Chang Allen, Murray Elizabeth, Yassa Michael A
Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences, Boston University.
Department of Neurobiology and Behavior, Institute for Memory Impairments and Neurological Disorders, University of California, Irvine.
Behav Neurosci. 2015 Oct;129(5):666-72. doi: 10.1037/bne0000090.
Face recognition is an important component of successful social interactions in humans. A large literature in social psychology has focused on the phenomenon termed the "other race" (ORE) effect, the tendency to be more proficient with face recognition within one's own ethnic group compared with other ethnic groups. Several potential hypotheses have been proposed for this effect, including perceptual expertise, social grouping, and holistic face processing. Recent work on mnemonic discrimination (i.e., the ability to resolve mnemonic interference among similar experiences) may provide a mechanistic account for the ORE. In the current study, we examined how discrimination and generalization in the presence of mnemonic interference may contribute to the ORE. We developed a database of computerized faces divided evenly among ethnic origins (Black, Caucasian, East Asian, South Asian), as well as morphed face stimuli that varied in the amount of similarity to the original stimuli (30%, 40%, 50%, and 60% morphs). Participants first examined the original unmorphed stimuli during study, then during test were asked to judge the prior occurrence of repetitions (targets), morphed stimuli (lures), and new stimuli (foils). We examined participants' ability to correctly reject similar morphed lures and found that it increased linearly as a function of face dissimilarity. We additionally found that Caucasian participants' mnemonic discrimination-generalization functions were sharply tuned for Caucasian faces but considerably less tuned for East Asian and Black faces. These results suggest that expertise plays an important role in resolving mnemonic interference, which may offer a mechanistic account for the ORE.
人脸识别是人类成功社交互动的重要组成部分。社会心理学领域的大量文献聚焦于被称为“其他种族”（ORE）效应的现象，即与其他种族相比，个体在识别本种族面孔时更为熟练的倾向。针对这一效应，人们提出了几种潜在的假设，包括感知专业知识、社会群体划分和整体面部加工。近期关于记忆辨别（即解决相似经历之间记忆干扰的能力）的研究可能为ORE效应提供一种机制性解释。在本研究中，我们探究了在存在记忆干扰的情况下，辨别和泛化如何可能导致ORE效应。我们开发了一个计算机化面孔数据库，这些面孔在种族来源（黑人、白人、东亚人、南亚人）中均匀分布，同时还开发了与原始刺激相似度不同（30%、40%、50%和60%变形）的变形面部刺激。参与者首先在学习阶段查看原始的未变形刺激，然后在测试阶段被要求判断重复刺激（目标）、变形刺激（诱饵）和新刺激（陪衬）之前是否出现过。我们考察了参与者正确拒绝相似变形诱饵的能力，发现其随着面部差异的增加呈线性上升。我们还发现，白人参与者的记忆辨别 - 泛化功能针对白人面孔有明显的调整，但针对东亚人和黑人面孔的调整则少得多。这些结果表明，专业知识在解决记忆干扰方面发挥着重要作用，这可能为ORE效应提供一种机制性解释。
