title: Electrophysiological evidence for women superiority on unfamiliar face processing.
abstract: Previous research has reported that women superiority on face recognition tasks, taking sex difference in accuracy rates as major evidence. By appropriately modifying experimental tasks and examining reaction time as behavioral measure, it was possible to explore which stage of face processing contributes to womens' superiority. We used a modified delayed matching-to-sample task to investigate the time course characteristics of face recognition by ERP, for both men and women. In each trial, participants matched successively presented faces to samples (target faces) by key pressing. It was revealed that women were more accurate and faster than men on the task. ERP results showed that compared to men, women had shorter peak latencies of early components P100 and N170, as well as larger mean amplitude of the late positive component P300. Correlations between P300 mean amplitudes and RTs were found for both sexes. Besides, reaction times of women but not men were positively correlated with N170 latencies. In general, we provided further evidence for women superiority on face recognition in both behavioral and neural aspects.
authors: School of Psychology and Cognitive Science, East China Normal University, North Zhongshan Road 3663, Shanghai, SH 200062, China; School of Education Science, Xinyang Normal University, South Lake Road 237, Xinyang 464000, China.
authors: Tianyi
authors: T
authors: Sun
authors: School of Psychology and Cognitive Science, East China Normal University, North Zhongshan Road 3663, Shanghai, SH 200062, China.
authors: Lin
authors: L
authors: Li
authors: School of Education Science, Xinyang Normal University, South Lake Road 237, Xinyang 464000, China.
authors: Yuanli
authors: Y
authors: Xu
authors: School of Psychology and Cognitive Science, East China Normal University, North Zhongshan Road 3663, Shanghai, SH 200062, China.
authors: Li
authors: L
authors: Zheng
authors: School of Psychology and Cognitive Science, East China Normal University, North Zhongshan Road 3663, Shanghai, SH 200062, China. Electronic address: wdzhang@psy.ecnu.edu.cn.
authors: Weidong
authors: W
authors: Zhang
authors: Zhejiang Yuying Education Group, Gongshu District 111, Hangzhou 310005,China.
authors: Fanzhi Anita
authors: FA
authors: Zhou
authors: School of Psychology and Cognitive Science, East China Normal University, North Zhongshan Road 3663, Shanghai, SH 200062, China. Electronic address: wlkc_xyguo@126.com.
authors: Xiuyan
authors: X
authors: Guo
mesh_terms: D004569:Electroencephalography; D018913:Event-Related Potentials, P300; D005071:Evoked Potentials; D005145:Face; D000066499:Facial Recognition; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D011930:Reaction Time; D021641:Recognition, Psychology; D012737:Sex Factors; D055815:Young Adult
keywords: Correlation; ERP; Face recognition; Sex difference; Superiority