Orienting Strategies at Study and Test in Facial Recognition
John H. Mueller, Kenneth L. Wherry · The American Journal of Psychology · 1980
Following a study phase which involved an orienting task that required processing of either a physical feature of a face or an abstract trait of a person, subjects had a recognition test under special instructions to concentrate on either physical features, abstract qualities, or no special instructions. For hit rate and d', abstract study tasks led to better recognition than physical-feature tasks. For d', but not for hit rate, subjects switched from physical-feature to abstract strategies did considerably worse on the recognition test than subjects with a physical-feature task at study and test. Subjects switched from abstract to physical-feature processing showed only a small decrement relative to subjects with abstract processing in both phases. On a second test, subjects were required to identify the first-test distractors among additional new items, with no study items shown. There was no residual effect of type of test strategy.