Recognition of faces and complex objects in younger and older adults

Abstract

We examined whether (1) age-associated impairments in face recognition are specific to faces or also apply to within-category recognition of other objects and (2) age-related face recognition deficits are related to impairments in encoding second-order relations and holistic information. In Experiments 1 and 2, we found reliable age differences for recognition of faces, but not of objects. Moreover, older adults (OAs) and younger adults (YAs) displayed similar face inversion effects. In Experiment 3, unlike YAs, OAs did not show the expected decline in performance for recognition of composites (Young, Hellawell, & Hay, 1987). In Experiment 4, both OAs and YAs showed a whole/part advantage (Tanaka & Farah, 1993). Our results suggest that OAs have spared function for processing of second-order relations and holistic information. Possible explanations for the finding that OAs have greater ifficulty recognizing faces than recognizing other objects are proposed. Copyright 2006 Psychonomic Society, Inc.