Abstract
Two experiments were performed to investigate the effects of encoding on facial recognition memory by using two types of personality traits and two types of presentation in rating. In Experiment 1, half of subjects rated impression of 30 faces in terms of expression-independent trait and another half of subjects rated impression of 30 faces in terms of expression-dependent trait. This was followed by an unexpected yes-no recognition test with the same person's expression-changed faces. The results showed that the performance of the expression-independent group was better than that of the expression-dependent group. In Experiment 2, presentation conditions and personality trait conditions were manipulated. In sequential presentation condition, three facial expressions of a person were presented sequentially, and subjects were asked to rate all of them together in terms of two types of personality traits. In distributed presentation condition, three facial expressions of a person were presented distributively, and subjects were asked to rate them separately in terms of two types of personality traits. This was followed by an unexpected expression-changed recognition test. The results showed that the performance of the sequential presentation condition groups was better than that of the distributed presentation condition groups, but there was no interaction between personality trait and presentation. It was suggested that the encoding process that led to integration of three expressions facilitated subjects' recognition memory for faces.
