Cognitive styles and memory for faces.

Accuracy in the incidental recall of photographed human faces can be predicted from the S's cognitive styles and biases: (a) Ss who were field dependent on an embedded-figures test recalled more faces correctly than did the field independent; (b) Ss who were narrow categorizers on the Pettigrew Category-Width Scale had better recall than had broad categorizers; and (c) Ss who thought the photographed persons were relatively young did better than those who thought they were older. These 3 kinds of stylistic consistency were mutually independent. Some of these styles may determine memory for all sorts of stimuli and some may be relatively specific to memory for faces. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)