Abstract
Familiarity and face inversion not only affect face recognition and memory but also influence attention. Face processing is less attention-demanding for familiar than for unfamiliar faces and for upright than for inverted faces. The automaticity raises the question of how face processing interacts with an increase in attention. Using a dual-task paradigm, we tested the interaction between attention and face familiarity and orientation. Participants encoded a series of faces to memory while simultaneously monitoring a stream of colored squares, pressing the space bar for target-colored squares and making no response to distractor-colored squares. Replicating previous findings of the attentional boost effect (ABE), we found that faces encoded with target squares were better remembered than faces encoded with distractor squares. If the automatic nature of familiar (or upright) face processing makes attention unnecessary, then the attentional boost should be attenuated for familiar relative to unfamiliar faces and for upright relative to inverted faces. Data from three experiments showed, however, that the ABE was the same for all types of faces. These results suggest that target detection did not simply elevate attention in an early encoding phase. Rather, selecting targets and rejecting distractors in the color task may have led to yoked temporal selection of target-concurrent faces for entry into memory.
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Data availability
Experimental data in an aggregated format as well as videos and data files verifying the accuracy of the computer code are available on Open Science Framework https://osf.io/9hyce/.
Code availability
Experimental codes and the famous faces used in the study are available from the authors by request. Unfamiliar faces are drawn from image databases maintained by others (see Methods).
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Acknowledgments
This study was supported in part by a Graduate Research Fellowship. The authors declare no conflicts of interest to disclose. The data supporting the findings of this study are available in aggregate form at the following link: https://osf.io/9hyce/. Study materials are available by request. The study was not preregistered
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A.W.O. and V.G.L. designed the experiments. A.W.O. coded the experiments, verified code accuracy, performed the experiments, analyzed the data, and prepared files for OSF under the supervision of V.G.L. A.W.O. and V.G.L. wrote the manuscript.
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Oliver, G.W., Lee, V.G. The generality of the attentional boost effect for famous, unfamiliar, and inverted faces. Psychon Bull Rev 31, 234–241 (2024). https://doi.org/10.3758/s13423-023-02346-7
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.3758/s13423-023-02346-7