Author(s)

Natalie Lugasi¹, Yaron Sachar², Eli Vakil^1*

¹Department of Psychology and Leslie and Susan Gonda (Goldschmied), Multidisciplinary Brain Research Center, Bar-Ilan University, Ramat-Gan, Israel.
²Brain Injury Rehabilitation, Loewenstein Hospital, Raanana, Israel.

Objective: Context-Dependent Effect (CDE) is a process by which restoring at test the original learning context enhances memory. We examined the CDE of facial expressions through behavioral and eye movement measures. Participants and Method: Twenty-three healthy individuals and 23 patients with moderate-to-severe TBI individuals participated in the current study. Participants were exposed to pictures of faces with neutral expression and were asked to remember them for a subsequent memory test. In the testing session, they were asked to determine whether or not the faces presented to them had appeared before, under two conditions: 1) where the context remains constant (facial expression remained neutral—the Repeat condition); 2) where the context changes (facial expression changed to angry or happy expression— the Re-pair condition). Results: While memory of the individuals with TBI was poorer than that of the control group, both groups exhibited CDE, that is consistency of facial expressions between study and test facilitated face recognition. In both groups, there is a relationship between Dwell Time on the faces and face recognition. This effect appeared in the study and test phases. Conclusions: This research supports previous studies showing evidence for CDE in the TBI group and extends our comprehension of the relationship between eye movements, memory, and context of facial expression.

Facial Expression, Memory, Eye Tracking, TBI

Lugasi, N. , Sachar, Y. and Vakil, E. (2023) The Effect of Facial Expressions on the Process of Learning, and Memory of Face Images among Healthy Participants and Individuals with Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI): Examination Using Eye Movements. Psychology, 14, 1361-1380. doi: 10.4236/psych.2023.148077.