Remembering changes: repetition effects in face recollection

Two experiments examined effects of repetition and change on states of awareness in face recognition. Participants studied repeatedly presented photographs of faces, with the second presentation following either immediately after the first presentation (massed repetition) or following six intervening items (spaced repetition). To manipulate perceptual change, each repeated face was either identical or a mirror image of the first presentation. Subsequently, when recognising a face, participants indicated whether they consciously recollected its prior occurrence (“remembering”) or recognised it on the basis of familiarity (“knowing”). Changes in appearance between repeated faces enhanced remember, but not know, responses, and these effects were accentuated for spaced, rather than massed, repetition. These findings suggest that distinctiveness of encoding supports the phenomenological experience of conscious remembering.