OBSERVATION Can Massive But Passive Exposure to Faces Contribute to Face Recognition Abilities? Galit Yovel, Keren Halsband, and Michel Pelleg Tel-Aviv University Naomi Farkash and Bracha Gal Rabin Medical Center, Petah Tikva, Israel Yonatan Goshen-Gottstein Tel-Aviv University Recent studies have suggested that individuation of other-race faces is more crucial for enhancing recognition performance than exposure that involves categorization of these faces to an identity- irrelevant criterion. These findings were primarily based on laboratory training protocols that dissociated exposure and individuation by using categorization tasks. However, the absence of enhanced recognition following categorization may not simulate key aspects of real-life massive exposure without individuation to other-race faces. Real-life exposure spans years of seeing a multitude of faces, under variant conditions, including expression, view, lighting and gaze, albeit with no subcategory individuation. However, in most real-life settings, massive exposure operates in concert with individuation. An exception to that are neonatology nurses, a unique population that is exposed to— but do not individuate—massive numbers of newborn faces. Our findings show that recognition of newborn faces by nurses does not differ from adults who are rarely exposed to newborn faces. A control study showed that the absence of enhanced recognition cannot be attributed to the relatively short exposure to each newborn face in the neonatology unit or to newborns’ apparent homogeneous appearance. It is therefore the quality—not the quantity— of exposure that determines recognition abilities. Keywords: other-race effect, perceptual training, individuation, face recognition, newborn-face effect A well-documented phenomena in face recognition is our poor ability to discriminate faces of other races compared with own-race faces (for review, see Meissner & Brigham, 2001). This other-race effect is usually attributed to the lesser amount of experience that our face recognition system has with other- race faces (Chiroro & Valentine, 1995). Indeed, high recogni- tion of own-race faces typically depends on two factors. First, we are passively exposed to faces of our own race. Second, we frequently attempt to individuate own-race faces; that is, to represent these faces at a subcategory level (Hugenberg, Young, Bernstein, & Sacco, 2010; Levin & Beale, 2000; Scott & Monesson, 2009; Tanaka, Curran, & Sheinberg, 2005; Tanaka & Pierce, 2009). Because passive exposure and individuation usually operate in concert, it is important to determine whether either of these can alone mediate the development of recognition abilities. Similar to the other-race effect, recognition of faces from other ages is also poor (Anastasi & Rhodes, 2005; Cassia, Picozzi, Kuefner, & Casati, 2009) and can provide insight with respect to the role of exposure and individuation on face recognition. This study was motivated by the insight that neonatology nurses—who though constantly exposed to newborn faces—are strongly discouraged from using facial features to discriminate between newborns. Most adults have minimal—if any—repeated exposure to newborn faces. We asked, therefore, whether extensive real life exposure- without-individuation of newborns by neonatology nurses would improve face recognition abilities. Indeed, recent studies have compared training protocols for other-race faces that involve individuation to protocols that require identity-irrelevant categorization (e.g., eye luminance; Tanaka & Pierce, 2009; McGugin, Tanaka, Lebrecht, Tarr, & Gauthier, 2010). These studies revealed greater improvement of recognition following individuation than following categorization. Critically, these studies included relatively short exposures to a small number This article was published Online First January 30, 2012. Galit Yovel, Keren Halsband, Michel Pelleg, and Yonatan Goshen- Gottstein, Department of Psychology, School of Psychological Sciences, Tel-Aviv University, Ramat-Aviv, Israel; Naomi Farkash and Bracha Gal, Neonatology Unit, Women’s Hospital, Rabin Medical Center, Petah Tikva, Israel. We first would like to thank the neonatology nurses and their age- matched control participants who participated in our study. We thank Ken Paller for sharing his 1970s yearbook face database with us. We also thank Zohar Rouso for her help in stimulus generation in the early stages of this project and Eyal Rosen for his help with the SuperLab programming. Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Galit Yovel or Yonatan Goshen-Gottstein, Department of Psychology, Tel Aviv University, Tel Aviv 69978, Israel. E-mail: gality@post.tau.ac.il or goshen@post.tau.ac.il Journal of Experimental Psychology: © 2012 American Psychological Association Human Perception and Performance 2012, Vol. 38, No. 2, 285–289 0096-1523/12/$12.00 DOI: 10.1037/a0027077 285