The Pre-exposure Technique: A Novel Method for Enhancing the Effects of Imagery in Face-name Association Learning

Abstract

We report the effects of stimulus pre-exposure in combination with either non-specific or imagery instructions on face-name learning in 15 memory-impaired subjects. Pre-exposure involved viewing the face alone (for 6 seconds) and making various judgements about the person depicted (e.g. honesty), prior to being shown the face-name pair for learning (for 4 seconds). When the face-name pairs were shown for 4 seconds accompanied by non-specific instructions, pre-exposure to the faces alone led to performance levels as good as when face-name pairs were shown for 10 seconds, and significantly greater performance than when the face-name pairs were shown for just 4 seconds. In line with the results of previous studies, imagery was found significantly to enhance face-name association learning, compared to non-specific instructions. However, performance was increased still further by combining imagery with pre-exposure: Under these conditions, subjects were able to remember almostdouble the number of names on the firstrecall trial than under imagery alone instructions.