I Remember (and Forget) Your Happy Smiling Face: Directed Forgetting of Emotionally Expressive Faces of In-Group and Out-Group Members

Description

In an item-method directed forgetting, directed forgetting occurs when remember-cued items are better retained than forget-cued items, a result often attributable to the rehearsal of remember-cued items and cessation of rehearsal of forget-cued items. Such effects were found in Experiment 1 for happy White and Asian faces, but not when neutral and sad White or Asian faces were presented at study. Results of Experiment 2 suggest that Experiment 1 results are not easily attributed to dimensions associated with the photographs (e.g., attractiveness) used in Experiment 1. In Experiment 3, recognition accuracy was examined for photographs of both Whites and Asians seen at study. Consistent with research on face recognition biases and the ‘happy face effect’, more White than Asian faces and more happy than sad photographs were recognized at test. These results were consistent with predictions from the affect-as-cognitive-feedback hypothesis (Huntsinger, et al., 2014) according to which positive stimuli promote task-relevant processing whereas negative stimuli stop or reverse those processes.

Steps to reproduce

Directed Forgetting Study: After completing the consent form, participants viewed 36 photographs, half (18) of which were followed by a remember cue and the other half by a forget cue. Participants were instructed to pay attention to the face while it was on the screen and retain only remember-cued faces. Which face was shown at study, and which ones were followed by a remember- or forget-cue was randomly determined for each participant. Faces were presented in the following sequence: a 1000 ms fixation cross preceded the presentation of the photograph which was shown for 4000 ms followed by a 2000 ms instruction slide containing the word ‘Remember’ or ‘Forget’ (or just ‘Remember’ in the remember-only control condition). To control for recency effects, a word search puzzle was presented for 2 minutes in which Canadian place names contained within a 9 X 9 letter matrix were to be found. Directed Forgetting Test: Participants received instructions that memory for all studied faces would be tested. They were then shown 72 faces (36 previously seen, 36 new – 12 new faces from each emotion condition), and asked to indicate whether the presented face was new (never seen before) by pressing the ‘n’ key; or, if they thought the face was old (seen before), to press the ‘o’ key. If the ‘o’ key was pressed, participants were asked to indicate whether the face was associated with a remember- (“press the ‘r’ key”) or a forget-cue (“press the ‘f’ key”) at study2. Each participant received a different random order of the 72 faces, and the task was self-paced. After completing the task participants were thanked and debriefed. Remember-Only Control Condition. As in the directed forgetting condition, participants saw 36 sex-matched photographs, but in this condition each photograph was followed by a remember cue. Participants were instructed to pay attention to the face for a later memory test. Each participant received a different random order of the faces which were shown in the same sequence described above, and the same word search puzzle described above was used to control recency effects. At test, participants were shown 72 faces (36 previously seen, 36 new, 12 from each emotion condition) and asked to indicate whether the presented face was new (press the ‘n’ key); or the ‘o’ key if they thought the face was old.

Institutions

• Brandon University

  Manitoba, Brandon

Categories

Licence