PRIME-TIME ADVERTISEMENTS - REPETITION PRIMING FROM FACES SEEN ON SUBJECT RECRUITMENT POSTERS

Repetition priming is defined as a gain in item recognition after prev ious exposure. Repetition priming of face recognition has been shown t o last for several months, despite contamination by everyday exposure to both experimental and control faces in the interval. Here we show t hat gains in face recognition in the laboratory are found from faces i nitially seen in a rather different context-on subject recruitment pos ters, even when the advertisements make no specific mention of experim ents involving face recognition. The priming was greatest when identic al pictures were shown in the posters and in the test phase, although different views of faces did give significant priming in one study. Fo llow-up studies revealed poor explicit memory for the faces shown on t he posters. The results of these experiments are used to develop a mod el in which repetition priming reflects the process of updating repres entations of familiar faces.