Testing instance models of face repetition priming

Two experiments examining repetition priming in face recognition are reported. They employed eight rather than the more usual two presentation trials so that the prediction made by Logan's (1988) instance model of power function speedup of response time (RT) distributions could be examined. In Experiment 1, we presented the same photograph on each trial; in Experiment 2, we presented photographs of varying poses. Both experiments showed repetition priming effects for familiar and unfamiliar faces, power function speedup for both the mean and the standard deviation of RT and the power function speedup of the quanties of the RT distributions. We argue that our findings are consistent with the predictions made by the instance model and provide an explanatory challenge for alternative theoretical approaches.