alumni Association for its interest and kind support. We thank Kirsty Novis, Kathryn Taylor, Rebecca Piatek, Stephanie Sharmon, Shaun Hayward, Samantha Cox, K.C. Owen, and Katherine Price for their help with data collection. We also thank Stephanie Sharmon for her help in tidying up and formatting one of the stimulus sets and Kathryn Taylor and Shelley Ford for their help editing an early draft of the manuscript. Finally, we thank Sharon Hannigan for verification of the time parameters for the experiments in . The results of Experiments 1-5 were reported at the 6th Meeting of the Society for Applied Research on Memory and Cognition (SARMAC), Wellington, New Zealand, Janurary 2005. The research was supported by grants awarded to the first author from the School of Psychology and the Faculty of Science, Victoria University of Wellington.

It is well-known that some cognitive processes slow with age but there has been little research into how slowly people can carry out tasks that are required to be undertaken slowly, such as certain pieces of music. A new study investigates the identification of speeded and slowed familiar tunes by younger, middle-aged and older listeners. The study, of nonmusicians and musicians, shows that recognition of slow-to-fast performances is unaffected by age while recognition of fast-to-slow performances declines in the 62-year age range. The increased experience of the musicians results in better performance in both speeded and slowed melodies.

This study compared effects of inversion on perceptual processing of faces with distorted components (eyes and mouths) and faces distorted by altering spatial relations between components. In a rating task, participants inversion reduced the rated grotesqueness of spatially distorted faces but not that of faces with altered components. In a comparison task, pairs of faces were shown side by side; participants judged whether they were identical or different. Inversion greatly reduced the rate at which participants responded within 3 s to pairs that differed spatially, but not pairs that differed componentially. Also, latencies for detecting spatial differences were lengthened by inversion more than latencies for detecting componential differences. Results support the hypothesis that inversion impairs encoding of spatial-relational information more than, or instead of, componential information, depending on the task.

Older people can differentiate tonal hierarchies according to musical principles with the same efficacy as younger people. However, they show greater inclination to classify the notes by pitch height when proximity is made more salient. Musicians have a better sense of tonal hierarchy than nonmusicians. Notes with ambiguous pitch height effects reduce accuracy in tonal differentiation among older adults.

Analyses of the influence of age, musical knowledge, and characteristics of musical impulse on a melodic short-term memory task of identifying musical transpositions in young adults and older listeners revealed that age and experience affected recognition abilities strongly with experience assuming priority as interference was introduced in the task. Both age and experience failed to affect the dominance of tonal over atonal materials. The significance of the findings for various theories of aging and music cognition are discussed.

The results of an experiment to examine perception of disorted faces indicate that wholistic information is used in assessing upright faces but inverting the eyes and mouth of faces leads to judgement based on the component parts of a face. The experiment used faces with inversion of mouths and eyes, faces with distortion due to moving eyes and mouths, and faces with posed expressed aimed to appear grotesque. Inversion appears to interfere with the processing of a certain type of wholistic data, leading to assessment through component parts.

Reports an experiment with five-year-old children which tested the hypothesis that a change in affect between input and test interferes with performance in a nominally noncued free recall test but not with performance on a cued recall test. (JMB)

Two experiments examined affect-dependent memory in preschool/kindergarten and third-grade children. A two-list intentional learning procedure was used to assess the effects of the congruent versus incongruent relationship between happy versus sad affect during initial list learning and happy versus sad affect during a delayed-recall test. (Author/RH)

Young (18-30 years) and older (62-79 years) adults (N = 96) engaged in a 20-min live interaction with the future target in a lineup task. One month later, participants were interviewed about the events in the prior encounter (with or without context reinstatement), and then they saw a target-present (TP) or target-absent (TA) lineup. The lineup was followed by the Benton Face Recognition Test (A. Benton, A. Sivan, K. Hamsher, N. Varney, & O. Spreen, 1994), which correlated positively with accuracy in TP, especially for young adults. False identification in TA was associated with (a) higher scores on a memory self-efficacy scale and (b) higher recall of information about the initial event, although only for seniors. Results suggested that age-related increases in false identification generalize to ecologically valid conditions and that seniors' performance on lineups is negatively related to verbal recall as well as to self-reports of satisfactory experiences with memory in life.