Human faces and face-like stimuli are more memorable

Abstract

We have previously suggested a distinction in the brain processes governing biological and artifactual stimuli. One of the best examples of the biological category consists of human faces, the perception of which appears to be determined by inherited mechanisms or ones rapidly acquired after birth. In extending this work, we inquire here whether there is a higher memorability for images of human faces and whether memorability declines with increasing departure from human faces; if so, the implication would add to the growing evidence of differences in the processing of biological versus artifactual stimuli. To do so, we used images and memorability scores from a large data set of 58,741 images to compare the relative memorability of the following image categories: real human faces versus buildings, and extending this to a comparison of real human faces with five image categories that differ in their grade of resemblance to a real human face. Our findings show that, in general, when we compare the biological category of faces to the artifactual category of buildings, the former is more memorable. Furthermore, there is a gradient in which the more an image resembles a real human face the more memorable it is. Thus, the previously identified differences in biological and artifactual images extend to the field of memory.