Effects of race and verbalization on attentional and behavioural processing underpinning image and face recognition performance

Four experiments examined the effects of race and verbalisation on attentional and behavioural responding to faces during image and face recognition tasks. In both tasks, White British and Japanese participants (N = 80) studied sequentially presented faces one at a time, with a post-encoding task (describe or control) between the faces. This encoding phase was followed immediately by a recognition task involving a two-altrenative forced choice recognition test. During the image recognition task, the images of the targets during learning and recognition were identical, wheareas during the face recognition task, the images between the two phases were different. Accuracy, response time, and eye movements (i.e., dwell time and fixations) were analysed. The results showed that race of face affected behavioural responses by both groups, but in contrasting directions. Verbal processing facilitated face recognition accuracy by the Japanese group, whereas it aided image recognition accuracy by the British group. Nonetheless, eye movements by both groups showed that verbalization resulted in increased attention to a wider area of the face while no-verbalizsation narrowed attention allocation to a specific feature. Moreover, both groups directed more attention to non-feature areas of other-race faces and more attention to eyes of own-race faces