The role of distinctiveness in recognition of faces as they become familiar

Abstract

Little research exists on the effect different stimuli can have on building familiarity for faces. However, the literature which does indicates that there are certain stimuli which can either help or hurt our ability to form familiarity. These factors include distinctiveness, internal and external features, caricaturing, quality, movement, inversion, and context to name a few (Johnston & Edmonds, 2009). The aim of this research was to test the effect of distinctiveness on familiarity for faces and to test at which point familiarity occurs with the hope of providing evidence for an instance theory of automaticity. A 5x3 within-subjects design was used to test this and the study found no significant effect for distinctiveness, however the experiment did show an improvement in accuracy, providing support for the instance theory