Bibliographic Details
| Title: |
Why some faces won’t be remembered: Brain potentials illuminate successful versus unsuccessful encoding for same-race and other-race faces |
| Authors: |
Heather D Lucas, Joan Y Chiao, Ken A Paller |
| Source: |
Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, Vol 5 (2011) |
| Publisher Information: |
Frontiers Media S.A., 2011. |
| Publication Year: |
2011 |
| Collection: |
LCC:Neurosciences. Biological psychiatry. Neuropsychiatry |
| Subject Terms: |
EEG, Expertise, recognition, ERPs, facial memory, other-race effect, Neurosciences. Biological psychiatry. Neuropsychiatry, RC321-571 |
| More Details: |
Memory is often less accurate for faces from another racial group than for faces from one's own racial group. The mechanisms underlying this phenomenon are a topic of active debate. Contemporary theories invoke factors such as inferior expertise with faces from other racial groups and an encoding emphasis on race-specifying information. We investigated neural mechanisms of this memory bias by recording event-related potentials while participants attempted to memorize same-race and other-race faces. Brain potentials at encoding were compared as a function of successful versus unsuccessful recognition on a subsequent memory test. Late positive amplitudes predicted subsequent memory for same-race faces and, to a lesser extent, for other-race faces. By contrast, the amplitudes of earlier frontocentral N200 potentials and occipito-temporal P2 potentials were larger for later-remembered relative to later-forgotten other-race faces. Furthermore, N200 and P2 amplitudes were larger for other-race faces with features considered atypical of that race relative to faces that were race-stereotypical (according to a consensus from a large group of other participants). In keeping with previous reports, we infer that these earlier potentials index the processing of unique or individuating facial information, which is key to remembering a face. Individuation may tend to be uniformly high for same-race faces but lower and less reliable for other-race faces. Individuation may also be more readily applied for other-race faces that appear less stereotypical. These electrophysiological measures thus provide novel evidence that poorer memory for other-race faces stems from encoding that is inadequate because it fails to emphasize individuating information. |
| Document Type: |
article |
| File Description: |
electronic resource |
| Language: |
English |
| ISSN: |
1662-5161 |
| Relation: |
http://journal.frontiersin.org/Journal/10.3389/fnhum.2011.00020/full; https://doaj.org/toc/1662-5161 |
| DOI: |
10.3389/fnhum.2011.00020 |
| Access URL: |
https://doaj.org/article/f40fdb866f74494eb532e65512adafa2 |
| Accession Number: |
edsdoj.f40fdb866f74494eb532e65512adafa2 |
| Database: |
Directory of Open Access Journals |
