Taiwanese Face Memory Test

Holistic Processing of Faces May Underlie Age Differences in Performance on Taiwanese Face Memory Test Gary C.-W. Shyi, Ya-Hsin Cheng, Kuan-Hao Cheng, & Vicky Y.-H. Chen Department of Psychology and Center for Research in Cognitive Sciences, National Chung Cheng University, Chiayi, Taiwan Average Cumulative Performance on Face Memory Test

Introduction The main goals of the present study were threefold: • To establish a test that utilizes face images collected and normed in the Taiwanese society in order to provide a culturally calibrated tool for assessing face memory ability; • To examine the relationship between face memory performance and a range of face tasks to reveal underlying processing that may play an important role in face memory; • To investigate the relationship between age differences in face memory performance and those in analytical and holistic processing revealed by three face processing tasks.

Taiwanese Face Memory Test

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Method •

TFMT/ Young Adults

Participants： 66 young adults (38 female & 27 male, age range 18-26 years) and 64 old adults (47 female & 17 male, age range 54- 86 years) received a monetary reward or small gifts for their participation.

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Correlations between TFMT and Face Processing Tasks

TFMT/ Old Adults

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Three Face Processing Tasks Stage 2: Novel Images

Stage 1: Identical Images

Face Stimuli for Configural Task

Face Stimuli for Component Task

Cambridge Face Memory Test (CFMT) •

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CFMT overcomes some serious shortcomings of existing face memory tests such as Recognition Memory test for Faces (RMF) and Benton Facial Recognition Test (BFRT). CFMT also could effectively assess and differentiate face memory capability of normal people and patients with prosopagnosia. We largely followed the procedure of CFMT to construct the Taiwanese Face Memory Test (TFMT) for assessing face memory performance.

Face Stimuli for Composite Task (complete design, Gauthier & Bukach, 2007)

Stage 3: Novel Images with Noise

Procedure of Face Processing Tasks

Four Levels of Gaussian Noise

Taiwanese Face Database

Configural Task: Same or different faces?

Component Task: Same or different faces?

(Shyi, Huang, & Yeh, 2013)

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The database by Shyi et al. contained face images of 48 models (24 males and 24 females) expressing 6 basic emotions and neutral expressions and photographed from 5 angles and 4 conditions of illumination. • Face images from those models were later rated by 170 participants.

Summary and Conclusions

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Composite Task: Same or different top halves?

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Results •

Young adults exhibited an overall pattern (M = 55.6) very similar to that reported by Duchaine and Nakayama (2006) (M = 57.9), and significantly outperformed their elderly counterparts (M = 41.1). Age Differences in TFMT Performance 1.0 0.9 0.8 0.7 0.6 0.5 0.4 0.3 0.2 0.1 0.0

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Young adults 0.79

0.72

Stage 1

Stage 2

7 6 5 d' 4 3 2 1 0

Component task

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4.42

3.21 2.00 1.99

YOUNG

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Configural task

P = .051 4.34

Upright Inverted

3.76

2.84 2.48

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References •

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Elders

0.71 0.52

Results of Three Face Processing Tasks

• Compared to their younger counterpart, old adults failed to exhibit inversion effect for both the component and configural tasks, suggesting old adults tended to process faces more analytically than holistically. • However, though performing at an overall inferior level, old adults show a pattern of interaction between congruency and alignment in the composite task similar to that exhibited by young adults, implicating the existence of residual holistic processing of faces among them. • More interestingly, the correlation results suggest that holistic processing clearly demonstrated by young adults was used to support their face memory performance on TFMT. In contrast, the residual holistic processing demonstrated by old adults seemed insufficient to support their performance on TFMT. • Taken together, these findings not only highlights the importance of creating culturally calibrated tool for assessing face memory ability, but also demonstrates that holistic processing of faces (or its absence) may underlie participants’ performance and in particular age differences on TFMT.

Young 0.49

Stage 3

7 6 5 d' 4 3 2 1 0

** 5.72

Composite task ** 5.33 5.44

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Aligned

Misaligned

7 6 5 4 d' 3 2 1 0

Old ** 4.35

Congruent

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Incongruent

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• 3.91 3.71

2.94

Aligned

Misaligned

Duchaine, B., & Nakayama, K. (2006). The Cambridge Face Memory Test: Results for neurologically intact individuals and an investigation of its validity using inverted face stimuli and prosopagnosic participants. Neuropsychologia, 44, 576–585. Gauthier, I., & Bukach, C. (2007). Should we reject the expertise hypothesis? Cognition, 103(2), 322-330. Shyi, G. C.-W., Huang, S.-T. T., & Yeh, C.-Y. (2013). Taiwan corpora of Chinese emotions and relevant psychophysiological data: A college-student database of facial expression for basic emotions. Journal of Chinese Psychology, 55(4), 455-474. (This study was supported by a research grant (No.:103-2815-C-194-016-H) from the Ministry of Science and Technology in Taiwan, ROC.)