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Undergraduate Research Internship Scheme 2014 Name: Dr Friederike Zimmermann School: Psychology Research Area: Cognitive Psychology Project Title: Have we met before? How semantic information can boost our visual memory for faces Project Summary In everyday life, we encounter new faces all the time, yet most of them are easily forgotten after one encounter. However, some factors increase the likelihood that a face will be remembered and later recognized. One of these factors is rich semantic information at the point of learning which has been shown to enhance our memory for faces (Bonner, Burton, Jenkins, & McNeill, 2003; Kaufmann, Schweinberger, & Burton, 2008). This finding indicates that we not only learn faces visually but rapidly integrate information from different sources including visual information about a person’s looks as well as semantic information such as their name or where you first met them. The aim of the proposed research project is to gain a better understanding of the benefits of nonvisual information on face learning which importantly might help us to find ways to improve face recognition in individuals with severe problems in recognizing faces (i.e., prosopagnosia) To summarize the main research questions that will be addressed are: 1. Does semantic information boost our ability to learn new faces? 2. What type of semantic information boosts face learning (e.g., visual descriptions of faces, a person’s name, semantic associations)? 3. Are these effects long-lasting (i.e., are the benefits still present after a distractor activity)? You will be trained in how to conduct behavioural research including experimental design and data collection/ analysis using Excel & SPSS. This project is ideal for someone who is interested in gaining research experience in cognitive psychology. Essential Criteria 1. Interest in cognitive psychology and willingness to read background literature on the topic 2. Good skills in Excel/ SPSS Desirable Criteria 1. Experience with Adobe Photoshop for stimulus preparation 2. Prior experience in experimental research