Elaboration and distinctiveness in memory for faces.

Abstract

This research attempts to account for the finding that faces that have been judged with reference to traits such as honesty or friendliness are better remembered than faces judged with respect to a physical feature. Four experiments are reported in which the orienting task engaged in by the subjects was controlled. The first two experiments support an elaboration hypothesis that it is the amount rather than the type of information encoded that accounts for the observed effect. Experiments 3 and 4 provide evidence that elaborative encoding is effective because the likelihood of a distinctive feature being encoded increases with the degree of elaboration. The role of distinctiveness is emphasized.' An abbreviated description of this study has been reported elsewhere (Winograd, 1978).

Beneficial effects of verbalization and visual distinctiveness on remembering and knowing faces

“…Visual-processing accounts argue that facilitation arises as a function of the quantity or quality of visual information encoded about the face. Facilitation may be due to a greater number of features being attended to and stored during encoding (the feature quantity account; e.g., Blaney & Winograd, 1978;Courtois & Mueller, 1979;Winograd, 1978Winograd, , 1981 or to the encoding of more holistic impressions of the face (i.e., the interrelations between features), in addition to feature-based information (the holistic account; e.g., Berman & Cutler, 1998;Wells & Hryciw, 1984). Alternatively, semantic-processing accounts suggest that facilitation may be due to the addition of semantic associations to the described face, which benefit retrieval (e.g., Anderson & Reder, 1979;Bruce & Young, 1986;Ryan & Schooler, 1994, cited in Schooler, Ryan, & Reder, 1996.…”

Faces prototípicas provenientes de amostras populacionais de uma região brasileira

“…A teoria prediz que uma face típica, ou seja, uma face cujos elementos seriam comuns às faces já observadas, seria facilmente confundida com outras. Já uma face peculiar seria identificada de forma mais acurada (Barlett, Hurry, & Thorley, 1984;Winograd, 1981).…”

Testing location memory for threatening and nonthreatening stimuli : implications for evolutionary psychological theorizing.

“…These results make sense because conscious memory is known lead to superior performance for arousing (Mather & Sunderland, 2011), uncommon (Winograd, 1981), and valenced (Hamann et al, 1999) stimuli.…”

“…The GMP hypothesis states that location memory should be better for stimuli that are more arousing (Mather & Sunderland, 2011), less common, (Barclay, 2008;Winograd, 1981), and more strongly valenced (positively or negatively) (Hamann et al, 1999) than other stimuli. As discussed above, ancestral nonthreatening stimuli, ancestral threatening stimuli, and modern threatening stimuli were all rated as significantly more arousing than modern nonthreatening stimuli.…”

“…Four mnemonic principles that are particularly important to keep in mind for the current dissertation are 1) stimuli that are viewed as self-relevant and/or goal-relevant are generally remembered better than stimuli that are not (Holbrook, Bost, & Cave, 2003;Symons & Johnson, 1997) 2) distinctive or unique stimuli are remembered better than more mundane stimuli (Winograd, 1981) 3) positively and negatively valenced stimuli are remembered better than neutral (non-valenced) stimuli (Hamann, Ely, Grafton, & Kilts, 1999) and 4) more arousing stimuli are generally remembered better than less arousing stimuli (Mather & Sunderland, 2011). This is not an exhaustive list of the basic mnemonic principles, but is important when considering the experiments presented below.…”