Never forget a face: Verbalization facilitates recollection as evidenced by flexible responding to contrasting recognition memory tests.

Verbal facilitation occurs when describing a face improves its subsequent recognition; but there are several theoretical explanations debated in the literature. The results of the present studies support a relatively unrestricted, parsimonious theory that verbal facilitation occurs because describing a face supports recollection of several different facets of the face-viewing experience. This recollection is then demonstrated by flexibly responding to two competing types of recognition task demands. Participants studied a list of faces and, following each face, performed a nonverbalization task (Experiment 1) or described its features or traits (Experiment 2). Two subsequent recognition tests included intact faces, new faces, and conjunctions (each of which recombined features of two studied faces). Inclusion test instructions emphasized featural information: respond "yes" to both intact and conjunction faces (both of which contained studied features), but "no" to new faces. Exclusion test instructions emphasized configural information: respond "yes" only to intact faces (which were the only test items that matched studied configurations), and "no" to both conjunctions and new faces. Both yes/no responses and confidence ratings supported our hypothesis that verbalization improved discrimination between (a) conjunctions and new faces in the inclusion test, and (b) intact faces and conjunctions in the exclusion test. Additional secondary responses about face type elucidated that verbalization at study improves the ability to recollect either featural or configural information, depending on which type of response the recognition test required. We discuss these findings about practical applications of improved face memory in real-world contexts.

Are the advantages of chess expertise on visuo-spatial working-memory capacity domain specific or domain general?

Chess experts have repeatedly demonstrated exceptional recall of chessboards, which is weakened by disruption of the chessboard. However, chess experts still perform better than novices when recalling such disrupted chessboards, suggesting a somewhat generalized expertise effect. In the current study, we examined the extent of this generalized expertise effect on early processing of visuo-spatial working memory (VSWM), by comparing 14 chess experts (Elo rating > 2000) and 15 novices on a change-detection paradigm using disrupted chessboards, where attention had to be selectively deployed to either visual or spatial features, or divided across both features. The paradigm differed in the stimuli used (domain-specific chess pieces vs. novel visual shapes) to evaluate domain-general effects of chess expertise. Both experts and novices had greater memory discriminability for chess stimuli than for the unfamiliar stimuli, suggesting a salience advantage for familiar stimuli. Experts, however, demonstrated better memory discriminability than novices not only for chess stimuli presented on these disrupted chessboards, but also for novel, domain-general stimuli, particularly when detecting spatial changes. This expertise advantage was greater for chessboards with supra-capacity set sizes. For set sizes within the working-memory capacity, the expertise advantage was driven by enhanced selective attention to spatial features by chess experts when compared to visual features. However, any expertise-related VSWM advantage disappeared in the absence of the 8 × 8 chessboard display, which implicates the chessboard display as an essential perceptual aspect facilitating the "expert memory effect" in chess, albeit one that might generalize beyond strictly domain-relevant stimuli.

Component structure of individual differences in true and false recognition of faces.

Principal-component analyses of 4 face-recognition studies uncovered 2 independent components. The first component was strongly related to false-alarm errors with new faces as well as to facial "conjunctions" that recombine features of previously studied faces. The second component was strongly related to hits as well as to the conjunction/new difference in false-alarm errors. The pattern of loadings on both components was impressively invariant across the experiments, which differed in age range of participants, stimulus set, list length, facial orientation, and the presence versus absence of familiarized lures along with conjunction and entirely new lures in the recognition test. Taken together, the findings show that neither component was exclusively related to discrimination, criterion, configural processing, featural processing, context recollection, or familiarity. Rather, the data are consistent with a neuropsychological model that distinguishes frontal and occipitotemporal contributions to face recognition memory. Within the framework of the model, findings showed that frontal and occipitotemporal contributions are discernible from the pattern of individual differences in behavioral performance among healthy young adults.

Holistic processing and unitization in face recognition memory.

Voluminous research supports holistic processing of faces. However, little is known about how holistic processing affects recognition of newly learned faces, a question of importance for improving performance in police lineups and other real-world tasks. Drawing on cognitive and neuropsychological research, we suggest that holistic processing facilitates the formation of unitized representations that support discrimination between old and new faces-including new faces that contain old parts-through a unidimensional familiarity signal. In the absence of holistic processing, face recognition is based on relational representations that are relatively difficult to encode, but which allow flexible recognition decisions based on match-mismatch detection to be made. Unlike unitized representations, relational representations can support judgments that newly encountered faces match previously experienced faces in some respects (e.g., some of their features) and yet not in others (e.g., other features, global configuration). Four experiments clarified the relationship of holistic processing to the formation of unitized and relational representations of faces. By manipulating the extent of holistic processing while controlling for the overall level of recognition performance, we demonstrate qualitative effects of holistic processing on how recognition decisions are made with faces. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved).

Expertise and processing distorted structure in chess.

