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Recognizing faces seen alone or with others: Why are two heads worse than one?

Bindemann, Markus, Sandford, Adam, Gillatt, Katie, Avetisyan, Meri, Megreya, Ahmed M. (2012) Recognizing faces seen alone or with others: Why are two heads worse than one? Perception, 41 . pp. 415-435. (The full text of this publication is not currently available from this repository. You may be able to access a copy if URLs are provided) (KAR id:29013)

The full text of this publication is not currently available from this repository. You may be able to access a copy if URLs are provided.

Abstract

The ability to identify an unfamiliar target face from an identity lineup declines when it is accompanied by a second face during visual encoding. This two-face disadvantage is still little studied and its basis remains poorly understood. This study investigated several possible explanations for this phenomenon. Experiments 1 and 2 varied the number of potential targets (1 or 2) and the number of faces in a lineup (5 or 10) to explore if this effect arises from the number of identity comparisons that need to be made to detect a target in a lineup. These experiments also explored if this effect arises from an uncertainty concerning which is the to-be-identified target in two-face displays, by cueing the relevant face during encoding. Experiment 3 then examined whether the two-face disadvantage reflects the depth of face encoding or a memory effect. The results show that this effect arises from the additional comparisons that are necessary to compare two potential targets to an identity lineup when memory demands are minimized (Experiment 1), but it reflects a difficulty in remembering several faces when targets and lineups cannot be viewed simultaneously (Experiments 2 and 3). However, in both cases the two-face disadvantage could not be eliminated fully by cueing the target. This hints at a further possible locus for this effect, which might reflect perceptual interference during the initial encoding of the target. The implications of these findings are discussed.

Item Type: Article
Subjects: B Philosophy. Psychology. Religion
Divisions: Divisions > Division of Human and Social Sciences > School of Psychology
Depositing User: Markus Bindemann
Date Deposited: 09 Mar 2012 09:57 UTC
Last Modified: 16 Nov 2021 10:07 UTC
Resource URI: https://kar.kent.ac.uk/id/eprint/29013 (The current URI for this page, for reference purposes)

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