Developmental differences in children's recognition memory for faces.

Abstract

Children at three age levels were tested for recognition memory of adult male faces following three different orienting activities at encoding. One group received standard intentional learning instructions, another group judged whether or not each face had a big nose, and a third group judged whether or not each face appeared "nice." Memory improved with age, and judgments of niceness facilitated memory equally at all ages. The results pose difficulties for Brown's model of memory development proposed in 1975.According to Brown (1975), memory tasks may be considered along two dimensions: whether or not strategies are required for efficient performance and whether or not episodic or semantic memory is primarily involved. The significance for developmental theory of Brown's model lies in her attempt to predict which types of memory tasks will be developmentally sensitive. Tasks that demand no strategic intervention and that are primarily episodic in nature will be the least sensitive to developmental factors. Brown cites some studies showing no age-related improvement in recognition of pictures as support for this position. However, recent articles by Nelson and Kosslyn (1976) and Tversky and Teiffer (1976) have found clear developmental trends in recognition memory for pictorial material. It might still be possible to cling to Brown's arguments about the lack of a developmental trend for highly episodic, nonstrategic tasks if one makes the assumption that, after all, pictures of common objects tap preexisting knowledge about the world and thus have a substantial semantic memory component. It seemed to us that remembering pictures of faces that one has never seen before is as episodic a task as one is likely to encounter without introducing special problems associated with the use of random forms and other kinds of meaningless material. To be specific, Brown's hypothesis would be strengthened if no developmental trend were found in recognition memory for faces. Evidence for developmental trends in memory for faces has been found by Goldstein and Chance (1964), but Cross, Cross, andDaly (1971) found no effect of age.

The development of face expertise: Evidence for a qualitative change in processing

“…This is entirely consistent with previous research (e.g., Blaney & Winograd, 1978;Carey et al, 1980;Flin, 1985). Curve fitting revealed that upright face recognition improved more reliably with age than inverted face recognition.…”

“…Through four Experiments we have shown that there was a significant improvement in the recognition of upright faces with development (both longitudinally and cross sectionally) consistent with previous research (Blaney & Winograd, 1978;Carey et al, 1980;Goldstein, 1965;Goldstein & Chance, 1964;Saltz & Sigel, 1967). The longitudinal data showed numerically consistent results with the cross-sectional data for participants within three years.…”

“…While adult face recognition is one of the most impressive human visual skills given the ability to differentiate and recognise many thousands of faces (Ellis, 1986), the face recognition abilities of children are poorer (Adams-Price, 1992;Blaney & Winograd, 1978). Adult face processing is assumed to be based on some form of expert processing mechanism (Farah, Wilson, Drain, & Tanaka, 1998) that may well be specific to the processing of faces (Kanwisher, Tong, & Nakayama, 1998).…”

Face-Space: A Unifying Concept in Face Recognition Research

“…Face recognition abilities improve through childhood (e.g. Blaney & Winograd, 1978;Ellis & Flin, 1990;List, 1986). This improvement may follow a linear pattern (Feinman & Entwisle, 1976;Hills, 2014) and is associated with better memory for faces in children (Dempster, 1981;Hills 2012) and faster responding (Johnston & Ellis, 1995).…”

Beneficial effects of verbalization and visual distinctiveness on remembering and knowing faces

“…Visual-processing accounts argue that facilitation arises as a function of the quantity or quality of visual information encoded about the face. Facilitation may be due to a greater number of features being attended to and stored during encoding (the feature quantity account; e.g., Blaney & Winograd, 1978;Courtois & Mueller, 1979;Winograd, 1978Winograd, , 1981 or to the encoding of more holistic impressions of the face (i.e., the interrelations between features), in addition to feature-based information (the holistic account; e.g., Berman & Cutler, 1998;Wells & Hryciw, 1984). Alternatively, semantic-processing accounts suggest that facilitation may be due to the addition of semantic associations to the described face, which benefit retrieval (e.g., Anderson & Reder, 1979;Bruce & Young, 1986;Ryan & Schooler, 1994, cited in Schooler, Ryan, & Reder, 1996.…”