Recognition memory for faces: when familiarity supports associative recognition judgments.

Area of Science:

• Cognitive Psychology
• Neuroscience
• Memory Research

Background:

• Recognition memory for single items and associations between items can be dissociated.
• Dual-process theories suggest item recognition uses recollection and familiarity, while associative recognition primarily uses recollection.
• Receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curves reveal differences: curvilinear for item recognition, linear for associative recognition of word pairs.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate if associative recognition ROCs for facial stimuli are linear or curvilinear.
• To determine if familiarity contributes to associative recognition of faces.
• To explore the role of stimulus coherence (gestalt) in associative recognition.

Main Methods:

• Examined associative recognition ROCs for facial stimuli with manipulated central and external features.
• Presented faces both upright and upside down to assess the role of familiarity.
• Analyzed ROC curves to differentiate between linear and curvilinear patterns.

Main Results:

• Upright faces yielded curvilinear associative ROCs, indicating familiarity contributed to associative judgments.
• Upside-down faces resulted in linear associative ROCs, suggesting familiarity's contribution was eliminated.
• Familiarity estimates were significantly above zero for upright faces but not for upside-down faces.

Conclusions:

• Familiarity can support associative recognition judgments when stimuli are encoded as a coherent gestalt, such as upright faces.
• The contribution of familiarity to associative recognition is dependent on the perceptual coherence of the stimulus.
• These findings extend dual-process theories of recognition to visual stimuli and highlight the role of holistic processing.