Ageing faces in ageing minds: A review on the own-age bias in face recognition

Abstract

Similar to the well-established own-race bias, participants are more accurate at remembering own- relative to other-age faces. An own-age bias (OAB) in face memory was demonstrated in participants older than approximately 5 years. Crucially, the OAB is modulated by contact—participants with substantial contact with other-age persons show either reduced or absent OAB effects. In line with a perceptual expertise account of the phenomenon, holistic processing of other-age faces is less efficient when tested with young adult versus child faces, and differential holistic processing may therefore reflect one mechanism contributing to the OAB. A possible additional contribution of sociocognitive factors to the OAB remains largely untested. Importantly, event-related brain potential studies suggest that the own-race and own-age biases are based on at least partly different mechanisms. Theoretical explanations for different group-based biases in face memory will need to consider these findings.

Keywords:

• Own-age bias
• Faces
• Recognition

The authors' work relating to this paper has been supported by grants of the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG; SCHW 511/8-1, WI 3219/4-1, WI 3219/5-2). We gratefully acknowledge contributions by Carolin S. Altmann, who created the average faces in Figure 1, and Franziska Krahmer for help with the preparation of Figure 3. We thank Dr. Romi Zäske for providing the individual face stimuli in Figure 1, and two anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments on an earlier version of the manuscript.

The authors' work relating to this paper has been supported by grants of the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG; SCHW 511/8-1, WI 3219/4-1, WI 3219/5-2). We gratefully acknowledge contributions by Carolin S. Altmann, who created the average faces in Figure 1, and Franziska Krahmer for help with the preparation of Figure 3. We thank Dr. Romi Zäske for providing the individual face stimuli in Figure 1, and two anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments on an earlier version of the manuscript.