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Eye Movement Monitoring of Memory
Published on: August 15, 2010
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Cognitive control, attention, and the other race effect in memory
Thackery I Brown1, Melina R Uncapher1,2, Tiffany E Chow3
1Department of Psychology, Stanford University, Stanford, California, United States of America.
Plos One
|March 11, 2017
Summary
The Other Race Effect (ORE) in face memory arises from differences in cognitive control and attention. People show better memory for same-race faces due to increased engagement of attention networks, while forgetting other-race faces is linked to reduced cognitive control during encoding.
Area of Science:
- Cognitive Neuroscience
- Social Psychology
- Neuroimaging
Background:
- The Other Race Effect (ORE) describes the tendency for individuals to exhibit better facial recognition for their own racial group compared to other racial groups.
- This memory bias has significant societal implications and may stem from differential processing of same- and other-race faces during encoding.
- Previous research suggests that varying levels of attention and cognitive control may underlie these memory differences.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate the neural mechanisms underlying the Other Race Effect (ORE) in face memory.
- To test a mechanistic model where differential engagement of frontoparietal networks (involved in attention and cognitive control) and their interaction with face processing regions predict memory performance for same- and other-race faces.
- To elucidate how top-down attention and cognitive control contribute to encoding accuracy for own-group versus other-group faces.
Main Methods:
- Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) was used to monitor brain activity during the intentional encoding of own- and other-race faces.
- Participants included European American (EA) and African American (AA) individuals who encoded faces from both racial groups.
- A recognition memory task was administered approximately 24 hours later to assess memory performance, combined with univariate and psychophysiological interaction (PPI) analyses.
Main Results:
- Univariate analyses showed greater activation in frontoparietal networks associated with top-down attention and cognitive control when encoding same-race faces compared to other-race faces.
- A failure to engage the cognitive control network during the encoding of other-race faces predicted subsequent memory failure for those faces.
- PPI analyses revealed stronger functional connectivity between the medial intraparietal sulcus (attention network) and the fusiform cortex (face processing) during same-race face encoding.
Conclusions:
- The Other Race Effect in face memory is, in part, driven by differential allocation of cognitive control and top-down attention during the encoding phase.
- Enhanced memory for same-race faces is associated with greater attentional engagement with face processing areas.
- Reduced recruitment of cognitive control mechanisms during the encoding of other-race faces is a key factor contributing to memory deficits for out-group faces.
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