No abstract

This study compared effects of inversion on perceptual processing of faces with distorted components (eyes and mouths) and faces distorted by altering spatial relations between components. In a rating task, participants inversion reduced the rated grotesqueness of spatially distorted faces but not that of faces with altered components. In a comparison task, pairs of faces were shown side by side; participants judged whether they were identical or different. Inversion greatly reduced the rate at which participants responded within 3 s to pairs that differed spatially, but not pairs that differed componentially. Also, latencies for detecting spatial differences were lengthened by inversion more than latencies for detecting componential differences. Results support the hypothesis that inversion impairs encoding of spatial-relational information more than, or instead of, componential information, depending on the task.

We describe some characteristics of persistent musical and verbal retrieval episodes, commonly known as "earworms." In Study 1, participants first filled out a survey summarizing their earworm experiences retrospectively. This was followed by a diary study to document each experience as it happened. Study 2 was an extension of the diary study with a larger sample and a focus on triggering events. Consistent with popular belief, these persistent musical memories were common across people and occurred frequently for most respondents, and were often linked to recent exposure to preferred music. Contrary to popular belief, the large majority of such experiences were not unpleasant. Verbal earworms were uncommon. These memory experiences provide an interesting example of extended memory retrieval for music in a naturalistic situation.

and AMINAMEMON University ofSouthampton, Southampton, EnglandStudies of aging and face recognition show age-related increases in false recognitions of new faces. Toexplore implications of this false alarm effect, we had young and senior adults perform (1) three eyewitness identification tasks, using both target present and target absent lineups, and (2) an old/new recognition task in which a study list of faces was followed by a test including old and new faces, along with conjunctions of old faces. Compared with the young, seniors had lower accuracy and higher choosing rates on the lineups, and they also falsely recognized more new faces on the recognition test. However, after screening for perceptual processing deficits, there was no age difference in false recognition of conjunctions, or in discriminating old faces from conjunctions. We conclude that the false alarm effect generalizes to lineup identification, but does not extend to conjunction faces. The findings are consistent with age-related deficits in recollection of context and relative age invariance in perceptual integrative processes underlying the experience of familiarity.

Four experiments examined the possibility of a key-distance effect in a transposition detection task. Subjects heard standard melodies followed by comparison melodies presented in the same key, a musically near key or a musically far key. The task was to recognize comparisons that were exact transpositions of the standards, rejecting nontranspositions. Results suggested a largely invariant key-distance effect with nontransposition comparisons (lures); same- and near-key lures evoked more false alarms than far-key lures. The variables of musical experience, age of subject, and familiarity of melody affected the level of transposition-recognition performance but did not consistently affect the size of the key-distance effect. The results support the psychological reality of key distance and are consistent with both musical and nonmusical-auditory theories of its effects. The key-distance effect was not found with transposition comparisons (targets), a result with implications for the separability of key and interval information in short-term memory for melodies.