Learning what to inhibit: The influence of repeated testing on the encoding of gender and age information.

Learning what to inhibit: The influence of repeated testing on the encoding of gender and age information. J Pers Soc Psychol. 2019 Apr 18;: Authors: Palma TA, Garcia-Marques L, Marques P, Hagá S, Payne BK Abstract Psychological research has devoted considerable attention to the relationship between the multiple category dimensions that can be extracted from faces. In the present studies, we investigated the role of experience and learning on the way the social perceiver deals with multiple category dimensions. Specifically, we tested whether learning which of 2 dimensions is the most relevant to the task at hand influences the encoding and retrieval of both task-relevant and irrelevant dimensions. In our studies, participants went through several cycles, each consisting of a study and a test phase. We manipulated the structure of the tests such that participants were probed on only 1 category dimension (age or gender), despite viewing faces of both category dimensions in all study phases. We hypothesized that when participants were repeatedly tested on 1 dimension, they would proactively control their attention toward that specific dimension and away from the nonrelevant dimension. Five studies demonstrated that: (a) participants learned which dimension was test-relevant such that they gradually became faster and more accurate on that dimension; (b) when the gender dimension was test-relevant, participants were faster and more accu...
Source: Journal of Personality and Social Psychology - Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: Tags: J Pers Soc Psychol Source Type: research