Effects of facial identity on age judgments: evidence from repetition priming

According to current face recognition models, facial identity is processed independently from other visually derived facial aspects, such as facial age. Here we used a repetition priming paradigm to investigate the relationship between the processing of facial identity and facial age. In Experiment 1, participants made speeded age classifications for primed and unprimed faces of famous celebrities. Performance was faster and more accurate for primed compared to unprimed faces, which indicates that the processing of facial age benefits from priming effects. In Experiment 2, priming was also found for preexperimentally unfamiliar faces which were familiarized during the experimental session. In Experiment 3, priming effects were found even when different photos of the same people were presented at study and at test. These results suggest that the processing of age is mediated by memory representations of facial identity.