The effect of face familiarity on boundary errors
Date
2022
Authors
Min, Rachel
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Thesis
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Abstract
Boundary errors occur when image boundaries are incorrectly remembered to be farther or closer than they actually were - termed boundary extension (BE) and boundary restriction (BR), respectively. These errors can be influenced by the composition of an image, such as some parts being more salient than others, and also forms of emotional arousal like state and trait anxiety. A type of stimulus not well-researched in relation to boundary errors, however, is faces, despite their highly salient nature; in particular, familiarity of faces may be relevant to boundary errors due to their ability to induce emotional arousal. In this study, using a within-subjects design, participants viewed 40 images of room interiors with a face embedded in the scene centre; 20 were famous, and 20 non-famous. After a time interval, participants viewed the same images at test, and rated how far they believed the boundaries of each image had changed from its original. A recognition test was used to confirm participants' personal familiarity with the famous faces. We found that participants tended to make BE errors overall, with the magnitude of BE error decreasing for non-famous faces. Ratings of emotional arousal and pleasantness also increased for famous faces. Participants' trait anxiety did not influence these results. Given that unfamiliar faces are encountered often in the environment in many different contexts, this study suggests negative arousal and distinctiveness to be a mechanism for contracted boundaries when viewing them. This has implications for contexts in which memory accuracy is crucial, such as eyewitness memory. Keywords: boundary errors, boundary extension, boundary restriction, face perception, face familiarity
School/Discipline
School of Psychology
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Thesis (B.PsychSc(Hons)) -- University of Adelaide, School of Psychology, 2023
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