REPETITION PRIMING AND ASSOCIATIVE PRIMING OF FACE RECOGNITION - EVIDENCE FROM EVENT-RELATED POTENTIALS

Face recognition can be facilitated by previous presentation both of the same face and of an associated person's face. In Experiment 1, the effects of face repetition and associative priming on event-related potentials (ERPs) were compared. Repetition decreased reaction times (RTs) and modulated both early (180-290 ms) and late ERPs beyond 310 ms. Associative priming caused a topographically equivalent late ERP modulation, although RTs and early ERPs were unaffected. The results suggest that repetition acted on an early processing locus, presumably the activation of face representations. Both repetition and associative priming affected a relatively late locus, probably the activation of person-related semantic information. In Experiment 2, face repetitions were omitted and associative priming effects were observed both in ERPs and RTs. This indicates that ERPs may reflect automatic aspects of associative priming more directly than do RTs.