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A familiarity disadvantage for remembering specific images of faces.

2015; American Psychological Association; Volume: 42; Issue: 4 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1037/xhp0000174

1939-1277

Regine Armann, Rob Jenkins, A. Mike Burton,

Visual Attention and Saliency Detection

Familiar faces are remembered better than unfamiliar faces. Furthermore, it is much easier to match images of familiar than unfamiliar faces. These findings could be accounted for by quantitative differences in the ease with which faces are encoded. However, it has been argued that there are also some qualitative differences in familiar and unfamiliar face processing. Unfamiliar faces are held to rely on superficial, pictorial representations, whereas familiar faces invoke more abstract representations. Here we present 2 studies that show, for 1 task, an advantage for unfamiliar faces. In recognition memory, viewers are better able to reject a new picture, if it depicts an unfamiliar face. This rare advantage for unfamiliar faces supports the notion that familiarity brings about some representational changes, and further emphasizes the idea that theoretical accounts of face processing should incorporate familiarity. (PsycINFO Database Record