Biological Psychology 94 (2013) 369–379 Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Biological Psychology journal h om epa ge: www.elsevier.com/locat e/biopsycho How experience shapes memory for faces: An event-related potential study on the own-age bias Holger Wiese a,b,∗ , Nicole Wolff a,b , Melanie C. Steffens a,c , Stefan R. Schweinberger a,b a DFG Research Unit Person Perception Friedrich Schiller University of Jena, Institute of Psychology, Am Steiger 3/1, 07743 Jena, Germany b Department of General Psychology and Cognitive Neuroscience, Friedrich Schiller University of Jena, Jena, Germany c Department of Social Cognition and Cognitive Psychology, Friedrich Schiller University of Jena, Jena, Germany a r t i c l e i n f o Article history: Received 10 December 2012 Accepted 7 July 2013 Available online 13 July 2013 Keywords: Faces Event-related potentials Recognition memory Own-age bias Expertise a b s t r a c t Young adults more accurately remember own-age than older faces. We tested whether this own-age bias (OAB) is reduced by increased experience. Young experts (geriatric nurses) and controls performed a recognition experiment with young and old faces. Critically, while control participants demonstrated better memory for young faces, no OAB was observed in the experts. Event-related potentials revealed larger N170 and P2 amplitudes for young than old faces in both groups, suggesting no group differences during early perceptual processing. At test, N250 repetition effects were more anteriorily distributed for own- than other-age faces in control participants, whereas experts showed no corresponding effects. A larger late positive component (LPC) for old than young faces was observed in controls, but not in experts. Larger LPCs may reflect prolonged stimulus processing compromising memory retrieval. In sum, experience with other-age faces does not affect early perceptual processing, but modulates later stages related to memory retrieval. © 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. 1. Introduction Humans are often considered to be experts in face recognition. Such expertise, however, can vary substantially for different cate- gories of faces. It is well known that participants are more accurate at remembering faces of their own relative to another ethnic group (Malpass & Kravitz, 1969; Meissner & Brigham, 2001). Similar to this so-called own-race bias, it has also been demonstrated that own-age faces are remembered more accurately than other-age faces (Anastasi & Rhodes, 2005; Bartlett & Leslie, 1986; Rhodes & Anastasi, 2012). Theoretical explanations of such biases in face recognition mem- ory have considered enhanced perceptual expertise, resulting from relatively more pronounced contact with own-group persons, as the underlying mechanism (Rossion & Michel, 2011; Valentine, 1991). For instance, most people grow up having more contact to own-race relative to other-race persons, and this may result in the accrual of enhanced perceptual expertise for own-race faces. Sim- ilarly, young adult participants typically have substantially more contact with persons from their own age group, compared to both older people and children. Accordingly, both the own-race and ∗ Corresponding author. Tel.: +49 3641 945185, fax: +49 3641 945182. E-mail address: holger.wiese@uni-jena.de (H. Wiese). own-age biases (OAB) may be explained by relatively increased perceptual expertise with the respective in-group faces. A number of empirical results support this assumption. For instance, it has been reported that participants with enhanced contact toward other-race people show reduced biases (Chiroro & Valentine, 1995; Hancock & Rhodes, 2008). Similarly, children who grow up in an “other-race country” (such as Korean adoptees who live in a European country) show either no (de Heering, de Liedekerke, Deboni, & Rossion, 2010), or even reversed own-race biases, with more accurate memory for other-race as compared to own-race faces (Sangrigoli, Pallier, Argenti, Ventureyra, & de Schonen, 2005). Moreover, holistic processing, which is typically observed for stimuli of particular perceptual expertise, has been shown to be more pronounced for own- relative to other-race faces (Bukach, Cottle, Ubiwa, & Miller, 2012; Michel, Caldara, & Rossion, 2006; Michel, Rossion, Han, Chung, & Caldara, 2006; Tanaka, Kiefer, & Bukach, 2004). Contact and/or expertise have also been demonstrated to influence the OAB. Harrison and Hole (2009) observed superior recognition memory for young adult relative to child faces in young adult control participants, but similar memory for child and adult faces in trainee teachers. Moreover, a recent study demonstrated an OAB in a group of older participants with substantially more contact toward own-age relative to young adult persons, while an age- and performance-matched group with more balanced contact did not show a corresponding OAB (Wiese, Komes, & Schweinberger, 2012). Using a delayed matching task Kuefner and colleagues (Kuefner, 0301-0511/$ – see front matter © 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.biopsycho.2013.07.001