Abstract

The own-age bias refers to the observation that face recognition is typically superior for own-age faces compared with other-age faces. We investigated this bias in Korsakoff patients, as well as its relationship with social contact and episodic memory. Korsakoff patients and age-matched controls were exposed to older faces (own-age faces) and younger faces (other-age faces). In the recognition phase, they were invited to decide whether faces had been exposed in the encoding phase or not. Results revealed an own-age bias in control participants (i.e., high recognition of older than for younger faces), but not in Korsakoff patients (i.e., similar recognition of older and younger faces). Furthermore, both Korsakoff’s syndrome and controls reported more social contact with old than with young individuals. Recognition of younger and older faces in Korsakoff patients was significantly correlated with episodic performance but not with social contact with younger and older people. We conclude that the lack of own-age bias in Korsakoff’s syndrome is related rather to compromise of episodic memory than to diminished social contact with younger adults.

摘要

同龄人脸偏差是指观察到人脸识别对于同龄人脸相比通常优于其他人脸。我们调查了 Korsakoff 患者的这种偏见，以及它与社会接触和情景记忆的关系。Korsakoff 患者和年龄匹配的对照组暴露于年龄较大的面孔（自己年龄的面孔）和年轻的面孔（其他年龄的面孔）。在识别阶段，他们被邀请决定是否在编码阶段暴露了面孔。结果显示对照组参与者存在年龄偏差（即，对老年人的识别高于对年轻面孔的识别），但在 Korsakoff 患者中则没有（即对老年人和年轻面孔的识别相似）。此外，Korsakoff 综合征和对照组均报告与老年人相比，与年轻人的社会接触更多。Korsakoff 患者对年轻和年长面孔的识别与情节表现显着相关，但与与年轻人和老年人的社交接触无关。我们得出的结论是，Korsakoff 综合征中缺乏自身年龄偏见与情景记忆的损害有关，而不是与与年轻人的社会接触减少有关。