Laboratory research has established that face recognition memory performance for ownrace faces is better than for other-race faces. Three studies are reported exploring the possibility that the other-race effect will generalize to voice recognition memory. Recognition memory performance for non-native American speakers speaking both English and their native languages was compared with memory for native American speakers. With relatively long speech samples, accented voices were no more difficult to recognize than were unaccented voices; reducing the speech sample duration decreased recognition memory for accented and unaccented voices, but the reduction was greater for accented voices.

Subjects selected on the basis of test anxiety scores made a judgement about each face in a series of slides. These orienting tasks involved either abstract traits (e.g. dependability) or physical features (e.g. weight), and decisions were made relative to either an absolute criterion or self-reference. A subsequent recognition test revealed superior performance by low-anxiety subjects and by subjects who evaluated abstract features during study, but there were no depth by anxiety interactions. The reference point for the decision had little effect overall, but the anxiety deficit was more apparent when the absolute reference point was involved.

Subjects made decisions about facial photographs and were tested later for recognition memory of the pictures. The study decisions involved judgments about abstract personality traits (e.g., friendliness) or physical features (e.g., lip thickness) relative to either self-comparisons or some nonself standard. The expected abstract-physical feature difference emerged, but there was no evidence for a self-other difference for either type of feature. A molar self-reference task specifying no particular attribute produced good performance, but no better than the abstract-nonself task or intent-to-Ieam instructions. For the molar-self task, faces judged to be similar to one's own were easier to recognize than were dissimilar faces. The self-comparison task yields good retention with face stimuli, but apparently no better than other tasks that require examining many features during encoding.

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