Repeated repetition priming in face recognition

Prior exposure to an item can facilitate subsequent recognition of that ite m. This effect, known as repetition priming, has been found for the recogni tion of many stimuli including faces (Bruce & Young, 1986). Three experimen ts are reported, which investigated whether repetition priming is limited t o the first repetition or whether subsequent repetitions continually act to increase the speed of face processing. Experiment I demonstrated that repe tition can reduce categorization time for faces after the first exposure, a nd this effect is independent of practice effects. Experiment 2 demonstrate d that the relationship between reaction time and number of repetitions fit s a negative power function. Experiment 3 investigated how delay affects th is power function. Delay was found to decrease the negative gradient of the power curve. The effects of priming and delay are discussed in terms of th e predictions made by Burton's (1994) interactive activation and competitio n with learning (IACL) model of face recognition and accounts of automatici ty.