Rating Distinctiveness of Faces Experiment

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Introduction
Materials


Introduction
The purpose of this experiment is to gather distinctiveness ratings for the set of faces used in several current experiments, including the Word Face Associations experiment found on the PsychExps site.  Perceived distinctiveness of a face is a critical factor in how well the face is later remembered (Light et al., 1979).  The data from this experiment will be used to help interpret several memory experiments using these faces as stimuli.
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Materials

There were 9 categories of female faces and 9 categories of male faces, each consisting of 12 perceptually similar exemplars, as judged by the author.  There were 20 extra female faces and 20 extra male faces, chosen not to be similar to any of the categories (called unrelated distracters).  The faces were black and white photographic quality with similar backgrounds, selected primarily from college yearbooks and from the Olivetti Research Database of Faces (AT&T Laboratories, 1994).  Each face was standardized so that the head orientation, level of the eyes, and position of the chin were identical and there was very little (if any) background.  My labels for the categories are as follows.  Female: old age, middle age, young blonde straight hair, young blonde curly hair, young brown curly hair, young brown straight hair, Asian American, African American, and Indian American.  Male:  old age, middle age, young blonde hair, young with mustaches, young brown hair, young receding hairlines, Asian American, African American, Indian American.  The extra faces came from categories above, but they all wore glasses.

Last revised:June 03, 2003 11:46:57 AM
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