[The effects of identity of facial expression and person on face recognition: a study using priming paradigm]

Three experiments investigated the effects of identity of facial expression and person of two successively presented faces on face recognition. In each experiment, a combination of a familiar/unfamiliar person with neutral/smile expression was presented. Four different groups of 8 or 12 undergraduates were asked to judge the facial expression or the familiarity of the second face. The results showed that reaction times in both judgments were shorter when the same person repeatedly appeared than when two different people were presented. This repetition effect was not affected by facial expression of the stimulus for expression judgments, while it depended on the expression and familiarity of the first and second faces for familiarity judgments. In facial expression judgments, reaction times to smile faces were shorter than those to the neutral faces, only when subjects were familiar with those faces. This facial expression effect appeared only when the identical familiar and smile person was repeatedly presented for familiarity judgments. These results suggested the interdependency between analysis of facial expression and that of person information in face recognition processes.