Department of Psychology, University of Hull, Hull, UK.
J Exp Psychol Learn Mem Cogn. 2012 Jan;38(1):61-77. doi: 10.1037/a0024853. Epub 2011 Aug 8.
Describing a face in words can either hinder or help subsequent face recognition. Here, the authors examined the relationship between the benefit from verbally describing a series of faces and the same-race advantage (SRA) whereby people are better at recognizing unfamiliar faces from their own race as compared with those from other races. Verbalization and the SRA influenced face recognition independently, as evident on both behavioral (Experiment 1) and eye movement measures (Experiment 2). The findings indicate that verbalization and the SRA each recruit different types of configural processing, with verbalization modulating face learning and the SRA modulating both face learning and recognition. Eye movement patterns demonstrated greater feature sampling for describing as compared with not describing faces and for other-race as compared with same-race faces. In both cases, sampling of the eyes, nose, and mouth played a major role in performance. The findings support a single process account whereby verbalization can influence perceptual processing in a flexible and yet fundamental way through shifting one's processing orientation.
用言语描述一张脸既可能有助于也可能阻碍后续的人脸识别。在这里，作者研究了口头描述一系列面孔的益处与同种族优势（SRA）之间的关系，即与其他种族的面孔相比，人们更善于识别自己种族的陌生面孔。言语化和 SRA 独立地影响人脸识别，这在行为（实验 1）和眼动测量（实验 2）中都很明显。研究结果表明，言语化和 SRA 各自招募不同类型的整体处理，言语化调节面孔学习，SRA 调节面孔学习和识别。与不描述面孔相比，描述面孔以及与其他种族相比，同种族面孔的眼动模式表现出更多的特征采样。在这两种情况下，眼睛、鼻子和嘴巴的采样在表现中起着主要作用。这些发现支持一种单一过程的解释，即言语化可以通过改变一个人的处理方向，以灵活且基本的方式影响感知处理。
