Poster #3 - ERP Study of the Own-Age Bias in Memory for Faces

• In Event: 1-169 - Poster Session 04
  In Poster Session: PS 04 Section - Attention, Learning, Memory

Integrative Statement

The own-age bias refers to the propensity to better remember own- than other-age faces. Children show an own-age bias (e.g., Hills, 2012; Hills, & Lewis, 2011), and the own-age bias impacts ERP correlates of memory in young and elderly adults (Wiese, Komes, & Schweinberger, 2012; Wiese, Schweinberger, & Hansen, 2008). No studies have examined the electrophysiological correlates of the own-age bias in children. The present study examines ERP correlates of the own-age bias during the encoding and retrieval phases of a face recognition task in 5- and 6-year-old children and young adults. We hypothesize that experience with members of one’s own age group results in the development of perceptual expertise for and enhanced encoding of own-age faces relative to other-age faces. Biases in encoding processes subsequently result in enhanced memory discrimination for own-age faces than other-age faces.
Children and adults completed a face recognition task with neutral child and adult faces. Child faces were obtained from the Child Affective Facial Expression Set (LoBue & Thrasher, 2015; LoBue et al., 2017) and young adult faces were obtained from the Chicago
Face Database (Ma, Correll, & Wittenbrink, 2015). During encoding, participants viewed each face for 5 seconds then made a sex judgment. Participants made a recognition memory judgment at retrieval. Behavioral and EEG data were collected during encoding and retrieval.
Behaviorally, adults demonstrated an own-age bias, since they better discriminated between adult (M = 2.34) than child faces (M = 1.84). Preliminary data suggest that if children demonstrate an own-age bias, it will be much smaller in magnitude than the effect shown by adults. Four ERP components associated with face processing (P1, N170, P2) and memory (parietal old/new effect) are of relevance to the present project. The P1 is associated with perceptual processes and is hypothesized to be modulated by the age of the face rather than age of the participant. Preliminary data at encoding suggest that the P1 is larger in amplitude for child faces than adult faces in both child and adult participants (Figure 1). The N170 and the P2 are associated with first-order configural processing and second-order configural processing, respectively. These ERP components were hypothesized to reflect an own-age bias (i.e., that age of the face would interact with age of the participant to influence the amplitude of the ERP response). Preliminary data showed the N170 and the P2 ERP components elicited at encoding exhibit an own-age bias. The amplitude of the N170 is larger for own- than other-age faces, whereas the amplitude of the P2 is smaller for own- than other-age faces (Figure 1). The parietal old/new effect is a memory effect recorded at retrieval that is associated with recollection. The parietal old/new effect is larger to own-age faces in young adults that exhibit an own-age bias in face recognition (Figure 2). We hypothesize that the positive slow wave activity in children, which reflects recollection, will also exhibit an own-age bias, but the data are too preliminary at this time to draw conclusions.

Authors

• Leslie Rollins, Christopher Newport University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Aubrey Olsen, Christopher Newport University
  Presenting Author