Face category differentially influences face memories after a delay

ABSTRACT

Faces belonging to the same category as the perceiver are better recognised than faces from different categories when tested immediately. After a delay, the same-category benefit persists and response bias becomes more liberal for other-category but not same-category faces. These effects are typically attributed to better encoding of same-category than other-category faces. To determine whether bias effects after a delay persist when immediate accuracy differences are minimised, Hispanic and Caucasian participants were given more study time for other-category than same-category faces. Memory was tested immediately and after a two-day delay. Discrimination accuracy was higher for other-category than for same-category faces during both test sessions. Bias was equivalent immediately, but after the delay, bias was more conservative for same-category than for other-category faces, especially in Caucasian participants. These results suggest that post-encoding processes differentially influence face memories from different categories, which may have implications for evaluating face memory in everyday situations.

KEYWORDS:

• Memory
• face recognition
• memory consolidation
• response bias

Acknowledgements

We thank Deanna Simon, James McDade, and Ayesha Wickramasinghe for stimuli preparation assistance and Marina Bottiglieri for data collection assistance. C. E. Westerberg and B. Reininger developed the study concept and design. Data collection and analyses were completed by N. J. Wofford and S. Menssor, and all authors contributed to data interpretation. C. E. Westerberg, B. Reininger, and R. G. Deason drafted the manuscript, and all authors provided revisions. All authors approved the final version of the manuscript for submission.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Data availability statement

The data for this study are available from the corresponding author, CEW, upon request, or may be downloaded from the Texas Data Repository at https://doi.org/10.18738/T8/ARUTA6.