Abstract
Recognition without identification is the finding that participants can recognize recognition test items as having been previously studied when the test items themselves are presented in such a way that their identification is hindered. The present study demonstrates this phenomenon in face recognition. Participants studied names of celebrities before receiving a recognition test containing pictures of celebrity faces. Half of the pictures were of celebrities whose names were studied; half were of celebrities whose names were not studied. Participants attempted to identify each face on the test and also rated the likelihood that each person’s name was studied. Among the faces that went unidentified, ratings discriminated between celebrities whose names were studied and celebrities whose names were not studied. This recognition without face identification effect is dependent upon the sense of being in a tip-of-the-tongue state for a particular name. Theoretical implications of the results are discussed.
Article PDF
Similar content being viewed by others
Avoid common mistakes on your manuscript.
References
Bredart, S., &Valentine, T. (1998). Descriptiveness and proper name retrieval.Memory,6, 199–206.
Bruce, V., &Valentine, T. (1985). Identity priming in the recognition of familiar faces.British Journal of Psychology,76, 363–383.
Burton, A. M., Bruce, V., &Hancock, P. J. B. (1999). From pixels to people: A model of familiar face recognition.Cognitive Science,23, 1–31.
Burton, A. M., Bruce, V., &Johnston, R. A. (1990). Understanding face recognition with an interactive activation model.British Journal of Psychology,81, 361–380.
Cleary, A. M. (2004). Orthography, phonology, and meaning: Word features that give rise to feelings of familiarity in recognition.Psychonomic Bulletin & Review,11, 446–451.
Cleary, A. M. (2006). Relating familiarity-based recognition and the tip-of-the-tongue phenomenon: Detecting a word’s recency in the absence of access to the word.Memory & Cognition,34, 804–816.
Cleary, A. M., &Greene, R. L. (2000). Recognition without identification.Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, & Cognition,26, 1063–1069.
Cleary, A. M., &Greene, R. L. (2001). Memory for unidentified items: Evidence for the use of letter information in familiarity processes.Memory & Cognition,29, 540–545.
Cleary, A. M., &Greene, R. L. (2004). True and false memory in the absence of perceptual identification.Memory,12, 231–236.
Cleary, A. M., &Greene, R. L. (2005). Recognition without perceptual identification: A measure of familiarity?Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology,58A, 1143–1152.
Cleary, A. M., Langley, M. M., &Seiler, K. R. (2004). Recognition without picture identification: Geons as components of the pictorial memory trace.Psychonomic Bulletin & Review,11, 903–908.
Cohen, G. (1990). Why is it difficult to put names to faces?British Journal of Psychology,81, 287–297.
Curran, T., &Cleary, A. M. (2003). Using ERPs to dissociate recollection from familiarity in picture recognition.Cognitive Brain Research,15, 191–205.
Goldstein, D. G., &Gigerenzer, G. (1999). The recognition heuristic: How ignorance makes us smart. In G. Gigerenzer, P. M. Todd, & The ABC Research Group (Eds.),Simple heuristics that make us smart (pp. 37–58). New York: Oxford University Press.
Hay, D. C., Young, A. W., &Ellis, A. W. (1991). Routes through the face recognition system.Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology,43A, 761–791.
Johnston, R. A., &Bruce, V. (1990). Lost properties? Retrieval differences between name codes and semantic codes for familiar people.Psychological Research,52, 62–67.
Mandler, G. (1980). Recognizing: The judgment of previous occurrence.Psychological Review,87, 252–271.
Mandler, G. (1991). Your face looks familiar but I can’t remember your name: A review of dual process theory. In W. E. Hockley & S. Lewandowsky (Eds.),Relating theory and data: Essays on human memory in honor of Bennet B. Murdock (pp. 207–225). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.
Peynircioglu, Z. (1990). A feeling-of-recognition without identification.Journal of Memory & Language,29, 493–500.
Rajaram, S. (1993). Remembering and knowing: Two means of access to the personal past.Memory & Cognition,21, 89–102.
Reder, L. M., Nhouyvanisvong, A., Schunn, C. D., Ayers, M. S., Angstadt, P., &Hiraki, K. (2000). A mechanistic account of the mirror effect for word frequency: A computational model of remember-know judgments in a continuous recognition paradigm.Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory & Cognition,26, 294–320.
Reingold, H. (2000).They have a word for it. Louisville, Kentucky: Sarabande Books.
Schwartz, B. L. (2001). The relation of tip-of-the-tongue states and retrieval time.Memory & Cognition,29, 117–126.
Schwartz, B. L. (2002).Tip-of-the-tongue states: Phenomenology, mechanism, and lexical retrieval. Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.
Stanhope, N., &Cohen, G. (1993). Retrieval of proper names: Testing the models.British Journal of Psychology,84, 51–65.
Yonelinas, A. P. (2002). The nature of recollection and familiarity: A review of 30 years of research.Journal of Memory & Language,46, 441–517.
Young, A. W., Hay, D. C., &Ellis, A. W. (1985). The faces that launched a thousand slips: Everyday difficulties and errors in recognizing people.British Journal of Psychology,76, 495–523.
Yovel, G., &Paller, K. A. (2004). The neural basis of the butcher-onthe-bus phenomenon: When a face seems familiar but is not remembered.NeuroImage,21, 789–800.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Additional information
This project was supported by National Science Foundation CA REE R Award 0349088 to A.M.C. L.E.S. participated in this project as part of the 2005 Summer Internship Program for Women in Science and Engineering at Iowa State University, which was also supported by NSF Grant 0349088.
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Cleary, A.M., Specker, L.E. Recognition without face identification. Memory & Cognition 35, 1610–1619 (2007). https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03193495
Received:
Accepted:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03193495