Subjects studied the names of faces with known coordinates in a four-dimensional similarity space (Wilson, Loffler, & Wilkinson, 2002), which was verified in a multi-dimensional scaling study (van Vugt, Sekuler, Wilson, & Kahana, in preparation). When subjects were cued with a face at test, the probability that they recalled the correct name diminished in an approximately linear manner depending on how many faces in the study set were similar to the cue face, i.e. present within a small neighborhood radius in face space. Reaction time showed the inverse effect. Furthermore, intrusions were more likely to come from nearby positions in face space. We demonstrated corresponding effects in an associative recognition task. |