Research suggests that own-race faces are naturally memorized in a more elaborate (e.g., many features of a face or the whole face) way, whereas other-race faces are memorized in a less elaborate (e.g., only selected features of the face) manner. Here, we tested if instructions for judgements about the whole face and a single facial feature modulated the other-race effect in face memory. White participants performed whole-face and single-feature tasks while memorizing White and Black faces for later recognition. Encoding instructions had a stronger impact on own-race than other-race faces. Whole-face instructions increased the other-race effect, whereas single-feature instructions decreased it. Own-race faces in the whole-face task demonstrated event-related potential (ERP) patterns of memory encoding comparable to previously observed natural memory encoding, suggesting naturally more elaborate encoding of own-race faces. ERPs of memory encoding for other-race faces were similar between task conditions and comparable to previously observed natural encoding patterns, suggesting naturally less elaborate encoding. No impact of the encoding tasks was found on ERPs related to memory retrieval, which may be an artefact of a perceptual task that does not enhance semantic details in memory. The current results indicate that some contributions to the other-race effect are more elaborate (more detailed) memory encoding for own-race faces and less elaborate (less detailed) memory encoding for other-race faces. This study also provides evidence for more malleability of own-race than other-race faces through task instructions, consistent with assumptions of perceptual learning theories of the other-race effect.

中文翻译：

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对自己种族面孔的更精细的处理和对其他种族面孔的不太精细的处理有助于面孔记忆中的其他种族效应

研究表明，自己种族的面孔自然会以更复杂的方式（例如，面孔的许多特征或整个面孔）被记忆，而其他种族的面孔则以不太复杂的方式被记住（例如，仅面部的选定特征）方式。在这里，我们测试了对整个面部和单个面部特征的判断指令是否调节面部记忆中的其他种族效应。白人参与者执行全脸和单一特征任务，同时记住白人和黑人面孔以供以后识别。编码指令对自己种族的影响比对其他种族面孔的影响更大。全脸指令增加了异族效应，而单一特征指令则降低了异族效应。在全脸任务中，本族面孔表现出与之前观察到的自然记忆编码相当的事件相关电位（ERP）模式的记忆编码，这表明本族面孔的编码自然更复杂。其他种族面孔的记忆编码的 ERP 在不同的任务条件下是相似的，并且与之前观察到的自然编码模式相当，这表明编码自然不那么复杂。没有发现编码任务对与记忆检索相关的 ERP 产生影响，这可能是感知任务的产物，不会增强记忆中的语义细节。目前的结果表明，对其他种族效应的一些贡献是对自己种族面孔的更精细（更详细）的记忆编码和对其他种族面孔的不太精细（不太详细）的记忆编码。