Intra- and inter-modal repetition priming of familiar faces and voices

• Published in: The British journal of psychology Vol. 88; no. 1; pp. 143 - 156
• Main Authors: Ellis, Hadyn D., Jones, Dylan M., Mosdell, Nick
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Oxford, UK Blackwell Publishing Ltd 01.02.1997; British Psychological Society; John Wiley & Sons, Inc; Cambridge University Press
• Subjects: Auditory Perception; Biological and medical sciences; Cognition; Cognition. Intelligence; Comparison; Face; Faces; Fundamental and applied biological sciences. Psychology; Humans; Miscellaneous; Priming (Psychology); Psychological aspects; Psychology; Psychology. Psychoanalysis. Psychiatry; Psychology. Psychophysiology; Random Allocation; Reaction Time; Repetition (Rhetoric); Repetition priming; Visual Perception; Voice; Voices; Human; Priming effect; Stimulus modality; Stimulus familiarity; Cognition; Identification; Hearing; Vision; Repetitive stimulus; Perception; Face; Voice; Recognition
• ISSN: 0007-1269; 2044-8295
• DOI: 10.1111/j.2044-8295.1997.tb02625.x

Two experiments explored repetition priming for familiar voices and faces. Expt 1 revealed that, like faces, prior exposure to a voice in a gender judgment task speeds its subsequent classification as familiar or unfamiliar, some minutes later. Faces and voices do not prime one another, however; a result consistent with the notion that evidence is initially accumulated separately for voices and faces. In Expt 2, a prediction derived from the IAC model of Burton, Bruce & Johnston (1990) was explored. The results confirmed that inter‐modal repetition priming occurs when the interval between exposures to different personal identification stimuli are separated by a short SOA. This result is consistent with similar ones reported by Calder (1993) and Young, Flude, Hellawell & Ellis (1994) for face‐name combinations.