Acquired Familiarity Can Increase Visual Working Memory Capacity of Faces.

• Main Authors: Caesar S.-C. Chuang, 莊士哲
• Other Authors: Gary C.-W. Shyi
• Format: Others
• Language: en_US
• Published: 2011
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/57818140475694611930

碩士 === 國立中正大學 === 心理學研究所 === 99 === Recent studies have shown that people can store a greater number of familiar (celebrity) faces than stranger faces in visual working memory (VWM) (Jackson & Raymond, 2008; Jackson & Raymond, 2006). Here in three experiments we investigated whether faces of acquired familiarity can also increase the storage capacity of VWM. In Experiment 1, we used a change-detection task to assess the VWM capacity of faces and replicated the previous finding that famous faces exhibited greater VWM capacity than stranger faces did. In Experiments 2A and 2B, stranger faces were familiarized by two different levels of repeated exposure, coupled with variation in facial expression. Results showed that, compared to novel faces, faces with acquired familiarity can yield greater VWM capacity provided there was sufficiently frequent exposure and expression variation. In Experiment 3, VWM capacity of faces with acquired familiarity was compared with that of celebrity faces. Results showed no difference in VWM capacity between faces with sufficiently strong acquired familiarity and celebrity faces. In conclusion, these findings not only demonstrate acquired familiarity can indeed increase VWM capacity of faces but also have implications for how stranger faces can be transformed into familiar ones.