A classic finding in research on human expertise and knowledge is that of enhanced memory for stimuli in a domain of expertise as compared to either stimuli outside that domain, or within-domain stimuli that have been degraded or distorted in some way. However, we do not understand how experts process degradation or distortion of stimuli within the expert domain (e.g., a face with the eyes, nose, and mouth in the wrong positions, or a chessboard with pieces placed randomly). Focusing on the domain of chess, we present new fMRI evidence that when experts view such distorted/within-domain stimuli, they engage an active search for structure-a kind of exploratory chunking-that involves a component of a prefrontal-parietal network linked to consciousness, attention and working memory.

Chess masters show a hallmark of face processing with chess.

Face processing has several distinctive hallmarks that researchers have attributed either to face-specific mechanisms or to extensive experience distinguishing faces. Here, we examined the face-processing hallmark of selective attention failure--as indexed by the congruency effect in the composite paradigm--in a domain of extreme expertise: chess. Among 27 experts, we found that the congruency effect was equally strong with chessboards and faces. Further, comparing these experts with recreational players and novices, we observed a trade-off: Chess expertise was positively related to the congruency effect with chess yet negatively related to the congruency effect with faces. These and other findings reveal a case of expertise-dependent, facelike processing of objects of expertise and suggest that face and expert-chess recognition share common processes.

Cognitive mechanisms of false facial recognition in older adults.

Older adults show elevated false alarm rates on recognition memory tests involving faces in comparison to younger adults. It has been proposed that this age-related increase in false facial recognition reflects a deficit in recollection and a corresponding increase in the use of familiarity when making memory decisions. To test this hypothesis, we examined the performance of 40 older adults and 40 younger adults on a face recognition memory paradigm involving three different types of lures with varying levels of familiarity. A robust age effect was found, with older adults demonstrating a markedly heightened false alarm rate in comparison to younger adults for "familiarized lures" that were exact repetitions of faces encountered earlier in the experiment, but outside the study list, and therefore required accurate recollection of contextual information to reject. By contrast, there were no age differences in false alarms to "conjunction lures" that recombined parts of study list faces, or to entirely new faces. Overall, the pattern of false recognition errors observed in older adults was consistent with excessive reliance on a familiarity-based response strategy. Specifically, in the absence of recollection older adults appeared to base their memory decisions on item familiarity, as evidenced by a linear increase in false alarm rates with increasing familiarity of the lures. These findings support the notion that automatic memory processes such as familiarity remain invariant with age, while more controlled memory processes such as recollection show age-related decline.

The neural organization of perception in chess experts.

The human visual system responds to expertise, and it has been suggested that regions that process faces also process other objects of expertise including chess boards by experts. We tested whether chess and face processing overlap in brain activity using fMRI. Chess experts and novices exhibited face selective areas, but these regions showed no selectivity to chess configurations relative to other stimuli. We next compared neural responses to chess and to scrambled chess displays to isolate areas relevant to expertise. Areas within the posterior cingulate, orbitofrontal cortex, and right temporal cortex were active in this comparison in experts over novices. We also compared chess and face responses within the posterior cingulate and found this area responsive to chess only in experts. These findings indicate that the configurations in chess are not strongly processed by face-selective regions that are selective for faces in individuals who have expertise in both domains. Further, the area most consistently involved in chess did not show overlap with faces. Overall, these results suggest that expert visual processing may be similar at the level of recognition, but need not show the same neural correlates.

When false recognition is out of control: the case of facial conjunctions.

In three experiments, a dual-process approach to face recognition memory is examined, with a specific focus on the idea that a recollection process can be used to retrieve configural information of a studied face. Subjects could avoid, with confidence, a recognition error to conjunction lure faces (each a reconfiguration of features from separate studied faces) or feature lure faces (each based on a set of old features and a set of new features) by recalling a studied configuration. In Experiment 1, study repetition (one vs. eight presentations) was manipulated, and in Experiments 2 and 3, retention interval over a short number of trials (0-20) was manipulated. Different measures converged on the conclusion that subjects were unable to use a recollection process to retrieve configural information in an effort to temper recognition errors for conjunction or feature lure faces. A single process, familiarity, appears to be the sole process underlying recognition of conjunction and feature faces, and familiarity contributes, perhaps in whole, to discrimination of old from conjunction faces.

Melody recognition at fast and slow tempos: effects of age, experience, and familiarity.

Eighty-one listeners defined by three age ranges (18-30, 31-59, and over 60 years) and three levels of musical experience performed an immediate recognition task requiring the detection of alterations in melodies. On each trial, a brief melody was presented, followed 5 sec later by a test stimulus that either was identical to the target or had two pitches changed, for a same-different judgment. Each melody pair was presented at 0.6 note/sec, 3.0 notes/sec, or 6.0 notes/sec. Performance was better with familiar melodies than with unfamiliar melodies. Overall performance declined slightly with age and improved substantially with increasing experience, in agreement with earlier results in an identification task. Tempo affected performance on familiar tunes (moderate was best), but not on unfamiliar tunes. We discuss these results in terms of theories of dynamic attending, cognitive slowing, and working memory in aging.