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Event related potential studies of recognition memory for faces.

Yick, Yee Ying. 2009. Event related potential studies of recognition memory for faces. PhD Thesis, Cardiff University.

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Abstract

The retrieval processes supporting recognition memory for faces were investigated using event-related potentials (ERPs) and behavioural measures. The ERP old/new effects elicited by faces were investigated in five experiments in which participants were required to distinguish between old and new (studied and non-studied) faces. A direct comparison between the ERP old/new effects elicited by faces and words in an old/new recognition memory task in Experiment 1 provided evidence for at least one common old/new effect, as well as evidence for a material-specific retrieval effect that was only present for faces. The subsequent experiments employed 'recognition confidence judgments' (Experiments 2 and 3) and 'source memory' manipulations (Experiments 4 and 5) to separate neural activity that might be tied to the processes of recollection and familiarity. Across the two recognition confidence experiments, reliable old/new effects were evident mainly for responses that attracted high confidence judgments, and there was little evidence for modulations that were sensitive to the level of recognition confidence systematically. These data indicate that ERPs index memory processes supporting face judgments that are linked to recollection. The two source memory experiments also revealed superior old/new effects which covered both frontal and parietal scalps and which were larger for those correct old responses that attracted correct rather than incorrect source judgments. The ERP data thus provides strong evidence for neural indices of recollection across all experiments. It might be regarded as surprising that, given the findings in ERP studies with verbal materials, no strong evidence for an ERP correlate of familiarity was found in the ERP data. In Experiment 4, a mid-frontal old/new effect in the 300-500ms time window was present for all correct old responses, and was insensitive to the source judgments, suggesting that this modulation is a neural index of familiarity. This pattern of data, however, was not replicated in Experiment 5 when a more rigorous separation between familiarity- and recollection-based responding was employed. These ERP findings are considered in the context of dual-process theories of recognition memory and their broad application across markedly different kinds of studied materials.

Item Type: Thesis (PhD)
Status: Unpublished
ISBN: 9781303191237
Date of First Compliant Deposit: 30 March 2016
Last Modified: 10 Jan 2018 05:55
URI: https://orca.cardiff.ac.uk/id/eprint/55891

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