2016 Volume 14 Issue 2 Pages 115-119
Judgment of facial impressions rather than physical features of a face improve subsequent recognition memory. This memory phenomenon is known as the semantic superiority effect pertaining to facial recognition memory. However, the problem with these two types of judgment is that they incorporate not only factors pertaining to levels of processing, but also factors of holistic processing. Therefore, in this study, we established four judgment tasks, including factors pertaining to levels of processing (semantic and structural) and factors of holistic processing (configural and part-based). Our analysis shows that the main effect of the two factors is not statistically significant, but rather, only their interaction is. That is, the judgment of facial impression, which semantically processes the face as a whole, had a greater effect on recognition memory in comparison with other types of judgment. These findings show that both configural and semantic processing are necessary for the semantic superiority effect to occur.
