Speak My Language and I Will Remember Your Face Better: An ERP Study

Abstract

Here we investigated how the language in which a person addresses us, native or foreign, influences subsequent face recognition. In an old/new paradigm, we explored the behavioral and electrophysiological activity associated with face recognition memory. Participants were first presented with faces accompanied by voices speaking either in their native (NL) or foreign language (FL). Faces were then presented in isolation and participants decided whether the face was presented before (old) or not (new). The results revealed that participants were more accurate at remembering faces previously paired with their native as opposed to their FL. At the event-related potential (ERP) level, we obtained evidence that faces in the NL were differently encoded from those in the FL condition, potentially due to differences in processing demands. During recognition, the frontal old/new effect was present (with a difference in latency) regardless of the language with which a face was associated, while the parietal old/new effect appeared only for faces associated with the native language. These results suggest that the language of our social interactions has an impact on the memory processes underlying the recognition of individuals.

Keywords: face recognition; familiarity; foreign language; old/new ERP effects; recollection; social categorization.

FIGURE 1

Mean accuracy in the recognition memory for faces for hit-NL (blue bar), hit-FL (red bar) and correct rejections (black bar) Error Bars depict mean standard errors.

FIGURE 2

ERPs during the encoding phase. Lines represent encoding trials in the NL condition (blue line) and encoding trials in the FL condition (red line). Negative is plotted up. Right figure represents a zoomed figure of the electrode F1.

FIGURE 3

ERPs during the face recognition task. Lines represent Hits in the NL condition (Hit-NL, blue line), Hits in the FL condition (Hit-FL, red line) and correct rejections (Crej, black line). Plotted electrodes represent the four regions of interest (ROI): Left frontal (Fp1, AF3, F1, F3: LF), Right frontal (Fp2, AF4, F2, F4: RF), Left parietal (P3, P1, CP3, CP1: LP), and Right parietal (P4, P2, CP4, CP2: RP). Negative is plotted up.

FIGURE 4

Raster diagram illustrating significant differences between ERPs to Crej and Hits (regardless of language) in the face recognition phase according to a cluster permutation test. Blue rectangles indicate electrodes/time points in which the ERPs to Crej are more negative than Hits. Gray rectangles indicate electrodes/time points at which no significant differences were found. Note that electrodes are organized according to laterality and region. Left and right electrodes are grouped on the figure’s top and bottom, respectively. Midline electrodes are shown in the middle. Moreover, each group of electrodes is ordered from frontal to posterior electrodes. Lower figure represents the topographical map of the old/new effect in the time-window between 464 and 590 ms for NL and FL.