Study title

United Kingdom

Individual

For data in file 'BadhamMaylor2016a':Thirty-two young and 32 older adults took part in the experiment.1 Young participants wererecruited from the University of Warwick and received either £6 or course credit. Olderparticipants were all living independently and were recruited from an age study volunteerpanel populated by local advertisements; they each received £10 toward their travelexpenses. All participants were native English speakers except for three young adults.For data in file 'BadhamMaylor2015': Forty-eight young adults (33 female, ages 18–27 years, M =20.0, SD = 1.9) and 48 older adults (33 female, ages 64–86 years, M = 73.1, SD = 5.4) took part in the experiment.1Young and older adults had similar years of education, M =14.6, SD = 1.6, and M = 15.0, SD = 2.8, respectively (t < 1).Young participants were either recruited from the universityand compensated a small amount, or they participated withoutcompensation as part of demonstration sessions at open daysfor the Department of Psychology. Older adults were recruitedfrom the local community and were given compensationtoward their travel expenses.Stimuli were 16 faces presented on a computer screen aboveone of two names. Two highly famous individuals’ nameswere used: Prince William (PW) and George Bush (GB). Thefaces were all nonfamous individuals, but two faces werelookalikes for PWand two were lookalikes for GB (lookalikeimages were taken from the Internet). The remaining faceswere taken from an online database (Psychological ImageCollection at Stirling; http://pics.psych.stir.ac.uk/). The faceswere of white males who varied in their similarity to PWandGB.For data in file 'BadhamHayFoxonKaurMaylor2016b': There were two factors: age (young vs. older adults; between participants) and prior knowledge (present vs. absent; within participants).Thirty-nine young and 36 older adults took part in the experiment (this excludes one young and two older adults who failed to follow the instructions). Young participants were recruited from the University of Warwick and received either £6 or course credit. Older participants were all living independently and were recruited from an age study volunteer panel populated by local advertisements; they each received £10 toward their travel expenses. All participants were native English speakers.Background information is summarized in Table 1, where it can be seen that young and older participants did not differ significantly in their years of education, t < 1. To assess cognitive functioning, participants completed the Digit Symbol Substitution test from the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale–Revised (Wechsler, 1981) as a measure of processing speed, and the multiple choice part of the Mill Hill vocabulary test (Raven, Raven, & Court, 1988) as a measure of crystallized intelligence. The results were consistent with the literature (e.g., Salthouse, 2010) in showing lower speed but higher vocabulary in older than in young adults, t(73) = −7.27 and 9.15, respectively.