Effects of changing context on remembering faces

Studied the effects of changes in context on recognition memory for faces in 2 experiments with a total of 72 university students. All faces were studied as male-female couples. Results of Exp I show that changing context from study to test by either deletion or substitution of context significantly...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Journal of Experimental Psychology : Human Learning and Memory 1977-07, Vol.3 (4), p.397-405
Main Authors: Winograd, Eugene, Rivers-Bulkeley, Noel T
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Contextual Associations
Facial Features
Human
Memory
Recognition (Learning)
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Summary:Studied the effects of changes in context on recognition memory for faces in 2 experiments with a total of 72 university students. All faces were studied as male-female couples. Results of Exp I show that changing context from study to test by either deletion or substitution of context significantly impaired recognition. Exp II investigated the role of unitization at study with one group (unitized) given instructions designed to lead to a more integrated representation of each pair of faces than the nonunitized group. Results show that the predicted interaction of context change with type of encoding was found for context substitution but not for deletion, and the decreases in recognition performance associated with context change found in Exp I were confirmed in Exp II. Theoretical implications for theories of recognition memory of the existence of change of context effects in face recognition are discussed.
ISSN:0096-1515
0278-7393
2327-9745
1939-1285
DOI:10.1037/0278-7393.3.4.397