Judged attractiveness in recognition memory of women's faces.

A series of 35 3 1/2 X 2 1/2-in., full-face photographs of female undergraduates were used as stimuli. Each subject rated the randomly presented photographs into high, medium, and low attractiveness and 2 hr. later subjects recognized photographs they judged most and least attractive significantly better than the more "neutral" faces when all were mixed with 10 previously unused control stimuli. Arousal and "distinctive cues" were discussed as possible explanations for the improved memory associated with attractive and unattractive faces.

Social relatedness and perceptual performance among the aged.

The author investigated whether the ability to shift mental sets as defined by Goldstein and Scheerer (1941) and measured by the ability to detect sequence changes in a film, is associated with the degree of social relatedness that older people have with society. 76 subjects, 16 men and 60 women, aged 60 to 88 yr., were administered a questionnaire whose items were designed to measure social, personality and demographic variables. The subjects were also participants in a perceptual task. The trend of the findings suggests a relationship between efficiency of psychological functioning on a perceptual task and degree of interpersonal relatedness.