Date of Award

1994

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Science (MS)

Department

Psychology

Program/Concentration

Psychology

Committee Director

Peter J. Mikulka

Committee Member

Raymond J. Kirby

Committee Member

Mark Scerbo

Call Number for Print

Special Collections LD4331.P65C54

Abstract

The present experiment examines the relationship between name stimulus match and facial familiarity using electrodermal activity (EDA) as a dependent measure. Twenty male and 20 female undergraduate students from Old Dominion University were used as subjects. A within-subjects design allowed subjects in the experimental conditions to view familiar written names and faces which varied on the dimension of naming (name-face pairings). Three combinations of naming conditions were incorporated: (1) match, (2) mismatch, and (3) no name. As a control, subjects experienced the same naming conditions, but the names and faces were unfamiliar. Results based on EDA amplitudes revealed that familiar names did not show properties of familiar faces (large EDAs) despite a priori predictions that they would. In contrast, EDA amplitudes for familiar faces were larger than amplitudes for unfamiliar faces supporting the results of Tranel et al. (1985) and Shearer (1992). For the naming conditions, EDA amplitudes for familiar faces in the no name pairings showed the largest EDA responding followed by the mismatched condition and the matched condition had the lowest EDAs. EDA responding for unfamiliar faces in all three naming conditions were not statistically different from one another. The study indicates that heightened EDA amplitudes may be due to a possible semantic naming search.

Rights

In Copyright. URI: http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/ This Item is protected by copyright and/or related rights. You are free to use this Item in any way that is permitted by the copyright and related rights legislation that applies to your use. For other uses you need to obtain permission from the rights-holder(s).

DOI

10.25777/z1mj-ed54

Download

Included in

Psychology Commons

Share

COinS