Recognizing and Naming Faces: Aging, Memory Retrieval, and the Tip of the Tongue State

Subjects over the age of 50 were presented with famous and nonfamous male faces. If they recognized the face, they were asked for his name and for as much information about the person as possible. For recognition, older subjects were less sensitive (lower d-prime) and more cautious (higher beta) than younger subjects. The number of "tip of the tongue" (TOT) naming responses as a proportion of faces recognized increased with age, while the number of responses where the right name was produced correspondingly decreased with age. Following responses of No, TOT, and Yes to "Do you know his name?", older subjects reported fewer correct semantic features than younger subjects in all three cases; but as proportions of the number of correct semantic features following Yes responses, there were no age effects (.21 and .59 for No and TOT responses, respectively). In multiple regression analyses, age surprisingly was often a better predictor of performance than measures of current cognitive ability. The results are interpreted as evidence of impairment with age associated with at least three stages in the face recognition process as identified by Bruce and Young (1986).