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Humans remember own-race faces more accurately than other-race faces (own-race bias). This effect is reduced by expertise with other-race faces. This study examined event-related potentials to own-race and other-race faces in a group of experts to other-race faces and a nonexpert control group. Both groups exhibited own-race recognition biases. Other-race faces elicited more negative and delayed N170 components, suggesting enhanced configural processing of own-race compared with other-race faces. Moreover, an increased P2 (approximately 210-240 ms) was observed for own-race faces. At right occipitotemporal regions of the experts only this P2 effect was found to be absent. These findings demonstrate an influence of early, presumably presemantic processes on the own-race bias, which are mediated by perceptual expertise with other-race faces.

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Participants are more accurate at remembering faces of their own relative to another ethnic group (own-race bias, ORB). This phenomenon has been explained by reduced perceptual expertise, or alternatively, by the categorization of other-race faces into social out-groups and reduced effort to individuate such faces. We examined event-related potential (ERP) correlates of the ORB, testing recognition memory for Asian and Caucasian faces in Caucasian and Asian participants. Both groups demonstrated a significant ORB in recognition memory. ERPs revealed more negative N170 amplitudes for other-race faces in both groups, probably reflecting more effortful structural encoding. Importantly, the ethnicity effect in left-hemispheric N170 during learning correlated significantly with the behavioral ORB. Similarly, in the subsequent N250, both groups demonstrated more negative amplitudes for other-race faces, and during test phases, this effect correlated significantly with the ORB. We suggest that ethnicity effects in the N170 reflect an early categorization of other-race faces into a social out-group, resulting in less efficient encoding and thus decreased memory. Moreover, ethnicity effects in the N250 may represent the "tagging" of other-race faces as perceptually salient, which hampers the recognition of these faces.

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Humans are remarkably accurate at recognising familiar faces, while their ability to recognize, or even match, unfamiliar faces is much poorer. However, previous research has failed to identify neural correlates of this striking behavioural difference. Here we show a clear difference in brain potentials elicited by highly familiar faces versus unfamiliar faces. This effect starts 200 ms after stimulus onset and reaches its maximum at 400-600 ms. This Sustained Familiarity Effect is substantially larger than previous candidates for a neural familiarity marker and is detected in almost all participants, representing a reliable index of high familiarity. While its scalp distribution is consistent with a generator in the ventral visual pathway, its modulation by repetition and degree of familiarity suggests an integration of affective and visual information.

. (2014) 'Eects of attractiveness on face memory separated from distinctiveness : evidence from event-related brain potentials. ', Neuropsychologia., Further information on publisher's website: Use policyThe full-text may be used and/or reproduced, and given to third parties in any format or medium, without prior permission or charge, for personal research or study, educational, or not-for-prot purposes provided that:• a full bibliographic reference is made to the original source • a link is made to the metadata record in DRO • the full-text is not changed in any way The full-text must not be sold in any format or medium without the formal permission of the copyright holders.Please consult the full DRO policy for further details. AbstractThe present study examined effects of attractiveness on behavioral and event-related potential (ERP) correlates of face memory. Extending previous reports, we controlled for potential moderating effects of distinctiveness, a variable known to affect memory. Attractive and unattractive faces were selected on the basis of a rating study, and were matched for distinctiveness. In a subsequent recognition memory experiment, we found more accurate memory for unattractive relative to attractive faces. Additionally, an attractiveness effect in the Early Posterior Negativity (EPN) during learning, with larger amplitudes for attractive than unattractive faces, correlated significantly with the magnitude of the memory advantage for unattractive faces at test. These findings establish a contribution of attractiveness to face memory over and above the well-known effect of distinctiveness. Additionally, as the EPN is typically enhanced for affective stimuli, our ERP results imply that the processing of emotionally relevant attractive faces during learning may hamper their encoding into memory.

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