Neumann Markus F, End Albert, Luttmann Stefanie, Schweinberger Stefan R, Wiese Holger
Department of General Psychology, Friedrich Schiller University of Jena, Jena, Germany,
Cogn Affect Behav Neurosci. 2015 Mar;15(1):180-94. doi: 10.3758/s13415-014-0306-7.
Participants are more accurate at remembering faces from their own relative to a different age group (the own-age bias, or OAB). A recent socio-cognitive account has suggested that differential allocation of attention to old versus young faces underlies this phenomenon. Critically, empirical evidence for a direct relationship between attention to own- versus other-age faces and the OAB in memory is lacking. To fill this gap, we tested the roles of attention in three different experimental paradigms, and additionally analyzed event-related brain potentials (ERPs). In Experiment 1, we compared the learning of old and young faces during focused versus divided attention, but revealed similar OABs in subsequent memory for both attention conditions. Similarly, manipulating attention during learning did not differentially affect the ERPs elicited by young versus old faces. In Experiment 2, we examined the repetition effects from task-irrelevant old and young faces presented under varying attentional loads on the N250r ERP component as an index of face recognition. Independent of load, the N250r effects were comparable for both age categories. Finally, in Experiment 3 we measured the N2pc as an index of attentional selection of old versus young target faces in a visual search task. The N2pc was not significantly different for the young versus the old target search conditions, suggesting similar orientations of attention to either face age group. Overall, we propose that the OAB in memory is largely unrelated to early attentional processes. Our findings therefore contrast with the predictions from socio-cognitive accounts on own-group biases in recognition memory, and are more easily reconciled with expertise-based models.
与不同年龄组的面孔相比，参与者对自己年龄组面孔的记忆更准确（即年龄内群体偏差，简称OAB）。最近的一种社会认知观点认为，对老年面孔和青年面孔注意力分配的差异是这一现象的基础。关键在于，目前缺乏关于对自己年龄组和其他年龄组面孔的注意力与记忆中的年龄内群体偏差之间存在直接关系的实证证据。为了填补这一空白，我们在三种不同的实验范式中测试了注意力的作用，并额外分析了事件相关脑电位（ERP）。在实验1中，我们比较了在集中注意力和分散注意力情况下对老年和青年面孔的学习情况，但发现在随后的记忆中，两种注意力条件下的年龄内群体偏差相似。同样，在学习过程中操纵注意力对青年面孔和老年面孔引发的ERP没有产生差异影响。在实验2中，我们将在不同注意力负荷下呈现的与任务无关的老年和青年面孔的重复效应作为面孔识别指标，考察了N250r ERP成分。与负荷无关，两个年龄组的N250r效应相当。最后，在实验3中，我们在视觉搜索任务中测量了N2pc，作为对老年和青年目标面孔注意力选择的指标。青年目标搜索条件和老年目标搜索条件下的N2pc没有显著差异，表明对两个年龄组面孔的注意力方向相似。总体而言，我们认为记忆中的年龄内群体偏差在很大程度上与早期注意力过程无关。因此，我们的研究结果与社会认知观点对识别记忆中群体内偏差的预测形成了对比，并且更容易与基于专业知识的模型相协调。
