Abstract
Subjects made decisions about a series of faces, then had a recognition test. The study tasks required a decision about self-reference (does it look like you), an abstract trait (e.g., friendliness), a single physical feature (e.g., thickness of lips), or multiple physical features (which is the person’s most distinctive feature). As in past research, single physical feature decisions led to poorer performance than abstract trait decisions. Of greater interest here, the multiple physical feature condition was significantly better than the single physical feature condition, though still slightly worse than the abstract trait condition. These results indicate that the number of features processed is as important to facial recognition as feature “depth,” and that under some circumstances encoding “shallow” attributes can produce durable memory traces.
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Mueller, J. H., Courtois, M. R., & Bailis, K. L. Selfreference in facial recognition. Paper read at the annual meetings of the Midwestern Psychological Assoc )Eds.), Chicago, 1979.
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This research was supported in part by funds from the Research Council of the Graduate School of the University of Missouri. The authors wish to acknowledge comments on an earlier draft by Eugene Winograd.
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Courtois, M.R., Mueller, J.H. Processing multiple physical features in facial recognition. Bull. Psychon. Soc. 14, 74–76 (1979). https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03329404
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03329404