Recognition and naming test of the Portuguese population for national and international celebrities

Abstract

Research on familiar faces has been conducted in different countries and resort to celebrities faces, stimuli that are highly constrained by geographic context and cultural peculiarities, since many celebrities are only famous in particular countries. Despite their relevance to psychological research, there are no normative studies of celebrities’ facial recognition in Portugal. We developed a database with 160 black and white pictures of famous persons' faces in this work. The data collection took place in two different studies. In study 1, participants were asked to recognize and name celebrity faces; while in study 2, celebrity names were rated for AoA, familiarity, and distinctiveness. Data were gathered from two different samples of Portuguese young adults aged between 18 and 25 years old, and both procedures were performed online through a questionnaire created in Qualtrics software. This database provides ratings of AoA, familiarity, facial distinctiveness, recognition rate, and naming rate for each celebrity, which will allow further selection of celebrities, based on these five attributes, for studies using Portuguese samples. Also, possible relationships between these five variables were analyzed and presented, highlighting facial distinctiveness as a predictor for both naming and recognition rate of celebrity faces.

Age-of-acquisition effects: A literature review.

“…This effect was also found to be a stronger predictor of naming latencies than word frequency. Over the past 6 decades, researchers have examined the role of AoA in the processing of words, phrases, pictures, faces and other nonlinguistic stimuli (for example, Anderson, 2008; Arnon et al, 2017; Baddeley et al, 1988; Bonin et al, 2008; Carroll & White, 1973; Cortese & Khanna, 2007; Gilhooly & Logie, 1982; Lima et al, 2021; Marful et al, 2018; Morrison & Ellis, 1995; Sereno & O’Donnell, 2009; Smith-Spark & Moore, 2009; Smith-Spark et al, 2012, 2013; Stewart & Ellis, 2008). It is, therefore, well documented that early-acquired items tend to be processed significantly faster and more accurately and are more resilient to forgetting, interference and cortical damage than late-acquired items (e.g., Bonin et al, 2004; Catling & Johnston, 2006c; Cuetos et al, 2010; Juhasz & Rayner, 2003, 2006; Morrison & Ellis, 1995).…”

Remembering to whom we transmit information during pandemics: the effect of face masks on destination memory

“…Sixty celebrity faces (e.g., Barack Obama) were selected from a celebrity database validated for the Portuguese population using the same age group—young adults (Lima et al 2021 ). In this database, 160 celebrity faces pictures were evaluated for several measures, like naming and recognition rates, presenting male and female celebrity faces and national and international celebrity faces (Lima et al 2021 ).…”

“…Sixty celebrity faces (e.g., Barack Obama) were selected from a celebrity database validated for the Portuguese population using the same age group—young adults (Lima et al 2021 ). In this database, 160 celebrity faces pictures were evaluated for several measures, like naming and recognition rates, presenting male and female celebrity faces and national and international celebrity faces (Lima et al 2021 ). Celebrity faces were used because, in everyday life, we mainly transmit information to recipients who are known or familiar to us and because we could more easily infer that they were familiar to our sample (Lima et al 2021 ).…”

“…In this database, 160 celebrity faces pictures were evaluated for several measures, like naming and recognition rates, presenting male and female celebrity faces and national and international celebrity faces (Lima et al 2021 ). Celebrity faces were used because, in everyday life, we mainly transmit information to recipients who are known or familiar to us and because we could more easily infer that they were familiar to our sample (Lima et al 2021 ). Considering this argument, we selected faces with naming accuracy above 75% ( M = 91.63; SD = 5.33) and recognition accuracy above 80% ( M = 97.17; SD = 3.61).…”

The internal attentional focus: Studies on the impact on destination memory

“…Sixty celebrity pictures (e.g., Barack Obama) were selected from a celebrity database validated for the Portuguese population using the same age group -young adults (Lima et al, 2021). All the 60 celebrity pictures selected had over an 80% recognition (M = 97.17; SD = 3.61) and 75% naming accuracy (M = 91.69; SD = 5.34).…”